Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 3

Somei Satoh: Kisetsu
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for winds and orchestra
Haydn: Symphony no 104

Melinda Maxwell, oboe; Janet Hilton, clarinet; Sue Dent, horn; Laurence Perkins, bassoon
Conductor: Diego Masson
Dartington Festival Orchestra

One of those concerts which gives the summer school students a chance to see and hear their masterclass tutors in action (in the Mozart). But also an opportunity to hear something a little different. Dartington has a long tradition of inviting resident composers, and this year it's the turn of the Japanese musical colourist Somei Satoh (there's a Japanese theme to the festival as a whole - it culminates in a couple of performances of Madama Butterfly, in which Festival Orchestra, student conductors and the opera class come together). Over the weeks of the school he has been holding composition classes, and various concerts have featured his work.

Working on a piece like Kisetsu poses particular challenges for an orchestra, particularly when the remainder of the programme is firmly classical and ends with as rumbustious a piece as Haydn 104. For a start, it is resolutely quiet, testing string harmonic technique and bow control under pressure, and relying on much ppp wind writing; and it's certainly no place for a percussionist with the DTs. It is also slow, very slow, with very few moving parts. As a result, any slight surge in volume or intensity is magnified. And there is a sense of anticipation, once each momentary bloom of timbre has subsided into silence, regarding what will come next.

But it's not just the performer's technical skill which is tested. Any ambient noise, a squeaky chair, a buzzing mute, is easily discernible. That's not to mention a violinist's stomach rumble (for that's what happened) causing the placid musical meniscus to tremble in a rather unexpected way.

Next: Haydn's Creation, with Aussie legend and the Bradman of the Baton, Sir Charles Mackerras (fingers crossed for the Ashes, eh, Sir C?)

Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 2

Gounod: Messe Solennelle
Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe (suites 1 & 2)
Dartington Festival Chorus & Orchestra (plus guest vocals from Exaudi)
Conductors: Brian Kay and Diego Masson

Firstly, erk, a correction: yes it was the Cello Concerto no 2 by Shostakovich that we played in Wednesday's concert, not no 1 (a rather less searching piece).

But anyway, following that intense experience, the prospect of Gounod's unfamiliar mass promised to be something of an anticlimax - it's one of those pieces which gets labelled as 'unjustifiably neglected', as sure a sign as you can get of something being justifiably neglected. In this case, well, it's not long, so would be a useful concert-filler, next to other relatively short pieces like the Beethoven Mass in C, or the Schubert E flat mass (even if putting Gounod in the same programme as Schubert would cruelly show up the differences between the two in tune-smithery).

Here, though, the companion was Ravel's ballet, which, as well as being an orchestral showpiece of the ultimate kind, gives a chorus a run-out in something rather less chaste than standard choral fare. This is particularly so in the second suite, where their wordless singing adds a real Hollywood bloom to the most glorious depiction of sunrise in all music (I'd like to add my personal thanks to Ravel for giving the tune to the violas, while the violins busy themselves with their fiddly background noodlings). But it's in the final section where the chanting really pays off, delivering an erotic charge the piece misses a little bit in the purely orchestral version - you feel just a little bit dirty even playing along.

Other than the music, one reason for looking forward to the Friday concert is that summer school director Gavin Henderson gives a hint of what's to come the following year. I guess the big news this time is that next year will be his last festival (after nearly a thousand years in charge), so there's a vacancy for 2011. Evidently, nobody has been lined up yet, so now's the time to start getting your CVs in order.

Next: Haydn, Mozart and Satoh.

Barlines at Dartington: Concert no 1

Shostakovich: Cello Concerto no 1
Dvorak: Symphony no 8
Soloist: only Karine Georgian!
Conductor: Diego 'Dieu' Masson
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The Dartington Festival Orchestra, house band of the Dartington International Summer School, has a somewhat polyvalent existence. A ragamuffin collection of freelancers, teachers, students and musicians of varying degrees of spuriousness, it exists primarily to:

a Accompany various choral courses during the last 3 weeks of the school
b Work as the pit band for the opera course at the end of August
c Provide cannon fodder for the advanced conducting course classes (6 students chosen for their all-round musical skills rather than nascent dictatorial qualities)

All this involves 6 hours' rehearsal a day (6 days a week), covering a range of repertoire. But the high point of all this work is the opportunity to perform a couple of concerts each of the 3 weeks the orchestra is in residence. And the first of this season was a belter, featuring a powerfully committed performance of Shostakovich at his most bleak by one of the world's most powerfully committed cellists. The concerto is not so well known - apparently, Ms Georgian herself had only performed it once before (I remain to stand corrected) - but from its opening falling minor second figure, to its mechanical percussion conclusion, via a cadenza in which the soloist duels with (and beats off) a furious bass drum, and a scherzo where she dances with a trio of beserk bassoons, the piece never stops probing at the scary crevices of the musical imagination.

Next up: er, Gounod!
(And Daphnis and Chloe.)