The piano wove a binding thread through Friday’s and Saturday’s programming at last week’s East Neuk Festival. Not at the expense of the Festival’s wider chamber music focus…
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One other key event, a piano-less one on Friday at the Bowhouse near St Monans, focussed on a single masterpiece, Schubert’s substantial Octet, for which the Elias String Quartet teamed up with double bassist Philip Nelson and three highly-prized wind players, Alec Frank Gemmill (horn), Robert Pane (clarinet) and Robin O’Neill (bassoon).
Neither the clattering above of a momentary downpour, nor the short while it took for the ensemble to calibrate as a homogenous unit, robbed this performance of its joyous thrills, nuanced generosity and internal cut and thrust.
You come to East Neuk mostly for a core helping of mainstream chamber music. It rarely fails to deliver.
