The 2007 Festival saw one of the best box-office takings ever Our support of talented young artists continued with our own Festival Academy, a group of musicians handpicked by Martyn Brabbins for the Festival and designed to give the cream of young musicians studying in Britain an opportunity to work on contemporary repertoire with established performers. The Academy performed three concerts this year. The first was a morning concert with the Russian pianist, Boris Giltburg who has become a firm Cheltenham favourite since first performing in 2005 under the Russian theme. Later in the week they performed two back-to-back concerts in the Town Hall. The first was a contemporary concert in the round with clarinetist, Michael Collins. The programme encompassed work that our composer-in-residence, Tarik O’Regan, had composed during the Festival itself. In many ways it was a celebration of all that the Music Festival stands for and the piece itself charmingly reflected the range of music on offer in the Festival. The Academy “Happening” took place straight after in the more intimate setting of the Pillar Room, a room used extensively by our young artists in the Jazz Festival. Amongst other work the Happening particularly explored the American experientalists such as Christian Wolff, Steve Reich, Cage and Cardew as well as West Coast composer Terry Riley. Among the world-class pianists we welcomed to the Festival, the epic performance of some fiendishly difficult repertoire by the Canadian Marc-André Hamelin must surely be one of the most brilliant and courageous performances ever heard at Cheltenham. The concert comprised a double bill of the Ives piano sonata no 2 followed by an hour and thirty minutes of Schumann’s Fantasie in C, ending with the Alkan Concerto for solo piano. We shall be delighted to welcome Marc-André back to Cheltenham in 2008. Vocalists also had a high billing and two pieces performed which are not so well known but strikingly beautiful were the Ravel, Chanson Madécasses performed by Ailish Tynan as part of BBC Radio 3’s weekend of New Generation Artists and the challenging pieces by Shostakovich, Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok performed by soprano Susan Gritton as part of the Florestan Trio’s concert.
This year, each weekend had a particular focus which audiences appreciated. The opening weekend including the Monday had an early music feel, the middle weekend concentrated on BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists and the final weekend saw a double-bill from international visitors the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra whom we welcomed to the Festival for the first time. The Festival started its finale weekend in the same way that it had begun with an all-American programme in the Town Hall which included the much-loved Rhapsody in Blue. The final concert in the main programme was reserved for 3 mighty works, Delius’ Appalachia, Elgar’s Sea Pictures sung by mezzo-soprano, Sarah Connolly and the New World Symphony by Dvorak brought the 2007 Festival to its close. The final weekend of the Festival and final weekend of Martyn Brabbins’ three-year directorship coincided with the Gloucestershire floods. With the Brno Philharmonic safely in Cheltenham and, in fact, inside the Town Hall rehearsing when the rains came, the violins did play on. However, as I took off my shoes to paddle across the river that was flowing in front of the Town Hall, I was reminded of one of Martyn Brabbins’ early community concerts at Cheltenham, Noyes Fludde! Successful festivals must develop year on year and, in a short space of time, Martyn has introduced many new concepts to Cheltenham which will live on in future festivals. One of these developments was the strong sense of community engagement with local musicians that Martyn brought to the Festivals and it is one for which we are all grateful. The promenade-style ‘athons’ in which the symphonies of a composer were played all in one day help enormously to bring orchestral work to young audiences. In 2003 in Michael Berkeley’s penultimate year the Beethoven-athon was held, the Tchaikovsky–athon in 2005 and the series culminated with the Dvorak-athon this year. These are the kind of events that make Festivals very special and rely on the goodwill of many performers. In July we said ‘Goodbye’ to Martyn but in early August we welcomed Meurig Bowen as our new Director for the Music Festival. He set to work immediately on preparing for the 2008 Festival.
The morning concerts at the Pump Room were strongly supported throughout the Festival and brought to completion one of Martyn’s projects, the performance of the Shostakovich Quartet cycle.
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