York Early Music Festival
Various venues * * *
For 20 years the York Early Music Festival has had an international reputation and nowhere to live. Now the Lottery has rescued the medieval St Margaret's church from semi-dereliction, facilitating its transformation into the cool, stone-clad multi-purpose research, recording and performance space of the National Centre for Early Music, an elegant base for a selection of this year's events.
The festival would not be half so much fun, however, were it not for an exhaustive itinerary of international specialists unveiling arcane items at strange hours of the day and night. A bracing, midnight vigil on the unyielding pews of St Olave's church provided the evocative ambience for Rachel Podger's candle-lit presentation of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The setting was a reminder that the sonatas were spiritual pieces originally performed in church; and her final sprint through the fugue of the C Major Sonata felt thrillingly apposite.
The university concert hall provided a less historic background to the Swiss-based Ensemble 415's programme of Bach concertos. The unexpected humidity of a sodden, Yorkshire July put paid to one of Lars-Ulrik Mortensen's harpsichord strings, which exploded with an almighty crack during a furious passage from the A major harpsichord concerto. He didn't turn a hair. Historically informed performance doesn't come more authentic than this.
Celebrating Bach's centenary is a relatively mainstream activity. The festival, however, is never on better form than in its excursions to the remotest corners of the repertory. Other than Bach, this year's theme is 16th- and 17th-century biblical narrative. Admittedly this sounds a bit dry, and in Stephen Varcoe's stiff, midday recital of Purcell and Blow it came close to positively parched.
But lutenist Anthony Rooley's evening, the Phoenix Rising, demonstrated that this little-known repertory still shows signs of life and even an unexpected grain of humour. With distinguished contributions from soprano Evelyn Tubb and mezzo Lucy Ballard, Rooley directed a ravishing election of religious mini-dramas, including the first modern performance of John Weldon's elegantly rococo Dissolution, the singers performing from memory and perambulating through the isles to striking effect.
Festival continues until Sunday. Box office: 01904 658338
