Cheltenham Music Festival 2008: A Preview by John Quinn (JQ)


The sixty-fourth Cheltenham Music Festival runs from 4 to 19 July. This is Meurig Bowen’s first festival as Director, taking over from Martyn Brabbins. Given the long lead time that’s often necessary to book artists and the fact that Mr Brabbins seemed to step down as Director somewhat suddenly last year I’m not sure how much of the 2008 programme was inherited by Mr Bowen. What did surprise me a little was that he doesn’t really use his foreword to the programme to advance any real theme for the current festival or to set out his vision for the future.

When one gets into the prospectus itself one finds that there are several themes running through the festival though none of these are as prominent a thread as was the theme of American music that ran through the 2007 programme. I suspect this is a sign that Mr Bowen may not have had as much time as he might have wished to devise the whole programme. The strands within the overall programme include a welcome focus on Ralph Vaughan Williams in the fiftieth anniversary year of his death. It’s a logical step from RVW to celebrate more generally “the Folk Revivalists”. The programme also features a good helping of chamber music by Schubert and another theme is “The Manchester Sound”. This latter includes a number of works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the featured composer of the 2008 Festival, who is an alumnus of the Royal Northern College of Music.

The Manchester connection is to the fore right at the start with a pair of concerts by the BBC Philharmonic. They’ll be led by the Polish conductor, Michal Dvorzynski, whose name is new to me, in an English programme (4 July), that includes The Planets by Holst and the first of two chances to hear Vaughan Williams’s evocative The Lark Ascending (the other is on 19 July). Britten and Grainger supply the rest of the music in that programme. The following night there’s Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, coupled with music by Smetana and Kodály.

Another orchestral highlight will be Richard Hickox’s concert with the Philharmonia in the glorious setting of Tewkesbury Abbey (11 July). There’s more Vaughan Williams in the shape of one of his less frequently played symphonies, the Sinfonia Antartica. Bruch’s evergreen Violin Concerto No 1 and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin complete an enticing programme.  The following night more visitors from the North West, in the shape of the Manchester Camerata, bring a fascinating programme of music entitled Strings Fantasia. RVW’s great ‘Tallis’ Fantasia is on the bill together with offerings from Rautavaara, Bartok and by a Bartok pupil, Sandor Veress. The orchestra will be directed by the leader of the LSO, Gordan Nikolitch.

The music by Maxwell Davies will be of great interest to devotees of his work, not least because there will be two important new chamber pieces. On 8 July the violinist Ilya Gringolts and pianist Aleksandar Madžar will play his new Sonata, just days after giving the world première at the St. Magnus Festival in Orkney. Cheltenham gets its own ‘Max’ world première just a few days later when the Primrose Piano Quartet unveils his new Piano Quartet in an eclectic programme that also includes music by Dohnányi, Brahms and Roger Quilter – his Gipsy Life Fantasy Quintet, a piece of which I must confess I’ve never heard.

Other works by Maxwell Davies include his celebrated and iconoclastic Eight Songs for a Mad King, which will be a BBC Radio 3 Discovering Music presentation (9 July). Wells Cathedral School Chamber Choir will sing two of his short choral works in their recital (8 July) and his Seven In Nomines can be heard in a Festival Academy Players concert on 19 July. This latter event also includes the first performances of new works by two past Festival Directors, John Manduell and Michael Berkeley.

Another notable première will be Air with Variations by Mark-Anthony Turnage, which Craig Ogden will include in his guitar recital on 12 July. Ogden will also offer The Blue Guitar by Tippett and music by Bach. He’ll also play a piece by Piazzolla, which should please those who don’t share my feeling that this Argentinean composer’s music has become far more exposed than it merits.

There’s a good helping of vocal music. The marvellous mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly makes a welcome return to sing Vivaldi and Handel accompanied by the ensemble La Serenissima (13 July). Another admirable British singer, the tenor James Gilchrist, teams up with The Schubert Ensemble to perform Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge as well as songs by Gurney and Grainger (8 July). And there’s more English song in a recital by baritone Matthew Rose (6 July). He’s joined by pianist Gareth Hancock in more Grainger and RVW (Songs of Travel) as well as a selection of Britten folksong arrangements and Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad.

For all this, the highlight for lovers of art songs, especially lieder, will surely be the recitals on consecutive days that contain the three great cycles by Schubert. First up is Die Schöne Müllerin in which tenor Allan Clayton is partnered by Paul Lewis, no less (17 July). Lewis also will play the Schubert Sonata in G major, D 894. The next evening bass-baritone Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles will perform Schwanengesang and other songs. Finally on 19 July, in a morning recital, Mark Padmore (tenor) and Paul Lewis will be our guides to Winterreise. All these recitals will be in the ideal surroundings of Pittville Pump Room.

A couple of outstanding choral events must be mentioned. Paul Hillier brings his Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir to Tewkesbury Abbey, which should be the perfect place to hear their programme of medieval music and pieces by Arvo Pärt (10 July). They transfer to Pittville Pump Room the next morning to give a recital of pieces inspired by Estonian folksong. There will be more Pärt on the programme and also pieces by Sibelius, Veljo Tormis and others.

Another mouth-watering programme (7 July) includes music by Olivier Messiaen and I’ll come to it in a second. I’m a little disappointed that I can spot only two works by the French master in the programme, given that it’s his centenary year. However, what’s on offer makes up in terms of quality for any lack of quantity. I shall certainly want to stay on in the Pittville Pump room after Schwanengesang for a candlelit performance of Messiaen’s searing and beautiful Quartet for the End of Time by four members of the Festival Academy (18 July, at 22.30)

But let me end with my own “must hear” programme, the concert on 7 July. This is another event in Tewkesbury Abbey and it will feature two crack local chamber choirs, the St. Cecilia Singers and the Oriel Singers. They’ll perform music by Tallis, including Spem in Alium, Messiaen and the Four Latin Motets by Duruflé and Abbey Organist, Carleton Etherington will play organ music by Messiaen. Then, to conclude Timothy Reynish will direct the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra in Messiaen’s monumental Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. Unmissable! 

With some eighty-three events going on it’s impossible, in a short preview such as this, to do more than scratch the surface of the festival programme. I’m conscious that I’ve left out several major events, including a piano recital by Marc-André Hamelin. I can only advise music lovers to browse at their leisure through either the website or the brochure – though I find the layout of the brochure very unclear and I hope a better design will be reintroduced next year - and pick out your own delights. It promises to be a fascinating, varied and richly entertaining couple of weeks in the gracious town of Cheltenham.

Full details of the complete festival programme can be obtained at www.cheltenhamfestivals.com or from the Festival Box Office at Town Hall, Imperial Square, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 1QA, United Kingdom. The Box Office telephone number is 01242 227979

John Quinn


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