Dalkeith Palace, 4/10/2025
Brian Bannatyne- Scott, bass, Caroline Taylor, soprano, Magnus Walker, tenor, John Kitchen, piano, Professor Peter France, speaker
Dalkeith Palace and Dalkeith Country Park are only a few miles out of Edinburgh. They are little known either in Edinburgh or indeed the rest of Scotland, yet they are both magic places to visit. Dalkeith Palace and the castle that predated it in the 17th century have a very important place in Scottish history and most important figures in the history of Scotland has stayed here, including Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Queen Victoria and others. It’s been owned by the Buccleuch family, one of the biggest landowners in Scotland, for over 300 years, but the Palace and the Country Park have now been given over to the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust and the Palace is to be used for cultural activities including exhibitions and concerts.
This link between exhibition and concerts was the theme of our concert reviewed here. It was inspired by Robin Gillanders’ photographs of the great French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s garden at Ermenonville, north of Paris. Rousseau also composed an opera ‘Le Devin du Village’ which was apparently very popular in the 18th century. This was satirised by the 12-year-old Mozart in his ‘Bastien and Bastienne’ in 1768. I knew of the Mozart opera but have never seen it performed. Fortunately our EMR writer, Brian Bannatyne-Scott, is not only a fine international opera singer, but as a student his first operatic performance at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews was a double bill of these two little-known operas, and today’s concert offered extracts from both, in French in the Rousseau extracts and in German in the Mozart work.
The concert took place in one of the many splendid rooms in Dalkeith Palace, surrounded by Robin Gillanders splendid photographs. The music was provided by the great organist and pianist John Kitchen, who is an expert on French music of Rousseau’s period. John was playing a splendid square wooden piano made by Thomas Preston of London in 1815, which was gifted to Dalkeith Palace by Professor Francesca Bray of Edinburgh University who was given it as a wedding present. It has accompanied her in her academic career around the world and now fittingly resides in Dalkeith Palace where it will be a centre of the musical culture that Charlotte Rostek, development director of Dalkeith Palace, is keen to promote. The piano sensitively played by John Kitchen sounded splendid in the warm acoustic of the wood-panelled concert room.
John Kitchen was accompanying three excellent singers: Magnus Walker a fine young Glasgow tenor who after graduating from the Royal Academy has been making a name on both the concert stage and the opera house; Caroline Taylor, a very good young soprano who like Brian Bannatyne-Scott was a graduate of St Andrews before training as an opera singer at the Royal Northern College. Since then she has been establishing herself on the concert stage and in the opera house. Caroline is not only a very good singer but a very expressive actress, key to a good opera singer, and her movement and expressions lit up the room in both works. Brian Bannatyne-Scott is well known to readers of the Edinburgh Music Review not only as an international opera star but of course as one of our leading writers. His articles about the life of an opera singer will be appearing soon as a book. Brian has retired from the opera house but still gives regular concerts and his great bass voice dominated the concert today. He also proved to be a good comic actor, donning a magician’s hat as part of his role and getting good laughs from the big audience.
In addition to the concert we had some introductions to the history and philosophy of the period by Professor Peter France. I gave a vote of thanks from the audience and said this concert was of a quality that would easily fit into the Edinburgh International Festival. I also suggested that the Edinburgh Music Review would be happy to work with Dalkeith Palace to promote it as a major musical venue. Sixty years ago I began my academic career at Newbattle Abbey College just down the river Esk from Dalkeith Palace. Recently Christine Twine my partner and co-editor moved into Newtongrange very near to Dalkeith. Of course the very successful Lammermuir Festival has just concluded over the border in East Lothian (and Brian Bannatyne-Scott and Donal Hurley did a splendid job reviewing it in the EMR.) Maybe we could persuade the Lammermuir Festival to extend just over the border to Dalkeith Palace. What about an open air performance of Lucia de Lammermuir in Dalkeith Country Park with the Palace as the backdrop? Brian tells me he is already discussing next year’s concert. After all the North Berwick ‘Fringe By The Sea’ is now a big success. Maybe in future Dalkeith Palace could be another fringe success story!