The East Neuk of Fife is renowned for its golf courses, its golden beaches and its picturesque villages which, at this time of year, fill up for the East Neuk Festival. Top class musicians come to the beautiful churches of Crail, Anstruther and St Andrews to play music and to build collaborations. At the festival’s core this year are the star musicians of the Belcea Quartet, but they’re playing only one quartet (Debussy’s) in the entire festival. For the rest of the time they’re collaborating with other musicians to play quintets and sextets, as well as showcasing individual players as guest soloists. In this concert, their first for this festival, the individual guest was pianist Bertrand Chamayou, but the guest string players were celebrities, too: the extra cellist was superstar Jean-Guihen Queyras, and the guest viola was none other than Diyang Mei, principal viola of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
An alignment of stars, then, but the most remarkable thing about their playing of Brahms’ Sextet no. 1 was how well the whole thing gelled, no mean feat for a group of musicians who must only very rarely (if ever) have played together before. Brahms is so studiously generous to all of the musicians in this work that it’s often very difficult to tell where one line of texture ends and another one begins, even when you’re watching them play what you’re hearing, and these six musicians made the very most of this organic sense of flow. The beauty of their coordination was a marvel to witness, and it seemed to be led from the middle rather than the top. My ear was regularly drawn to Mei’s super-rich viola, which fitted with the two cellos like a hand in a glove. Was he genuinely making a more assertive sound, or was I just expecting one because I knew who he was? Either way, the richness of the sextet's overall tone was something to wallow in, and so was its shape.
The first movement unfolded in unhurried warmth, while the second began in a forceful drama that dissolved into something unfathomably tender before melting gorgeously into silence. The third movement’s playfulness contained a hint of mania, which was all forgotten in the suave cello melody that led the finale, and the music crossed the finish line with a smile so confident that it seemed to punch the air. These were stars who subsumed their egos into a common endeavour, and the result was outstanding.
Hearing this music in a grand concert hall in Vienna would be a marvellous treat. Hearing it in the silence of the ancient church in Crail felt little short of miraculous. Its stone arches and wooden pews seem almost tailor-made for chamber music. They don’t always flatter a piano, however. Chamayou’s Liszt selection managed to avoid any acoustical problems, just about, playing the Sposalizio and Sonnet 123 with mellifluous beauty and unhurried smoothness. Once he got into the Dante movement, however, his sound seemed to grab our ears with a touch of aggression rather than giving the music space to breathe. Liszt’s piece contrasts heaven and hell, and Chamayou seemed a force of nature as the cascade of notes tumbled out from under his fingers. Hell felt perhaps a little too weighty, however, and heaven didn’t quite offer either the consolation or the resolution that Liszt may have intended. So the devil won out in the end, but that's OK for now. Let’s hope he’s long gone before Crail's minister finds out.
