ENF 2022 in PICTURES

Photographer Neil Hanna had a roving brief at ENF 2022 to capture the festival as it happened…

NB Hi Res images available for press use; please contact Debra Boraston with enquiries

Young brass players in ENF’s BIG PROJECT 2022 [Photo by Neil Hanna]

Trumpeter John Wallace and one of our young performers keep an eye on things in ENF’s BIG PROJECT 2022 [photo by Neil Hanna]

Light the Lights rehearsal with Violinist Benjamin Baker and Dancer James Pett.[Neil Hanna Photography]

Light the Lights rehearsal with Benjamin Baker, violin, and Aaron Sparks, juggler [Neil Hanna Photography]

Elias Quartet in rehearsal for Schubert’s Octet [Neil Hanna Photography]

Band in a Van featuring Tenement Jazz at Crail Harbour. [Neil Hanna Photography]

Helena Kay SIM Trio at Dreel Halls [Neil Hanna Photography]

Crail Church – Gandini Juggling entertain the audience [Neil Hanna Photography]

Elisabeth Leonskaja in rehearsal at Crail Church [Neil Hanna Photography]

Pavel Haas Quartet and Boris Giltburg in rehearsal in Crail Church. [Neil Hanna Photography]

Rapasa Otieno performing in St Ayle’s Anstruther [Neil Hanna Photography]

Rihab Azar performing in St Ayle Anstruther [Neil Hanna Photography]

Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoyin Crail Church concert. [Neil Hanna Photography]3

Elisabeth Leonskaja, Liza Ferschtman and Ivan Karizna in rehearsal in Crail Church [Neil Hanna Photography]

Shirley Smart Trio in performance Anstruther Town Hall [Neil Hanna Photography]

THUNDERPLUMP FILMSHOW: A SCOTTISH SPECTACULAR

Between September 2021 and May 2022, David Behrens made 9 films for ENF’s BIG PROJECT 2022, Thunderplump.

Travelling Scotland, he filmed all kinds of Scottish weather and landscape, risking ice, storm, snow and gales – as well as the occasional fine day.

This ‘Filmshow’ version brings together some of the most spectacular moments from his journeys.

*Thunderplump: A sudden, heavy shower of rain, sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightning.

N.B. This film is without sound/music since the original was screened at ENF2022 with live music from Neil Brand, The Wallace Collection and three Fife music groups: Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra, StAMP, Tullis Russell Mills Band. We invite you to create your own music to the film…

READ DAVID’S FILMING BLOG HERE: Thunderplump diary

Follow David on Instagram @davidbehrens13

Learn more about ENF’s BIG PROJECTS.

ENF RETREAT INFORMATION

ENF is interested in working with outstanding young artists who have a great idea to suggest and are looking for the kind of support and development possibilities that ENF Retreat can offer. These include A&R, advocacy, practical assistance with logistics/production, support in fundraising, offering performance opportunities and helping seek onward performances. We are looking for artists whose idea will deliver excellent and distinctive work that has potential for onward development or performance and that will make a tangible difference to the artist’s future.

All ENF Retreats involve coming to Fife to work on your ideas; usually we anticipate that the work may take place in bursts over a period of 6-12 months, so we put an upper limit of 10 days in total.
You may invite a mentor or request specialist support, or you may want to involve other musicians/artists – every residency is different.

ENF provides a lot – expenses, accommodation, catering, technical and project support, PR and promotion. We do not pay participants, except if a residency results in a performance in the Festival, in which case we agree a fee.

A successful project is typically –

– solo or chamber scale performance
– realisable within a residency of 10 days within 6-12 months
– Allow the artist to test some new idea, technique or possibility
– Needs this kind of support to be realised (we will not support a simple preparation of a programme or recording.)
– Have potential for further performance / development
– Fits with the ENF’S artistic programme

What we don’t do:

– commission: this is a place to develop ideas, take next steps, take risks
– support simple preparation for a concert programme or album

If you would like to pitch your case, email svend@eastneukfestival.com

ENF 2021 IN PICTURES

Sunset on 2 July we lit huge candles in the labyrinth. A test-drive for 2022…. [Photo: Jackie Chalmers]

Rihab Azar mesmerised us with ancient and modern Oud music [Still from film by Stuart Armitt]

Pianist Paul Lewis thrilled us with Pictures at an Exhibition [Picture: David Behrens]

Young brass players came together for the first time to perform together with members of The Wallace Collection [Photo: David Behrens] See more lovely pictures HERE

Sean Shibe played music from the Balcarres Lute Book actually in Balcarres House – 4 centuries after the book was collated. [Still from film by Stuart Armitt]

Thomas Adès directed the UK premiere of Francesco Coll’s Turia with Sean Shibe and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Sand in your Eye created 3 huge drawings on Elie Beach {Photo by Jamie Wardley, Sand in your Eye]

The Dixie Lee Trio toured the Neuk as our Band In A Van giving pop-up concerts throughout the area [Photo: Colin Hattersley]

LABYRINTH

ENF Director, Svend McEwan-Brown explains why the festival has a labyrinth this year…

I have been hooked on labyrinths for a very long time. I know the word has some unhappy resonances: the Minotaur’s labyrinth (not a happy place), labyrinthine plots (confusing and annoying), labyrinthitis (very nasty), but to me, labyrinths are special places for thinking, playing, and relaxing.

The history of labyrinths is long (read an excellent short overview HERE), and they clearly fill a profound need in humans. They are easy to confuse with (equally ancient) mazes but in fact they are the opposite: a maze is a puzzle to be solved, while a labyrinth is not there to confound you. You can usually see the whole thing, and the path generally only goes one way; the act of walking it has, since ancient times, been an aid to prayer or thought. And for me – Because my brain is made this way – labyrinths are very musical. Listening to a long-ish piece of music is so often like walking a path, encountering melodies and other musical ideas from different perspectives as you move along it. At bottom, that’s why we have a labyrinth at ENF this year. Of course there is another, very current reason, which is that in this time of Covid I’ve been considering all kinds of possibilities for events and happenings that we can deliver safely to enough people for it to make sense to do them. So having something like this which can be in place for months and bring pleasure to many is a wonderful thing.

I’ve had the pleasure of commissioning two labyrinths before, both linked to music and to play. A few years ago in Glasgow, the veteran labyrinth creator Jim Buchanan created a water labyrinth in Glasgow City Halls. Projected patterns on a pool of water delighted all ages from toddlers to the elderly, and played a part in family days and arcane electronica performances equally successfully. Then, in Fife, Hilke McIntyre created a labyrinth which was also a schematic map of the East Neuk.

Laid out in Crail Community Hall, it was around the size of a badminton court and as well as being a beautiful graphic, it encapsulated many aspects of the area, its landscape, history, industries, and towns. Again, its invitation was to walk and enjoy the artwork quietly and peacefully, or to play. Children ran around it; others paced reflectively.

This year’s labyrinth is the first that I have designed myself. Like Hilke, I took inspiration from the East Neuk itself and my starting point was the coastline (also the route of Fife Coastal Path), which famously resembles a Scottie dog’s head. I took that pattern and mapped it out and then drew the rest of the labyrinth from there.

My pattern was taken by Chris Randall, who used GPRS technology to map it onto the wildflower meadow at Kellie Castle. Then he and ENF producer Danni Bastian marked it all up, and the NTS team of gardeners made a cut into the meadow following the pattern.

Aerial photo of the Labyrinth at Kellie Castle by Katie Chalmers

It has some growing to do before it looks its best, but as they continue to mow the pattern from now till July my hope is that, seen from above, the pattern will be increasingly beautiful and from the ground it will provide a very special way of enjoying that lovely space this year. Who knows, we may even be able to have some music there… Even now,  I guess you could (virtually) walk the Fife Coastal Path by following one edge of it – and it would only take you about a minute.

The Mozart Effect

Monday 4 September 2017 was a sunny, homey kind of a day; I did a little work, baked teacakes, gardened, watched some telly. Around 4.30, my left arm suddenly fell heavy and stiff. I could not lift my left foot from the ground. I knew enough to suspect that I was suffering a stroke. Weirdly, the symptoms abated enough for Roy, my husband, to drive me to A&E and for me to walk in under my own steam. A couple of hours later, things looked not so bad – perhaps it was just a scare. We were joking and persuading the medics not to keep me in overnight when the really serious stroke struck. “It’s happening now” I slurred, and saw the junior doctor’s face switch from jolly banter to urgent concern. Then he ran for support.

‘Stroke’ is such a tender word. The experience is oddly painless – things just suddenly stop working. I’ve never actually known anyone who suffered a stroke, never thought about them, and knowing so little made things all the scarier. Should I be saying goodbye to Roy as best I could? If I survived, what might I lose? Mobility, speech, or other bodily and brain functions? There was no telling how bad it might get.

After a sleepless night listening to endless machines go ping in the HDU, things looked a little brighter – at least I was still there and nothing had gotten any worse. I found myself in the Borders General Hospital Stroke Unit, pretty much helpless, disoriented and so, so tired. I’m telling you this only because of what happened next. As I lay there, I found myself in a place I had never ever been. I inherited a strong vein of optimism and pragmatism from my Mother’s side; we are people who get on with things and respond to setbacks by finding another way. Yet here I was, so depressed and turned inwards that I couldn’t even muster enough energy for some solid self-pity. It was a malign, blank inertia, and other than Roy, the only thing I could think of to turn to was music. I remembered reading that listening to Mozart was supposed to bring all kinds of amazing brain benefits, from making your baby more intelligent, to relieving depression. Maybe he could help me. Roy brought me headphones and my phone to the hospital, and it had the Leopold Trio’s recording of Mozart’s late Serenade for string trio K568 on it. I shut my eyes and let it play. An hour later I was a different man.

By any standards, this is a miracle piece – just 3 instruments, 6 movements and a whole world of riches in an hour of music. It edges in so unassumingly, draws you into its play of ideas in a spirit that is generous, serious, genial, warm and intimate at once. It is not attention-seeking. Dramatic touches are few and far between. It’s like spending time with your very best friends. I lost myself in it completely, and truly could not have anticipated its power; it turned me around. At the end of that hour, I had got myself back. I was calmer, outward looking, engaged. Not out of the woods, but eager to start working out where the paths were.

From then on I listened to Mozart every day, it was the soundtrack to my recovery and I would recommend it to anyone as the best anti-depressant available.

One of the things people said to me most often at that time was: “don’t worry about work, don’t give it a thought”. I’m really lucky in that the work I do is also one of my biggest pleasures – the East Neuk Festival is a huge joy to me, so it made no sense to ignore it just when joy was a thing I needed on prescription. September is exactly the time of year when I would normally be pulling it all together, finalising everything ready for a January launch. So, with Mozart in my ears and my phone in hand, I set to work. Finalising the programme is a bit like playing 4-dimensional Tetris, and as piece after piece finds its place, the whole picture takes shape. Looking at this year’s programme for ENF, could you tell that it was put together by mobile phone from a hospital bed using just my right hand? I hope not, but for me ENF 2018 will always be a special one.

10 questions with Krzysztof Chorzelski

Krzysztof Chorzelski is most familiar to ENF audiences as the viola player of the Belcea Quartet. He enjoys a diverse career including guesting with other ensembles (such as the Alban Berg, Ysaye and Pavel Haas Quartets); he is a viola professor at London’s Guildhall School; he plays solo (his recital disc is due to be released next year on the Champs Hill Records Label) and he is also pursuing a conducting career.

We asked him 10 questions….

1. Great composers have played viola, most notably Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven – do you think that playing in the heart of the texture helped them write great quartets?

Being a violist, I would like to believe that this is the case! Playing in the heart of the texture is certainly a privilege which I love and enjoy. But more likely is the more prosaic truth about these great composers choosing to play the viola in quartets: they were too busy writing great music to practice their more and more virtuosic violin parts. I am sure that the melodic line (lying mostly at the top of the texture) came to them first together with harmony which was defined by the bass- line, while the middle parts were the results of the fine-tuning process. Perhaps this is why there is so much subtlety hidden inside these parts. I love my place in the quartet, it’s a source of never-ending wonder and discovery, but it would be unfair to attribute a particularly special role to it. The music of these great composers at height of their powers does not contain a single superflous note in any of the lines forming a quartet score – it is the finest and most accomplished compositional form and each of the four lines is an essential and intrinsic part of the great sum that they form.

2. An early success for you was winning a Violin competition. How come you transferred to viola?

I was asked by the young and brilliant Belcea Quartet in the more or less first year of their existence at the Royal College of Music to urgently replace their original violist who decided that his interest lay somewhere else. The urgency was due to an upcoming intercollegiate string quartet competition. I told them that I would help them out while they looked for a proper violist that they deserved to have. The set work was Beethoven’s op.18 no.5. My viola part had a fingering next to every note, because I could not read the viola clef. Almost twenty years later, they seem to still be looking for that proper violist and in the meantime I am enjoying “the ride”. And I have learnt the viola clef by now.

3. Would you tell us about your instrument?

My instrument is a Niccolo Amati built in 1678. It is a treasure, which I hold in my hands every day. It has given me so much over the past twelve or so years. It invites me all the time to go further, to look for the sound that would best express the music I play. If there ever are obstacles in the way, it is me and not my viola who is behind them.

4. Is it your only instrument or do you have different instruments for different purposes?

I own a modern instrument built for me by a talented young Romanian violin- maker Felix Rotaru. I am happy for it to be in the hands of a talented student of mine, growing up slowly while getting played. I am very curious what will become of it in the future. But as long as I can play my wonderful Amati it is unlikely to ever replace it.

5. All of the members of the Belcea Quartet have professional lives outside of the quartet – would you tell us a bit about other things you’re doing these days?

Yes, Axel and Antoine play together as concertmaster and solo cellist respectively in the Basel Sinfonie Orchester. They live a very rich and busy life. Corina has a violin class at the Bern Hochschule and plays wonderfully as a soloist whenever time permits. We all love coaching young quartets, which is becoming slowly a big part of our lives. I am also very interested in conducting, having studied it over the years and readily accept invitations from all orchestras willing to play under me. It is a great way to enrich my experience in music. Having to think a lot about another musical activity, which I am much less accomplished in, is very stimulating for me. I love playing chamber music with many other wonderful colleagues and friends of mine, and life gives me ample opportunity to do it.

6. At East Neuk Festival you will play in a septet, quintet, quartet and solo – is this a typical weekend for you and the Quartet? No it isn’t, which is why this is a very special weekend for us.

This is really party time! And an opportunity to perform other repertoire that we love and don’t get to perform that often with some fantastic musicians.

7. You are playing the Arpeggione Sonata which was originally written for a strange guitar/bowed string hybrid instrument:

The solo viola repertoire is not very big and therefore it is being enriched by many transcriptions with varying degree of success. The Arpeggione is one of the finest in my opinion. This music suits the sound of the viola and what is also helpful is the fact that we cannot be blamed for stealing this masterpiece from the repertoire of an instrument that has fallen silent since more or less Schubert’s time.

8. Belcea Quartet has created a new Trust – would you tell us a bit about what it will do and what your hopes are for it.

The Belcea Quartet Trust has two aims. The first one is to take the best, most passionate young quartets under our wing and give them our time during anextended period needed for a young group to develop. Very few music education institutions have got the mindset necessary to support chamber music so we decided to go it alone. We are very happy with the results of the first year and are looking forward to new quartets joining the scheme next season. The second aim is commissioning new music from today’s leading composers. The first fruit of this project will be a premiere of a new string quartet by Thomas Larcher in 2015. Another big premiere is planned for the following seasons, but it is still a well kept secret …

9. What is the toughest thing about playing in a quartet?

For me the toughest part of playing in a quartet is not spending enough time with the people I love.

10. What is the most rewarding thing about playing in a quartet?

The most rewarding thing about the life we live is the constant contact we have with some of the greatest music ever written and the fact that every day we play together we give each other a chance to do it better.

At East Neuk Festival you can hear Krzysztof with Belcea and Elias quartets and solo.

Lovesong and Lament (Weds, 2 July, Crail): Performing Brahms and Strauss as Belcea and Elias Quartets join forces

Elias Quartet (Thu 3 July, Kilrenny): guesting to add the extra viola to Beethoven’s Quintet

Schubertiad 2 (Sat 5 July, Crail): Belcea Quartet play Schubert’s ‘Rosamond’ Quartet

Schubertiad 4 (Sat 5 July Crail): Playing Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata with Christian Zacharias.

In praise of pathways

So many  paths across the actual littoral– not just the Fife Coastal Path, but all those purposeful  patterns of webbed feet on the beaches at high tide, the spoor-spotted tunnels through the undergrowth at the field’s edges. So many pathways too through our Littoral programme, cunningly interconnecting.

Listen to the magnificent Robert Macfarlane,  his litany of the ancient  paths which shadow or slant away from our modern roads : “Pilgrim paths, green roads, drove roads, corpse roads, trods, leys, dykes, drongs, sarns, snickets – say the names out loud and at speed and they become a poem or a rite – holloways, bostles, shutes, driftways, lichways, ridings, halterpaths, cartways carneys, causeways, herepaths.”

Did you catch that one half way through? Robert Macfarlane’s  latest book is in fact called “Holloway” -not a tribute to the esteemed former bishop who will once more grace this year’s programme with his unmatched eloquence, but lovely serendipity nevertheless.   The title refers to a “hollow way” – a deep and sunken lane, worn into soft ground through centuries. The book is an object of covetable beauty, created with an artist and fellow writer, printed using specially  cast type, the kind of thing you can never caress on your Kindle. It is exquisite, small,  not expensive and should be bestowed, munificently, upon your most deserving friends.

As should Robert’s other books, all things of beauty, learning and revelation, all full of  exhilarating excursions to forgotten, wild, resonant, remote or just seen-through-new-eyes places. When the idea of a coherent literary programme for the East Neuk Festival was first mooted, fellow director Jenny Brown and I were immediately clear that it should be about landscape and seascape, reflecting aspects of the natural world.  I am about to run into serious difficulty here, as virtually every author described  as a “nature writer” loathes the term. True, it is reductive lazy genre  short hand, but it is easier to say and write than “profound, observant, erudite thinkers who write illuminatingly,  personally  and passionately  about the effects on our brain and souls of taking the  time and effort  truly to look at all the living things and land around us.” So, tough, “nature writer” it is for now – and Robert is the absolute finest of his generation. Oh and he’s ridiculously charming, compelling and a complete hero too. I’m quite glad he’s joining us for this 10^th anniversary festival actually. Or did you gather that already?

Catherine Lockerbie

ENF TOP 20!

Svend Brown, Artistic Director, talks about the festival’s favourites…

Big birthdays are fine occasions for taking a good hard look at yourself. This year I’ve been spending a bit of time nerdily going through every ENF programme since 2005 and collating spreadsheets and lists of musicians, composers, pieces of music, writers and artists whom we have featured over the past decade to see what they revealed about us.

The top 20 composers make an interesting bunch. Between them they span a period from the Tudor age (Tallis, Dowland) to the present day (Living composers include Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, John Luther Adams and James MacMillan). They come from Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, England, Estonia, France, USA, Russia and Scotland.

The top 5 should come as no surprise given that the heart of East Neuk Festival is a shared passion for chamber music – especially the great masterworks of the past 250-odd years. And our most popular genre is the string quartet: so Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn lead the field. Of them all, Mozart undoubtedly wrote the greatest volume and range of chamber music and that explains his top position. We have heard his music for strings, voice, winds, solo and orchestra: his quartets, of course but also trios, quintets, serenades and divertimenti, sonata and variations, then concerts, symphonies and overtures. Yet we have still only featured less than 10% of his output in these genres. In contrast we have featured all of Mendelssohn’s quartets and most of Beethoven’s.

The two pieces of music that have been performed most regularly also give food for thought: Beethoven’s late string quartet Op.132 and Arvo Pärt’s Fratres in a variety of incarnations – for strings wind and soloists. That does make me feel good: great pieces both and in utterly different ways.

Here’s the list:

1. Mozart
2. Beethoven
3. Schubert
4. Bach
5. Mendelssohn
6. Haydn
7. Brahms
8. Britten
9. Janáček
10. Pärt
11. Tallis
12. Ravel
13. Debussy
14. Poulenc
15. Schumann
16. Dowland
17. John Luther Adams
18. James MacMillan
19. Reich
20. Tchaikovsky