Nipping across the border from Berwick-upon-Tweed, Paul Riley discovers a mansion adorned with fine art and glorious music-making
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
A morning mist hangs low. Approaching journey’s end, the river Tweed is a carpet of bobbing swans. And from across the water the skirl of the pipes welcomes visitors as a boat disgorges its cargo of eager tourists. With the town’s Tudor and Elizabeth ramparts, Hawksmoor-designed barracks and handsome Jacobean Church, Berwick-Upon-Tweed is as much a feast for the eyes as for ears entranced by the plangent call of curlews across the estuary.
Come July, though, ears have something else to detain them, as Music at Paxton lures discerning festival-goers a few miles north and across the border to a Palladian mansion proudly sited above a bend in the Tweed and enveloped in bosky 18th-century parkland laid out by Robert Robinson, Scotland’s answer to Capability Brown. Beyond the ha-ha, highland cattle stand implacable, fiery in the late afternoon sun; deep in the woods, the sizzle of the zipwire promises less bucolic attractions; and on the approach roads, motorists are cautioned to watch out for red squirrels.
The squirrels aren’t the only nearly endangered species. Covid forced cancellation of the 2020 festival, and while live concerts returned last year, they were be-masked and socially distanced. Happily, it’s now full steam ahead for 2022, as ‘business as usual’ resumes with nine action-packed days from 22-31 July. Steadily evolving in scope and ambition, there has been a chamber music festival at Paxton House since 2006. And although its elegant Georgian interiors – complete with a fine collection of Chippendale furniture – were made for intimate music-making, when the first pink sandstone blocks began to rise from the ground, Haydn’s Op. 1 string quartets were still some way off.
By the time a commanding purpose-built picture gallery had been added in the second decade of the 19th century, Haydn’s complete quartet output had been joined by that of Mozart – not to mention the lion’s share of Beethoven’s. And it’s the picture gallery, subsequently kitted out in the high-Victorian style with pictures peppering the walls in a dizzying display, that the Festival calls home. Not just the Festival, in fact – Scotland’s national galleries exhibit alongside some of the original paintings, and more contemporary work colonises adjacent spaces including the Hayloft Gallery.
For the audience, there�
