Venue: St Mary's Parish Church, Haddington

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.

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.

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.