2024 Lammermuir Competition – 5 to 16 September – Seen and Heard Worldwide

Lammermuir Competition proclaims its programme for its fifteenth pageant in September this 12 months having walked a path of miracles since its fragile funding cliff-face in 2023.

The complete programme is now launched on-line CLICK HERE.

James Waters Chief Govt and Co-Inventive Director stated: ‘These final 12 months have been a number of the hardest we’ve skilled in over 30 years of working and operating arts festivals. However they’ve additionally been a number of the most magical as our audiences, our buddies throughout the trade, our patrons and supporters have all come collectively in voice and, the place they might, with monetary assist to make sure that this 12 months’s pageant might go forward. Their ardour for what we do is extremely humbling, thrilling and motivating and we actually wouldn’t be right here with out them. Thanks to every one who has supported.’

This massively valued East Lothian pageant rigorously brings collectively a programme of extremely proficient musicians, with music that resonates and expands the viewers expertise in places throughout the undulating county between the coast east of Edinburgh and the Lammermuir Hills.

On the coronary heart of that programme this 12 months is Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles carried out within the Concorde Hangar on the Nationwide Museum of Flight. Sung by one of many best choral teams on this planet, Tenebrae, for which it was written, the work which is each ravishingly stunning and massively dramatic has been carried out as soon as earlier than at Lammermuir to a sold-out viewers who stood cheering when it completed. That is an unmissable masterpiece and centrepiece of the fifteenth pageant.

Concerto Copenhagen, probably the greatest baroque orchestras on this planet, makes its first look in Scotland. Embedding themselves within the pageant as Ensemble in Residence, they provide 4 live shows which spotlight the brilliance of the seventeenth century masters who impressed Bach, from Dutch composer Dietrich Buxtehude to Biber to Schmelzer and lesser identified geniuses like George Muffat and Johan Helmich Roman.

Scottish Opera visits the market city of Haddington to entertain with Britten’s operatic comedy Albert Herring, set in a small Suffolk market city. The forged consists of Susan Bullock as Woman Billows and Glen Cunningham as Albert Herring and directed by Daisy Evans.

The landmark programme additionally marks the pageant debut of the incomparable Véronique Gens, one of many world’s biggest singers. Her again catalogue of award-winning recordings and star appearances at main opera homes speaks volumes. One of many main interpreters of French music, her extra intimate recital on the pageant provides great songs by Fauré, Gounod, Duparc and Hahn.

Amsterdam’s sensible younger Van Bearle Trio get completist taking part in all of Beethoven’s piano trios, a number of the most stunning music ever written, throughout the favored weekday morning Espresso Live shows, and with world-class truffles.

The pageant’s unashamed devotion to JS Bach continues with The Artwork of Fugue carried out by pioneering viol consort Fretwork and Roman Rabinovich taking part in arguably Bach’s best keyboard music, the Goldberg Variations.

ZRI, named after the Viennese café, typically frequented by Schubert and Brahms, take audiences actually on a journey throughout three rural places performing their very own distinctive variations of nice works by Schubert, Brahms and Janáček which draw out their gypsy and Hungarian musical iNFLuences.

Among the pageant’s most enduringly standard artists celebrating the fifteenth pageant together with the Maxwell Quartet, Dunedin Consort, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Gesualdo Six, Hebrides Ensemble and plenty of others.

And this 12 months welcomes the model new Valo Quartet partnered with extraordinary American pianist Jeremy Denk who additionally contributes two different usually putting programmes together with a celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Charles Ives with the transcendent violinist Maria Włoszczowska plus a brass band and a choir.

Throughout 37 live shows there are a lot of extra tales and gems to uncover.

Co-Inventive Director Hugh Macdonald added: ‘I believe that is most likely the richest, most inspiring Lammermuir programme we have now but give you. We’re so delighted – and excited – to be again!’

For individuals who method the pageant as a possibility to roam and discover the countryside wherein it nestles, the journey all the way down to Crichton Collegiate Church and Humbie within the south, Dunbar and Stenton within the east and Dirleton and North Berwick on the northern shoreline soak up a lot of the fantastic thing about East Lothian and its surrounds.

The unfold throughout 15 venues additionally invitations those that may not be so aware of classical music to find one thing on their doorsteps, whether or not in one of many principal cities or small villages.

This 12 months’s pageant additionally invitations younger folks in East Lothian by means of its doorways to take entrance row seats in live shows.

Entrance Row is a brand new two-year viewers improvement and studying initiative developed in collaboration with East Lothian Instrumental Providers and with assist from Scops Arts Belief which helps to provide folks entry to take pleasure in and take part within the arts.

100 12- to 18-year-old college college students in East Lothian may have the chance to attend a live performance with a seat within the entrance row without spending a dime. They’re additionally invited to attend rehearsals and meet the artists and two shall be provided the prospect to hitch with the staff to see behind the scenes and get a style of life engaged on the pageant.

Along with the brand new Entrance Row programme, Lammermuir ComPetition is providing college college students aged 7-18 free tickets, and full-time college students in additional schooling aged 16+ half-price tickets to listen to the unbelievable line-up.

The 2024 Lammermuir ComPetition has been made potential solely with the beneficiant assist of our many companions, trusts and foundations, benefactors, buddies and donors together with The Nationwide Lottery by means of Inventive Scotland, Foyle Basis, McInroy & Wooden and the Stevenston Charitable Belief.

Muir Russell, Chair of Lammermuir ComPetition stated: ‘This 12 months’s ComPetition programme is our strongest but. Due to the generosity of our supporters and buddies, and with Inventive Scotland’s contribution, we are able to go ahead to supply one other distinctive, wealthy cultural expertise of the type that Lammermuir has grow to be well-known for.’

Alan Morrison, Head of Music at Inventive Scotland stated: ‘East Lothian strikes centre stage on the European cultural scene this September because the Lammermuir Competition returns with a global array of artists from Denmark, France, the Netherlands and past. As ever, the pageant additionally gives a high-profile platform for a few of Scotland’s greatest classical musicians to showcase their world-beating skills. It’s nice to see a programme thread its approach by means of a area in such an ingenious approach, with choral work within the Concorde Hangar and opera absorbing the ambiance of Haddington’s historical past as a market city.’

The ComPetition’s relationship with BBC Radio 3 continues with the published of 4 Concerto Copenhagen live shows from the 2024 ComPetition.