With two Bach cello suites book-ending the recital, the expectation was that the JSB offerings would be the concert’s highlights, with a couple of shorter 20^th century fillers in between. It didn’t quite pan out that way.

This was my final Ryedale Festival concert for the current season, in St. Mary’s Church, Lastingham. Recipient of the 2025 Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award, Laura van der Heijden’s recital, ‘Fall of the Leaf’, reminded us that we’re now closer to autumn than to the beginning of spring. What an apt title, for so hot and dry has this summer been, that the horse chestnuts and sycamores, whose leaves sometimes fall in late August, are now turning prematurely autumnal throughout Ryedale.

Before discussing the music, my overriding question during this recital was: Should a performer match their performance or repertoire to the environment they’re playing in? It’s interesting to ponder this, especially in this venue, for there’s nothing quite like St. Mary’s in this region.

From its high vantage point, the Norman church, with its Perpendicular additions, dominates the tiny village. Its rounded apse gives the air of a miniature cathedral. Inside, a unique double-aisled Norman crypt sits below, and the nave enjoys a fabulous stone ceiling thanks to some sensitive Victorian renovations.

Because the acoustics are far more generous than any regular concert hall, Bach’s implicit single-line polyphony creates an aural conjuring trick by sounding even more like multi-part counterpoint than it normally does. Laura van der Heijden’s seventeenth-century Francesco Ruggieri cello, which she plays with immense energy and passion, was the ideal richly-voiced instrument for St. Mary’s.

That the performances of Bach’s Suite No. 2 in D minor, and No. 3 in C major, didn’t quite capitalise on the building’s resonance, is perhaps indicative of van der Heijden’s wonderful eagerness. She so adores the music, that she wants to share every note with her audience, though such repertoire needs room to breathe in so echoing a setting.

According to the printed programme, the Suites should have opened and closed the recital. In the event, after No. 2, we had Imogen Holst’s Fall of the Leaf, followed by Suite No. 3, and then Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite (1973) to end with. The original format would have been better balanced, so that we would have finished with something spiritually appropriate for this atmospheric church, rather than with the virtuosic, energetic, and often noisy, Perkinson.

I have to say, though, that the concert’s revelation for me was the Holst. Poor Imogen, forever referred to as Gustav’s daughter, rather than a composer in her own right. But listening to Fall of the Leaf, composed in 1963, it’s obvious that her music is a real find. The variations, based on a theme by Martin Peerson, which found its way into the early 17^th century Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, are beautifully poised and balanced, with some delicate musical depictions of swaying trees and falling leaves. It was so gorgeously played by van der Heijden who, by her own admission, adores this piece.

This was a delightful recital. Full credit goes to the Ryedale Festival team who, once again, have put on a fantastic series of concerts, excellently organised and thoughtfully curated. Though summer is far from over, I’ll retain warm memories of this performance, and of idyllic Ryedale, something to help sustain me through the long, dark northern winter when it eventually arrives.

(Several concerts from the festival were recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and can be heard on Classical Live at 1pm each day during the week beginning 3 August.)