Until relatively recently you’d have been forgiven for thinking of East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival as a fairly small-scale affair, tucked away in a quietly scenic corner of Scotland and specialising in intimate events of chamber music. Bringing an orchestra on the level of the Philharmonia, however, is both a massive statement of how far the festival has come and a suggestion of its power to draw. “This is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done,” declared one of the festival's directors from the stage before the concert began, yet it feels like a natural progression rather than an aberration.
After all, as orchestras go, the Philharmonia is pretty much top level. Fitting them into Haddington’s St Mary’s Church was a squeeze, but the sheer heft of the sound in this concert was a delight. The two chords that launched Beethoven’s Eroica were like a cannon rather than a starting pistol, and the weight of the first movement was both impressive and exhilarating. The ensemble may have been a bit testy in places – it often seemed that the cellos sitting in the south transept couldn’t quite coordinate with the violins in the north – but the crashing discords at the climax of the development section were hair-raising, as was the rollicking energy of the Scherzo. There was a chilly edge to the strings in the funeral march, a movement which developed terrific bite as it progressed, and the finale bristled with confidence, moving purposefully towards the finish line with tremendous excitement.
Much of that was thanks to conductor Rory Macdonald, who shaped the unfolding score with pace and energy. His tempi were on the fast side, but he knew when to push forwards and when to hold back so that the turns of the musical narrative were fresh and sometimes surprising. He could also turn on a dime in Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, so that the switch from calm to storm could be sudden and urgent. In this he was helped by the fantastically clean sound of the orchestral strings, where every phrase sounded as though it had been scrubbed fresh, and the winds that echoed atmospherically around the church’s medieval walls.