Surprising suites

We arrived at Ashburton to find ourselves at the tail end of an arts festival put on in what had been the Methodist Chapel (Greek Temple format) in the centre of town, with one of the tail end events being a performance of three of Bach's cello suites given by Guy Fishman, the principal cellist from the grandly named Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. And not only grand in name, this society has been around for just about 100 years - 'the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the United States and is unique among American ensembles for its longevity, capacity for reinvention, and distinguished history of premières'.

The chapel was more or less full, perhaps 150 people, mostly seated on the hard seats of box pews, although there was a reasonable supply of cushions to hand.

The cellist did a very good job of adapting his platform style to this provincial occasion, giving jolly little talks at the beginning and in the intervals between the three suites - I think No.1, No.3 and No.5.

He played on a large cello which was slightly older than the suites themselves, having been 'made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler', an expatriate German. Fishman was properly period instrument, playing without a spike and using old-speak cat-gut strings. I thought that this made for a slightly harsh tone and for a selection of squeaks and other blemishes, things which might have been ironed out by a more up to date instrument. Nonetheless, I warmed to his performance of these splendid suites.

Slightly marred by the jiggling presence of one child who was too young to sit still. But at least her minder, probably her grandmother, realised she had made a mistake and offloaded the child somewhere for the second half, after our tea and biscuits. Behaviour which was to be contrasted with that of a blind dog in our very own box which managed to sit more or less still and silent throughout.

All in all, a very agreeable surprise. All credit to the organisers.

We wondered, after the event, how the cellist came to be paired with the festival. Is there a meeting of minds of agents acting for festivals and agents acting for travelling cellists? Did the cellist have a Devonian ancestor? Did he happen to bump into the organiser at a jazz concert in London? We came to no conclusion.

PS: next down to hear suites in June. Two concerts of three in one day, not a format I can cope with these days, so I shall just do one of them. From Jean-Guihen Queyras.

Reference 1: https://handelandhaydn.org/.