The seventeenth English Music Pageant at Dorchester Abbey from 24 to 27 Might 2024 – Seen and Heard Worldwide

The Seventeenth ENGLISH MUSIC FESTIVAL, Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire OX10 7HH from 24 to 27 Might 2024

For extra details about the English Music Pageant click on right here.

Opening Live performance – Friday 24 Might, 7.30pm
BBC CONCERT ORCHESTRA / MARTIN YATES (conductor)
Doreen Carwithen – Suffolk Suite
Frederick Delius – Idylle de Printemps
Charles Villiers Stanford – Clarinet Concerto (Michael Collins)
Ralph Vaughan Williams – ‘Richard II’ Live performance (world premiere)
Gustav Holst – ‘Cotswold’ Symphony in F

The seventeenth annual English Music Pageant (EMF) returns to Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire from Friday 24 Might till Financial institution Vacation Monday 27 Might 2024. Celebrating anniversaries of two of Britain’s biggest composers throughout the occasion, the opening live performance, given by the BBC Live performance Orchestra and Conductor Martin Yates, options Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Michael Collins, and Holst’s ‘Cotswold’ Symphony. Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Live performance Fantasy is given a world premiere, alongside works by Doreen Carwithen and Frederick Delius. Orchestral, chamber and choral concert events proceed all through the weekend.

The English Music Pageant celebrates the brilliance, innovation, magnificence and wealthy musical heritage of Britain with a robust give attention to unearthing ignored or forgotten masterpieces of the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

‘Annually viewers suggestions proclaims the newest EMF the most effective but and we’re delighted to have the ability to proceed growing and enhancing our now much-loved Pageant’, says Em Marshall-Luck, Pageant Founder-Director. ‘This 12 months’s is typical EMF programming, within the vary from solo piano recitals to full orchestra and choral concert events, and from early music by way of to up to date, whereas we retain our give attention to the EMF’s raison d’etre, these ignored and forgotten works by British composers of the Golden Renaissance. 

‘We’re delighted to have been in a position to entice prime performers from overseas, with musicologist, tenor and English-music knowledgeable Brian Thorsett becoming a member of us from the USA and sensible pianist Peter Cartwright from South Africa, the place the EMF has a collaboration with the College of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. I’m notably wanting ahead to their concert events, in addition to – specifically – the Vaughan Williams premiere with the BBC Live performance Orchestra, and the primary fashionable efficiency of a beautiful work by Sir Thomas Armstrong, in addition to pianist and Radio 3 presenter, Paul Guinery’s late-night recital, which celebrates the discharge of his third disc of Mild Piano Music for the Pageant’s personal report label, EM Information.’

The works of Gustav Holst (1874-1934) have been on the coronary heart of Founder-Director Em Marshall-Luck’s programming on the EMF and stay a perennial favorite amongst audiences, with many memorable performances of the composer’s usually ignored main works having been given, in addition to recorded by the Pageant’s impartial recording arm, E M Information. This 12 months, the composer’s early symphony, ‘The Cotswolds’, takes centre stage.

One of many main musicians of his Technology – as performer, conductor, composer, instructor and author, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had a profound impact on the event and historical past of English music. Along with the Directorship of the Royal School of Music, amongst different august musical institutions, and his affect on a number of generations of composition college students who went on to grew to become family names, Stanford was a prolific composer, finishing seven symphonies, eight string quartets, 9 operas, greater than 300 songs, 30 massive scale choral works and a big physique of chamber music.

The centenary of his loss of life this 12 months offers a possibility for analysis of some works from the massive canon which have fallen underneath the radar. For the EMF’s opening live performance, there might be a uncommon efficiency of Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto that includes one in every of right this moment’s main exponents of the instrument, Michael Collins.

WORLD PREMIERES: First performances embody the World Premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Live performance Fantasy; the whole incidental music the composer was commissioned to put in writing for Frank Benson’s 1912-13 manufacturing at Stratford, which might be carried out by the BBC Live performance Orchestra underneath Conductor, Martin Yates.

Vaughan Williams first found Shakespeare as a baby when he was given the whole version by his relative, Caroline Darwin, and ‘Richard II’ grow to be a favorite. The composer took Shakespeare’s many references to English folk-ballads as supporting his personal ‘nationwide’ method to music, saying ‘Shakespeare makes a global enchantment for the very motive that he’s so nationwide and English in his outlook.’ He went on to set and write over 20 Shakespeare texts and incidental music, usually utilizing folksongs and ballads, and the well-known ‘Greensleeves’ seems in ‘Richard II’.

CHORAL CELEBRATIONS: The EMF usually showcase reside choral music. This 12 months The Godwine Choir, performed by Hilary Davan Wetton, deliver a programme of common favourites to Dorchester Abbey, together with a primary fashionable efficiency of Edward Elgar’s ‘Give Unto the Lord’, and Excalibur Voices carry out works by Coleridge-Taylor, Milford, Dyson, Bainton, Walford Davies and others.

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL Returning to the EMF is South African pianist Peter Cartwright, who joins violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck in recital to carry out works by Holst, Farrar, Stanford, Bliss and Howells.

American tenor Brian Thorsett and pianist Richard Masters, who get pleasure from a specific affiliation with British music, are making their first look on the EMF with a programme of Finzi, Eire, Frank Excursions and Somervell.

RELAXED LISTENING: John Andrews raises the baton for the English Symphony Orchestra in a programme of works by Finzi, Delius, Howells, Milford, Dyson and Warlock, whereas piano trio, Ensemble Kopernikus, performs Delius, Holst, Rebecca Clarke, John Eire and Percy Hilder Miles. Pianist and British music specialist, Phillip Leslie, performs works by Rawsthorne, Bowen, Dyson, Leighton, and John Eire’s masterpiece, ‘Sarnia’.

Rosalind Ventris and Richard Uttley might be performing works for viola and piano together with Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. Rosalind’s album ‘Sola’ has been nominated for a BBC Music Journal award within the 2024 ‘Premiere’ class.

At all times a preferred fixture, late-evening recitals are a particular characteristic of the EMF, with the traditional heat of Dorchester Abbey offering the proper setting for audiences to chill out in and revel in a efficiency from The Flutes & Frets Duo – Beth Stone (historic flutes) and Daniel Murphy (lute; theorbo and guitar), and for a discovery of the lighter facet of British composers when pianist Paul Guinery returns to the keyboard. Informative talks embody these on anniversary composers, Stanford and Holst, in addition to Farrar and Bliss.

This 12 months, the Pageant is remaining in Dorchester-on-Thames during the lengthy weekend.

FURTHER INFORMATION: The total programme is on the market on the EMF’s web site click on right here. Tickets go on sale through the web site from 22 March (8 March to Pageant Associates) and by way of a postal reserving type. Full Pageant and Day Passes are additionally accessible. Tickets for particular person concert events might be accessible on the door, topic to availability.