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You might not regard the Cotswolds as a hotbed of musical activity, but the  Chipping Campden Music Festival could well change your mind. Between the 13th and 24th of May, this year the small North Cotswold town hosted concerts by artists of the calibre of Boris Berezovsky, Emmanuel Ax, Midori, the Nash Ensemble and the Sixteen, not forgetting the Festival's president, Paul Lewis.

The Festival took a big step forward this year with the inauguration of its own Festival Academy Orchestra. The idea behind the orchestra is partly educational - to enable recently qualified musicians to gain experience by playing with seasoned professionals - hence its title. However, it certainly did not sound like a training orchestra, and this is in large measure thanks to the sterling efforts of conductor Thomas Hull who succeeded in coaxing some polished playing from the ensemble, and even included a world premiere in the first of the concerts.

This was Howard Goodall's And the Bridge is Love for cello and strings, composed in memory of a teenage cellist he knew who died tragically last year.  The title is a quotation from Thornton Wilder's novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, about the collapse of a bridge in Peru in 1714 which killed five peoplea and the composition takes the form of an elegy attempting to find meaning in tragedy. As the music moves from a mood of despair towards a more optiminstic conclusion there are moments of great beauty. Goodall is well known for championing music in schools, and this piece is designed to be playable by young musicians. However, it is by no means a simple work, and its first performance was made particularly memorable by Julian Lloyd Webber's sensitive handling of the solo part. Lloyd Webber also gave a stunning performance of Haydn's Cello Concerto in C. He and the orchestra were able to achieve some remarkably quiet pianissimos in the Adagio thanks to the near-perfect acoustics of St James' Church.

The Orchestra's second concert was devoted largely to Mozart,  opening with a splendid performance of the Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio with all the exotic Turkish percussion effects. Although Mozart professed to disdain the flute, his Flute Concerto in G contains some delightful music and it could not have had a better advocate than Emily Beynon who gave a sparkling performance of it with gentle support from the Orchestra. 

However. the Austrian composer's works tended to be eclipsed by Jonathan Dove's Magic Flute Dances which draws on themes from the opera. "I thought this could be an opportunity to let the flute out of its box, not to play the music it plays in the opera, but to play  the music it has heard other people sing," writes the composer. With its varied rhythms and changes of tempo this work offered plenty of challenges to both soloist and orchestra. Emily Beynon, who commissioned the piece, surmounted the challenges with playing of extraordinary brilliance, and the orchestra rose to the occasion under Thomas Hull's alert direction.

Now in its seventh year the Chipping Campden Festival has grown from modest beginnings into a musical event of national significance.

Roger Jones

The Chipping Camden Festival web site is HERE

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