En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Haddington

Bringing the Philharmonia is the most ambitious thing the Lammermuir Festival has ever done, yet it felt like a natural next step for a festival that's growing in stature.

In their Lammermuir Festival debut, I Fagiolini strike spiritual and musical gold with the Monteverdi Vespers... at least in the first half.

Scotland's Dunedin Consort offers a radiant program of Purcell and his peers.

Danny Driver thrills in an imaginatively conceived and wonderfully executed programme of Ligeti and Debussy. 

Phantasm in an intimate, late night Art of Fugue for consort of viols. 

Tender Sibelius, Mozart brimming with personality and heroic Beethoven in the opening concert of the sixth Lammermuir Fetival. 

A deeply moving evening of Russian choral treasures from Nigel Short's Tenebrae.

National Youth Choir of Scotland Chamber Choir and Lammermuir Festival Players delight in an imaginative programme of French and Estonian sacred music.

Philip Higham and Alasdair Beatson performed Beethoven, Schumann, Fauré and Janáček at Haddington's Town House.

Since reading Stravinsky’s assertion (in Poetics of Music) that “The more constraint one imposes, the more one frees oneself from the chains that shackle the spirit”, this paradox has fascinated me.

I’ve never before dreamt of being a fly on the wall during early discussions of festival programming, but this concert really set me thinking. Two minor-key works? One instrument? Ten o’clock on a Saturday night? The element which reframes everything is the Lammermuir Festival’s binary belief in beauty of music and place.

Haddington’s 1815 Holy Trinity Church stands on the site of a thirteenth-century Franciscan friary. It is set back on the deceptively narrow Church Street which terminates at the Nungate Bridge, as did the dangling lives of many criminals in bygone eras. This elegantly simply venue housed an imaginative centenary celebration programme entitled “Literary Britten”.

If three years is sufficient to constitute a tradition then, traditionally, a Lammermuir Festival ends with a sell-out concert in St. Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington. And if year three is sufficiently far along the line to break with tradition, then this year’s surprise was not box-office focused but based on choice of repertoire; not a Bach/Handel finish, but an all-French programme.

Stars of Lammermuir’s 2011 Musical Journey, the Navarra Quartet returned for two 2012 dates. The first of their engagements featured a single Haydn work: The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross (1787).The prospect of seven slow movements, framed by “Introduzione” and “Il Terremoto” (“Earthquake”) might strike some as a marathon.

The motto of the Lammermuir Festival, now in its third year, is “beautiful music in beautiful places”. Few settings are more striking than St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington.

The Dunedin Consort and Players is running a series of three concerts over the coming months, each programming two of Bach’s Brandenberg Concertos interspersed with two Cantatas. Although strictly speaking still in Advent, when Leipzig frowned on elaborate church music, a large crowd turned out to hear this imaginative all-Bach programme for this Christmas season in Perth Concert Hall.

The Closing Concert of the Lammermuir Festival took place in the historic St. Mary's Parish Church, Haddington – the site of John Knox's ordination as a Catholic priest, some years before the volte face which saw him spearheading the Scottish Reformation. An all-Baroque programme was presented by the Dunedin Consort, animatedly directed from the keyboard by John Butt.

You might think that a programme containing Bach and 20th/21st century composers would suggest an evening of unconnected extremes. Nothing could be further from the truth in the case of Jennifer Koh's Bach and Beyond recital, given in Lennoxlove House, Haddington as part of the Lammermuir Festival.

Bringing to a close this season of Music Up Close concerts, Nikolai Demidenko delighted a packed Haddington Town House with a programme of Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt. The programme opened with two much loved Beethoven works: Piano Sonata in C minor, 'Pathétique' Op. 13 and Piano Sonata in C# minor, 'Moonlight' Op. 27 No. 2.

With only Nikolai Demidenko's Gala Recital on Sunday 10th April remaining, the recital by the Vardanyan Quartet marked the end of Haddington Concert Society's 2010/11 “Music Close Up” season. The only single-gender ensemble I've seen in two seasons of concerts, the quartet opened with Haydn's String Quartet in D Major, Op. 64 No. 5 'The Lark'.