BIF 40th Anniversary Programme

B U X T O N F E S T I VA L . C O . U K

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Chairman’s Welcome CEO Michael Williams Meet our new Artistic Director Sponsors & Funders Our Supporters 1979-2019: A Celebration of 40 years of Buxton International Festival

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OPERA EUGENE ONEGIN Cast Synopsis Director’s Note Lyrical Scenes Biographies

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Buxton International Festival Chorus Northern Chamber Orchestra

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GEORGIANA Cast Synopsis Georgiana: The Anatomy of Creating a Pasticcio Georgiana: A Programme Note Biographies

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LUCIO PAPIRIO DITTATORE Cast Synopsis Lucio Papirio Dittatore Dramma per Musica Director’s Note Biographies

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ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD Cast Synopsis Offenbach, The Cancan, & “L’Humeur Montiepatonne” Offenbach, Operetta and Orpheus Biographies

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THE ORPHANS OF KOOMBU Cast and participating schools Synopsis The Orphans of Koombu An African Chamber opera Director’s Note Let them Sing!

Biographies Opera Talks

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NEW VOICES FESTIVAL FOUNDATION CONCERT Cast Programme Biographies

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MUSIC A Song At Six In The Spotlight Cape Town Opera

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Imogen Cooper Improviso Zorada Temmingh Philip Moore & Huw Watkins BIF vocal recitals Castalian String Quartet Matilda Lloyd & Richard Gowers Alessandro Fisher & Ashok Gupta Peter Donohoe Peter Donohoe & Alissa Margulis Peter Donohoe, Alissa Margulis & Per Nyström Peter Donohoe Beth Langford & Keval Shah Dinner & Musical Theatre in The Dome BBC Philharmonic Soraya Mafi & Adrian Kelly La Vaghezza Jonathan Radford & Ashley Fripp Clare Hammond Alistair McGowan Voces8 Savitri Grier & Yundu Wang The English Concert Frith Piano Quartet La Serenissima Roderick Williams & Iain Burnside Victoria String Quartet Ex Cathedra Consort Garry Magee & Tim Lole A Good Reed?

Carnival of the Animals Brodsky Quartet

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JAZZ Lizzie Ball Kabantu Jason Singh & Friends Chris Ingham Quartet National Youth Jazz Orchestra The Julian Bliss Septet Bella Hardy Dominic Alldiss Trio

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FESTIVAL MASSES

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BOOKS On Literary Festivals Mark Cocker & Friends Mark Wigglesworth Lucy Worsley Sarah Ward & Friends Amanda Foreman Gillian Moore Alan Powers Robert Skidelsky Diarmaid MacCulloch The Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie BIF Podcast Ian Kershaw Max Fischer Robin Hanbury-Tenison Max Adams

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Dorian Linskey Kate Humble Richard King Peter Hennessy Saliha Mahmood Ahmed Tristram Hunt & Julian Glover Jacqueline Riding Max Hastings Venki Ramakrishnan Tom Service Jenny Waldman Sophie Thérèse Ambler Simon Winder Anna Pasternak Christopher Somerville John Wright Anna Beer Martin Moore Nick Robinson Rt Hon Michael Gove MP Melissa Harrison & Tim Pears David Cannadine Melvyn Bragg Jane Glover John Lanchester

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PERSPECTIVES Is Digitalisation Killing Classical Music?

The Future of the Economy Brexit Britain: What Next?

Are Gender Stereotypes Damaging Our Children?

Science and Artificial Intelligence The Future of our Political Parties

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GEORGIAN DISCOVERY Mill Songs & Georgian Chamber Music Dr Peter Collinge Dr Gillian Williamson University of Derby: Dr Ruth Larsen

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THE LITERARY SALON Alan Powers Peter Moore Adrian Kelly & Michael Williams Tom Service Anna Beer Naoko Abe

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Wild Places: Landscape as Inspiration in Crime Fiction Our Interviewers Buxton International Festival 2010 Creative Learning Buxton Festival Fringe Buxton Festival Foundation Buxton Festival Operas 1979-2018 Friends of Buxton International Festival Buxton Spa Art Prize Buxton International Festival Company FESTIVAL DIARY 2019

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Cover Image by Naomi Waite

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FROM THE CHAIRMAN

‘Buxton Festival can confidently claim to offer more to arts lovers than most other events in the country’- so wrote the Daily Mail in celebration of our 25th Anniversary. Wind forward to our 40th and the Metropolitan Opera of New York’s house magazine describes us as one of Europe’s great … unmissable Opera Festivals. Our Festival team and audience are now international. Our new Chief Executive, Michael Williams, put South Africa’s Cape Town Opera onto the international stage; our new Artistic Director, Adrian Kelly, is Music Director of the Salzburger Landestheater. They have been drawn to us by our formidable and exciting reputation built up over 40 years, and to celebrate another milestone they are building on the quality of the past, including a glorious rarity from one of the greatest early Baroque composers, offset by ingenious new works sung and directed by some of our most respected established talents alongside a range of exciting new voices. From the known and loved to the tempting unknown there is more packed into our 17 days this year than ever before.

Opera, music and books, plus debates curated by the British Academy, African voices at Haddon Hall, Literary Salons in the intimacy of a beautiful private home, the BBC Philharmonic and some very fine jazz: in our 40th year, Buxton International Festival can confidently claim to offer more to arts lovers than any other event in the country!

FELICITY GOODEY CBE DL, CHAIRMAN

The Buxton Festival has recorded the patterns of cultural change over the last 40 years and has contributed an important legacy to the arts in the United Kingdom. Our 40th Anniversary programme reveals a greater diversity of artistic activities, with a focus on inclusivity in everything we do: from an opening concert featuring singers from Cape Town Opera, to jazz and world music in the Café, to working with 200 young people from seven local schools to sing in an opera, to participating in a Literary Salon or Perspectives debate, to foraging in the nearby hills, to enjoying a Georgian dinner at the Old Hall, to an opera about a local icon and to a lovely cup of tea at our Festival Tea Garden at St John’s Church.

FROM THE CEO

We live in a world where we can no longer be blind to the countless rich cultures that our global community offers. A few years ago the board decided to put the word ‘international’ into the Buxton Festival. Artistic Director Adrian Kelly and Book Festival Director Victoria Dawson and I are committed to bringing to the Festival a balanced programme of local and international artists, authors and productions. Buxton is unique among UK Festivals in featuring its own opera productions which we now plan to export around the UK and abroad. We are committed to continuing to uncover those rare operatic beauties, as well as established favourites and new works, which all add to the debate about opera’s place in modern Britain.

It is our duty of care to expand and increase the diversity of audiences by offering a festival which can be enjoyed by everyone. We aim to entertain but we also want to challenge what we think we already know. A festival is an opportunity to create a cultural knowledge garden which awakens our spirit and feeds our soul. Many themes emerge in this year’s programme, including a provocative look at imagining our future economies and political parties; an exploration of Russian opera, ballet and music; and a special celebration of the many and varied voices of women.

I am deeply conscious of how the festival has been rooted in the social and cultural life of Buxton, enhancing and benefiting the town. How do you put a value on the pride Buxtonians feel for their town and their festival? We are hugely grateful to the thousands of Friends of BIF and the supporters of the Festival Foundation who raise money to help us deliver the Festival each year. They are the heartbeat of your festival and if you are not already a ‘friend’, please consider joining immediately.

We salute the efforts of Malcolm Fraser, Anthony Hose, David Rigby and all those who were behind the heroic restoration of the Buxton Opera House and who started the Festival in 1979. Together with our partners at the Opera House, our friends at St John’s and the Pavilion Gardens, and the BIF team, I extend a very warm welcome to the 40th Anniversary season of the Buxton International Festival. For the next 17 days we want you to make yourself right at home in Buxton. After all, you are now part of the family.

MICHAEL WILLIAMS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

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MEET OUR NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

A D R I A N K E L LY, I N C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H G E R R Y N O R T H A M

GN: Can you remember when you first thought that you might have a career in music?

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AK: I was in my final year at Cambridge as a choral scholar at King’s and I met somebody on a course on which I was a junior member of staff.

He asked what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to keep going with music because I love to play the piano and I love to sing. He said why don’t you become a répétiteur and suggested I meet a man called David Syrus, the Head of Music at the Royal Opera House. That was a pretty amazing start. Mr Syrus asked me to take a little bit of The Marriage of Figaro and I turned up in a pinstripe suit and found him in a pair of Bermuda shorts.

So before my first application to a music college I was introduced to the idea of working in an opera house and that became my goal quite quickly.

GN: Can you remember what you played?

AK: It was the duet between the Count and Susanna, Crudel! Perchè finora, at the beginning of Act 3.

GN: Has Mozart been a particular passion?

AK: I always liked Mozart very much. At the Royal Northern College of Music I did Così fan tutte scenes and they let me conduct them though I’m not quite sure how I did that to be honest. It was a lot of raw instinct.

by watching Antonio Pappano and I played the rehearsals of Simon Boccanegra with Mark Elder which was a fantastic experience. I worked on The Magic Flute with Philippe Jordan, now the chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera. Also I would slip into a rehearsal every time I could and there’s a sort of osmosis that happens from the excitement and working atmosphere at Covent Garden, which is second to none.

GN: You are speaking of some great conductors and you are suggesting real generosity on their part, though we often think famous conductors can be absolutely forbidding.

AK: The big name ogre conductors have never appealed to me. It’s not that I don’t recognise and admire their work, but I am very much drawn to the communicators who are collaborative and supportive - that is something I aspire to 100%.

GN: What is the greatest thrill in conducting?

AK: I think it is when something works. Some people imagine conducting as just fun because you are in control, but with control comes all that responsibility. The thrill comes when you have an idea or a gesture which enables great musicmaking. A conductor is a communicator and a co-ordinator.

GN: No training?

GN: What attracted you to come to Buxton as artistic director?

AK: No formal conducting training. I had one half-hour of conducting lessons but that’s actually quite normal for people who choose the route I have taken - to go through an opera house as répétiteur and learn the ropes from the bottom up. When I joined the Royal Opera House I learned wonderful things about Puccini and Verdi

GN: The birth of the Buxton Festival revolved around saving the opera house. What do you

AK: Many things. I have been looking for the opportunity to shape a company, looking after the needs of singers and programming works.

Buxton is ideal because it is a renowned festival with a great reputation and a beautiful theatre.

think fits best operatically into that wonderful Matcham theatre?

AK: That’s interesting because the theatre I have spent the last 10 years in, the Landestheater [in Salzburg], has similar proportions so I have gained experience about what works and what definitely does not work in a smaller theatre. What I love about Buxton is that almost no seat has a bad view. These jewel-box theatres mean you can make an opera experience something quite intimate so the obvious thing would be to say that in smaller theatres with smaller orchestras one should be doing classical and baroque opera. But there’s also a long tradition of doing Donizetti and other bel canto and interesting composers like Cimarosa. I think for me, the pieces that tell a story in an intimate way with the miracle of an operatic voice are the works that I am looking at. Eugene Onegin is a great example - it was written by Tchaikovsky for young voices and it is such a moving story. The key for a festival is to cover all possible styles and the tradition in Buxton to do unusual works is something we will continue to honour. We are not going to do the very central works, the Carmens and so on, it is not our remit.

GN: How would you then see the festival developing after its 40th year?

AK: I am talking a lot at the moment with Michael Williams [Buxton Festival CEO] about future plans. The festival has a tradition which people love and they come to see the operas and take in the book events and concerts and we will continue with that foundation for sure. We have now the Octagon which

I plan to use more and I love St John’s and the Pavilion Arts Centre and I will always be looking for new venues to bring the festival to a wider audience. As with the Koombu project, we need to keep drawing in young people and providing entertainment for festival goers that involves young people.

I respect the reality that opera is a minority taste but I am excited by the prospect of enticing people to see something they haven’t seen before and bringing in young people to take part. There are all manner of genres that are important and we will look to find more diversity of events. Contemporary opera is very exciting and can often have fascinating subjects and should be part of what we offer alongside rediscovered works like the Caldara [Lucio Papirio Dittatore] this year.

GN: A broader range of music? More jazz perhaps?

AK: Absolutely jazz, more world music, folk music and there will be some new departures from 2020. I don’t come with a set of ideas that I want to impose but during this year’s festival I will begin to find what fascinates our audiences and will entertain them. I look forward to experiments and also to celebrating a wonderful tradition.

GN: Without dumbing it down?

AK: You can’t dumb it down, that would be to show disrespect for your audience. Trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator is very foolish and I am determined to keep the highest standards. But things which have an irreverent take on a work of art can be exactly what it takes to interest a different audience.

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Buxton International Festival and artists are very grateful for the support of the following organisations.

FUNDERS

CORPORATE PARTNERS

SPONSORS & FUNDERS

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS

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REN I S H AW H AL L

SUPPORTED BY

FESTIVAL CIRCLE Best Western Lee Wood Hotel Biggin Hall Brooke-Taylor Solicitors Buxton Civic Association Buxton Pudding Company The Columbine Restaurant Isla Fine Art, Cards & Gifts John Hattersley Wines John Whibley ‘Holidays with Music’

The Palace Hotel Buxton & Spa The Queen’s Head Hotel & Public House RW Percival Funeral Directors Roseleigh Guest House Vardells Wheeldon Farm Holiday Cottages

For more information contact Lucy Marsden lucy.marsden@buxtonfestival.co.uk

Thank you to all supporters for helping to create extraordinary experiences. With your help we have created platforms for young singers and entertained audiences for 40 years. We raise a glass to you all!

Your support really does make a difference, thank you for • • • •

Enriching the lives of over 30,000 individuals a year Nurturing new talent, singers. musicians and our creative teams Inspiring new audiences Encouraging young people to be curious and embrace new experiences.

This year you have helped by supporting syndicates and storage space, operas and outreach, the BIF roadshow and music throughout the year.

Special thanks to Jasper & Virginia Olivier, Bill & Sue Tyson, Derek Raphael, Brian Ashby and Lord & Lady Manners, Paul Berry and others who want to remain anonymous, you know who you are!

DIRECTORS CIRCLE

OUR SUPPORTERS

Why not join our Directors Circle for insights into what goes on behind the scenes and invitations to special events throughout the year. Current members: Mr Mark H Brackenbury George & Daphne Burnett Wyn & Jane Davies OBE Mr Richard C A Eastwood & Dr Carol Lomax John Marsh & Felicity Goodey CBE DL Dr D J Mather Mr R J Mayson & Mrs K Blandy-Mayson Mrs Patricia Payne & Mr Peter Leach

Mrs Louise T Potter DL Dr John & Dr Frances Riordan Prof F Schmid & Ms B Eickhoff Dame Janet Smith & Mr R Mathieson Mr Oliver & Mrs Fiona Stephenson Mr M E Sutherland Mr & Mrs W J Tyson Mr & Mrs Jan Woloniecki

BIF FRIENDS & FESTIVAL FOUNDATION Thank you to our amazing BIF Friends, the life and soul of the festival for their enthusiasm and financial support – a full list is on page 172 and the Buxton Festival Foundation for their invaluable support throughout the year.

YOUR FESTIVAL NEEDS YOU! By supporting BIF you are helping this spectacular arts festival in the beautiful Peak District bring to life rare operas and present the best in music and books. The support we receive from individuals, trusts & foundations and companies really does make a difference to the work of our charity, explore how you can get involved.

Contact Joanne Williams, Development Director joanne.williams@buxtonfestival.co.uk

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1979-2019: A Celebration of 40 years of Buxton International Festival Buxton International Festival celebrates 40 years of helping to restore an empty theatre to its gilded glory, breathing new life into forgotten operas and setting the Peak District at the centre of global culture. Every summer for four decades the town has come alive with the excitement of a Festival which mixes rare musical gems from the past with exciting debates about the future, tilting the centre of gravity briefly away from London by bringing the country’s movers and shakers out into the fresh Derbyshire air.

One of its proudest boasts is that it has been a springboard for singers who try out their voices in the intimate Opera House which allows them to make the most of their growing vocal talents with the support of a Festival team which many have described as being like a family.

“I’ve been coming to the Buxton Literary Festival for most of its 40 years of existence. A beautiful town, lovely theatre, warm and intelligent audience – what m o r e c o u l d a n y w r i t e r w a n t ? ” MELVYN BRAGG

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Opera is a complex art form. When I am working on a production, I love seeing all the diverse elements come together: stage design, singers, orchestra, costumes, make-up and lighting. It takes a minor miracle for all of these components to align, but when they do the result can be breathtaking. And yet in spite of all this complexity, perhaps because of the fragility of the unamplified human voice, or because of the power that music has to speak directly to our emotions, it is often the intimate familiarity of a story which can touch us most.

The American actress Julianne Moore once said in an interview that ‘the audience doesn’t come to see you, they come to see themselves.’ Even with the excitement of being part of a live audience, listening to opera remains an intensely personal experience. There can be few of us who have not experienced the intense thrill of our first love, like a young Tatyana, or the pangs of regret for broken friendships and lost opportunities which haunt Onegin. Tchaikovsky himself was adamant that the first performances of Eugene Onegin should be given by students at the Moscow Conservatory, believing that they could be relied upon to tell the story with sincerity and simplicity.

I have strived to put together a programme which is balanced and varied, both musically and dramatically: Georgiana is a new work which brings a familiar historical figure to life. Orpheus in the Underworld is a comedy which has stood the test of time. Lucio Papirio Dittatore, on the other hand, is an opera seria which has been all

but lost for 300 years – a rarity for sure, but also a rediscovery. Finally, The Orphans of Koombu will offer many local children a wonderful opportunity to perform in an opera alongside opera singers and, with any luck, will give them a first experience of opera that they will remember for a long time.

This year the Foundation Concert ‘New Voices’ will be sung by visiting singers from Cape Town Opera together with 16 chorus singers and young artists from the Royal Northern College of Music.

This is very much a statement of intent. We have a cohort of excellent established soloists who will join us for the main productions during the Festival, but for this curtain-raiser I want to show that there is talent in depth within the Company, to give opportunities to the next generation of soloists and, most importantly, to show that this Festival as a whole can create a wonderful place to come together.

ADRIAN KELLY

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EUGENE ONEGIN

P Y O T R I LY I C H T C H A I K O V S K Y ( 1 8 4 0 – 9 3 )

LIBRETTO BY THE COMPOSER, BASED ON THE NOVEL IN VERSE BY ALEXANDER PUSHKIN (1799-1837). SUNG IN ENGLISH, WITH SIDE-TITLES SATURDAY 6 JULY 7.15PM, WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 7.15PM, SUNDAY 14 JULY 2PM, TUESDAY 16 JULY 7.15PM, FRIDAY 19 JULY 7.15PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE A Buxton International Festival production, with the Buxton Festival Chorus and the Northern Chamber Orchestra

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CAST Eugene Onegin Tatyana Olga Vladimir Lensky Madame Larina Filipyevena Prince Gremin M. Triquet Zaretsky Captain

George Humphreys Shelley Jackson Angharad Lyddon David Webb Gaynor Keeble Ceri Williams Joshua Bloom Joseph Doody Christopher Cull Phil Wilcox

CHORUS Soprano: Fiona Finsbury, Eleri Gwilym, Isolde Roxby, Georgina Stalbow, Olivia Carrell*, Yara Zeitoun* Mezzo-Soprano: Imogen Garner, Anna Jeffers, Aurelija Stasiulytė, Bethany Yeaman, Rhiannon Doogan*, Naomi Rogers* Tenor: George Curnow, Joseph Doody, Gethin Lewis, William Searle, Matthew Curtis*, Andrew Masterson*

Baritone/Bass: Christopher Cull, Brian McBride, Luke Scott, Philip Wilcox, Edward Robinson*, Einar Steffánsson* *Member of the Young Artist Programme Dancers: Lowri Mashburn Katie Fairs CREATIVES Conductor Director Designer Lighting Designer Assistant Director Choreographer Stage Manager Deputy Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager

Adrian Kelly Jamie Manton Justin Nardella Zoe Spurr Matthew Holmquist Jasmine Rickets Jocelyn Bundy Checca Ponsonby Rachel Bell

SYNPOSIS ACT I Rural Russia in the mid-19th century.

Madame Larina reflects upon the days before she married, when she was courted by her husband but loved another. She is now a widow with two daughters,Tatyana and Olga. While Tatyana spends her time reading romantic novels, Olga is being courted by their neighbour, the poet Vladimir Lensky. He arrives unexpectedly, bringing with him a friend, Eugene Onegin.

He and Tatyana are attracted to each other.

Getting ready for bed that evening, Tatyana asks her nurse Filipyevna to tell her of her own first love and marriage. Tatyana stays up all night writing a letter to Onegin telling him of her feelings and she persuades Filipyevna to send her grandson to deliver it. A few days later Onegin visits Tatyana and brutally rejects her love, leaving her distressed and humiliated.

ACT II The local community has been invited to the Larin estate to celebrate Tatyana’s name day. Onegin has agreed to accompany Lensky to what he believes will be an intimate family celebration. Tatyana is serenaded by the elderly Frenchman M. Triquet. Sorry he came to the party and bored by the occasion, Onegin humours himself by flirting and dancing with Olga, making Lensky jealous. The two men quarrel and, despite all Madame Larina’s efforts to prevent it, Lensky challenges Onegin to a duel. At dawn the next day, before the duel, Lensky muses upon his love for Olga, and upon death. Both Lensky and Onegin are wishing they had never got into this situation, but honour demands that they see it through. Lensky is killed and the horrified Onegin leaves the area.

ACT III Having travelled abroad for several years since the duel, Onegin has returned to St Petersburg. He attends a ball given by his old friend Prince Gremin, who introduces his young wife and tells Onegin how much he loves her. Onegin is disturbed to see that this is Tatyana and realizes that he is in love with her. He arranges to meet her at the Gremin palace and begs her to run away with him.

Tatyana reminds him of his rejection of her and of how close they came to real happiness. She admits that she still loves him, but she will not leave her husband and sends the desperate Onegin away.

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1833: Alexander Pushkin’s (1799-1837) Eugene Onegin published.

1879: Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin premièred in Moscow.

In Eugene Onegin, Russia arguably enjoys her greatest and most celebrated works of both literature and music. Through Pushkin’s heart-rending poetry and Tchaikovsky’s breathtaking music score, we are thrown into the physical and psychological worlds of the work’s passionate characters. This is a domestic tale about youthful relationships, something that a 21st-century audience can all relate to with direct and personal knowledge. We understand the dreaming, the longing, the infatuation and, ultimately, the brutal realities of destiny. ‘Pushkin has an unerring but emphatic sense of the sort of places where both ecstasy and misery have to happen’ (John Bayley) and Tchaikovsky’s music amplifies this into sensational realms. What starts out for our audience as a possible ‘fairytale romance’, soon plummets into a journey that encapsulates the winding turns and pitfalls of rejection, betrayal, severed friendships and regrets.

Another! … No, another never In all the world could take my heart!

Decreed in highest court for ever..

Heaven’s will - for you I’m set apart

BY JAMIE MANTON

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Tatiana

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Tchaikovsky’s opera, in it’s Introduction and in it’s interludes, has a haunting quality that draws us in, like a memory. We are seductively hypnotised into another realm of time and place. There is an intense feeling of nostalgia, as if this story has been told before ghosts from the past, reliving their trajectories. Despite the novel and the opera being written prior to the Russian Revolution, there is a sense of looking backwards in time. To a ‘paradise lost’ or a golden age of the ruling classes. This ‘paradise’ is now only known to us through literature, imagery and icons. The opera feels like a private and rediscovered treasure, both fragile and beautiful in its nature, that is inviting us in to share and relive its tale.

Whilst Onegin is very much a domestic drama, it is important to understand how the tale sits in Russian history. Whilst it was certainly a gilded age, it was also a time of growing uncertainty. Pushkin and Tchaikovsky provide a revealing portrait of the way of life in 19th-century Imperial Russia, a century of many significant political events that would later trigger the Russian Revolution. Peter the Great’s westernising reforms a century and a half earlier, as well as territorial expansion, had done much to produce a vast multinational empire. Profound changes that would culminate in the Revolution had begun: the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the continuing alienation of the intellectual elite, the introduction of industry to rural societies and the gradual erosion of the autocracy.

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Tchaikovsky spent much of his life searching for good operatic subjects, but after trying his hand at realism, fairy tale, history, and the fantastic, it was by chance that he came across the subject of his fifth and finest opera. He had gone one day to call on his friend Elizaveta Andreyevna Lavrovskaya. She was an operatic contralto, married to a dull functionary, but an intelligent woman who moved in artistic circles. On 30th May 1877 he wrote to tell his brother Modest about the encounter.

Last week I happened to be at Mme Lavrovskaya’s. The conversation was about operatic subjects. Her stupid husband talked the most incredible nonsense and suggested the most impossible subjects. Liz. And. kept quiet and smiled goodnaturedly, then suddenly said, ‘What about Eugene Onegin?’

BY JOHN WARRACK

LY R I C A L S C E N E S

Tchaikovsky then briefly outlined this scenario, prepared for him by Konstantin Shilovsky, a young amateur poet and musician, using much of the original Pushkin. He continued:

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You won’t believe how fired I am with this subject. How delighted I am to be rid of Ethiopian princesses, Pharaohs, poisonings, all that stilted stuff. What an infinity of poetry there is in Onegin. I’m not deluding myself; I know there will be little in the way of stage effects or movement in this opera. But the amount of poetry, humanity, simplicity in the subject, and a text of genius, will more than compensate for these deficiencies.

Tchaikovsky’s description of his opera, lyricheskiye stseny, is unique. ‘Lyrical scenes’ meant to him firstly that here was a direct expression of poetic feeling; but the Russian adjective also carries with it overtones of French usage, in which l’art lyrique is opera; and he further answers his own diffidence about setting Russia’s greatest poetic masterpiece – the companion of Pushkin’s finest years, 1823-31 – by indicating that though he cannot interpret the whole, he can hope, with his music, to admit us to its essential moments.

It is easy to imagine how some of Onegin’s situations would take hold of an opera composer’s imagination. But Tchaikovsky was also contemplating Russia’s best-loved narrative poem, a ‘novel in verse’ by the artist for whom Russians have always felt a sense of almost personal devotion. The characters were indeed more than the ‘stilted’ figures he despised in conventional opera; they were loved and known to Pushkin’s readers, which meant the whole of literate Russia, because the marvellous poetry takes them close to so many people of the time, to their lives and customs and conventions and surroundings, their manner of speech, their hopes, frustrations, ambitions and disappointments.

The first book of Pushkin’s novel is wholly devoted to Onegin, outlining for us the aloof dandy, clever, cultivated, who also moves easily in the St Petersburg monde, yet is gripped in a paralysing ennui. He is one of the first examples of the lishny chelovek, the ‘superfluous man’ who was to haunt 19th-century Russian literature, blessed with sensitivity and intelligence but doomed to have these qualities stifled by the impossibility of finding a place for them in the cramping society of the day.

So when Lensky, the callow young poet, is killed by Onegin in the duel, Pushkin seems yet again to be teasing him by writing some lines that are as lame as poor Lensky’s own verses; and then in the next stanza he produces a most beautiful elegy, an image of a familiar house suddenly emptied of people and noise and love, the shutters up, the owner fled. The tenderness is the deeper for this sense of Pushkin first having to hide his private grief for Lensky behind an ironic mask. There is a subtler irony in the contrast between the two Larina sisters. Olga is the realist, the only completely happy character in the work because of the lightness of her feelings. She is a cheerful, pretty creature who never really understands Lensky and his Byronic outpourings, and after his death is quickly found at the altar with a dull Uhlan officer.

But Tatyana cannot take life so easily. She is the first of many a Russian heroine - Tolstoy’s Natasha, Dostoyevsky’s Dunya, Turgenev’s Lisa - whose charm lies in her gentleness, her sensitivity, her mixture of impulsive emotions with an abiding sense of loyalty and a capacity for sadness. But Tatyana is unique. Pushkin describes her as dika, ‘wild’ in the sense that a young deer is shy of human contact. To her, wrapped in her

imaginative world, Onegin comes as a dream hero; and by the supreme tragic irony of the poem, she has perceived truly, for he is indeed the love of her life, and she in turn has kindled in him a spark which does not grow into a fire to warm his numbed heart until it is too late.

Tchaikovsky, for his part, sought a way to the characters by avoiding, as far as he could, the operatic conventions he deplored. His method is unique, parallelled only in his other brilliant Pushkin setting, The Queen of Spades. The parent to both works is Bizet’s Carmen, the opera which brought Tchaikovsky and Nietzsche together as unlikely companions, holding for different reasons that here was music which could ‘Mediterraneanize’ opera, letting sun and light penetrate cloudy Wagnerian philosophizing. In Carmen, Tchaikovsky found melodic elegance expressing a tragic subject, and also found the idea of a central theme that could permeate the score, working not like Leitmotif but as something to haunt the invention. Two themes for Tatyana mark out Eugene Onegin: there is the tender sighing phrase which is the first music we hear, and which remains associated with her; and in the Letter Scene, as she wonders if Onegin is her guardian angel or a tempter from Hell, oboe and horn play a soft phrase that crosses an uncertain harmonic area before finding a confident close. Pushkin declares that he can only give a pale transcription of the impetuous passion that blazes from her letter, which, he says, happens to lie before him as he writes; Tchaikovsky would not have claimed more, but his music embodies her urgency, her trust in the emotions which, as the more private of the sisters, she has cultivated. Her two themes express this. They also contain the descending scale which 15

Tchaikovsky, often in his music, associated with fate and death.

This will come to the fore with Lensky. Tchaikovsky gives him a fairly conventional melody for his avowal to Olga about his terrible sufferings when he is sundered from her for so long (only a day, she points out). It is after the quarrel that he finds a more personal musical voice, shocked and grieving at his behaviour and that it should have been this loved, hospitable house which has brought him disillusion with honour and friendship. Finally, as he awaits Onegin for the duel in the frozen dawn, the sorrowful melody, shrouded with the fateful descending scale, mourns the passing of his days as he discovers his true self behind the sentimental words and faces an unpoetic death in the grip of a cruel code of honour.

When Onegin arrives, their duet is to the same melody, but one dislocated in a canon, the single melodic line, which as friends they ought to be sharing, now separated, unable to find unison.

Tchaikovsky’s melodic gift is a key to the opera’s genius. Each of the lyrical scenes is exactly judged melodically. No-one can miss the contrast between the stately St Petersburg polonaise, with its formal manners and proud gait, and the homely bounce of the waltz at Tatyana’s birthday party. Nor is there any ambiguity about the peasants’ arrival near the start, their folk polyphony and then the vigorous dance that sets the Larins close to their land. The old women are now content with their lot but the two sisters are of a younger generation and feel as remote from the city as Chekhov’s three sisters do.

Each of the characters reflects an aspect of Russian life and manners, and Tchaikovsky shoulders his composer’s responsibility for this. Filipyevna may be based on Pushkin’s own nurse, Arina Rodionovna, but she is the eternal Russian nyanya, utterly devoted to her charge, filled with peasant wisdom, shrewdness and patience, a repository of generations of folk stories and songs.

Zaretsky, the pedantic duel-master, is bluntly outlined in the clichés of his utterance. Monsieur Triquet, the Frenchman living in the neighbourhood, gives Tchaikovsky the chance to display his touch with Grétry-like couplets in Tatyana’s honour, as he upholds Parisian civilization in these Russian wastes (and shows a French disdain for the correct pronunciation of her name). Tatyana’s husband, anonymous in Pushkin, comes to life in the opera as old General Gremin, touched to his heart by the miracle of Tatyana’s affection.

His aria is there partly so as to give the bass something to sing, but one can easily imagine Pushkin recognizing a genuine Onegin character, and stepping forward to proffer a hand to welcome the old man into his lyrical scene.

Onegin himself is more problematic. Tchaikovsky could not feel much sympathy for him; but it is a mistake to dismiss him as merely a cold fish. In his speech turning aside Tatyana’s declaration of love, there is concern for her; the music reflects this, containing a warmth latent in the cool words, and hinting at the potentialities of this ‘superfluous man’, warmth that justifies his belated blaze of passion at the end.

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In his own words, ‘fired’ by the subject and its musical possibilities, Tchaikovsky started work in May 1877. He liked to begin work on an opera with a crucial scene; this time it was Tatyana’s Letter.

Progress was so good that he had written some two thirds of the work by late June. He was confident, he told his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that he would indeed be inspired by Pushkin’s text, if only he could find the peace of mind to compose. So far from that, he received out of the blue a letter from a student at the Conservatory, Antonina Milyukova, proposing marriage. Startled by the coincidence with his opera, he replied cautiously; there were meetings; and he decided not to play the distant Onegin to her impulsive Tatyana. He sought domesticity; he wanted to stifle the rumours of his homosexuality. The outcome of this hopeless marriage was only too predictable: he was immediately plunged into a nervous collapse from which his worried brothers and friends managed to extricate him. To Mme von Meck he wrote expressing his doubts about the success of Onegin. He feared that it was insufficiently brilliant or effective. It was this which led to his anxieties about subjecting the work to the professional theatre, with its rigid conventions and traditions of acting that could be exaggeratedly melodramatic. From Milan, he wrote anxiously to Mme von Meck in December 1877: Where shall I find the Tatyana whom Pushkin imagined and whom I have tried to illustrate musically? Where is the artist who can even faintly approach the ideal Onegin, this cold dandy penetrated to the marrow with worldly bon ton? Where on earth is there a Lensky, an eighteen-year-old youth with the thick curls, the impetuous and individual manner of a young poet à la Schiller? How Pushkin’s captivating picture will be vulgarized when it is transferred to the stage with its routine, its senseless traditions, its veterans of both sexes who, without any shame, take on ... the roles of sixteen-yearold girls and beardless youths!

His solution was to turn to the Moscow Conservatoire, and offer the first performance to students. Mme von Meck was taken aback; but he insisted that he knew what he was doing, that the opera was never going to make its way on the regular stage and would be far better away from its ‘trivial and murderous routine and glaring anachronisms and absurdities’.

Success did not come immediately. Despite Nikolay Rubinstein’s conducting at the Moscow Maly Theatre on 29th May 1879, the students were not trained for such unusual music, and the audience responded best to the more conventional elements in the score.

But gradually the work was taken up and has conquered the world’s stages, among them the greatest and grandest. It remains ‘lyrical scenes’, and can disclose its essence best in intimate productions, away from the elaborate stage spectacle that Tchaikovsky feared would clutter and maim his subtle vision.

John Warrack was music critic for the Daily and then the Sunday Telegraph (1954-72) and taught at the University of Oxford (1984-93). He is the author of several books including The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1964, with Harold Rosenthal) and The Oxford Dictionary of Opera (1992, with Ewan West).

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ADRIAN KELLY, CONDUCTOR Following studies at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar, and at the Royal Northern College of Music, Adrian Kelly was a member of the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he assisted among others Sir Antonio Pappano and Sir Mark Elder. He subsequently moved to Hamburg to pursue his conducting career. He is currently Music Director of the Salzburg State Theatre, where he has conducted the Mozarteum Orchestra in a broad repertoire, including many highly acclaimed productions, such as Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain, Massenet’s Werther and Manon, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel and, most recently, all three Mozart/da Ponte operas. Freelance work has taken him to North and South America and to several European opera houses. Adrian has also worked extensively for the Salzburg Festival, initially as an assistant conductor and, since 2015, as music director of the Festival’s Young Singers Project.

JAMIE MANTON, DIRECTOR As a child Jamie sang and acted in productions of The Magic Flute (ROH, Glyndebourne, Kenneth Branagh film), Tosca (ROH), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ENO) and The Life of Galileo

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(National Theatre). Hoping for a career in the arts, he studied drama at the University of Exeter, where he moved over to the realms of directing and he directed August: Osage County and Our Lords and Masters at the Exeter Northcott Theatre. Before leaving university he founded (with his brother Charlie Manton), Duelling Productions, a film and theatre production company, bringing productions from Exeter to the London Fringe: Punk Rock, The Norman Conquests Trilogy, A Single Act and No Quarter. ENO offered Jamie an Assistant Director traineeship enabling him to assist directors including Deborah Warner, Richard Jones, Peter Sellars, Simon McBurney and Benedict Andrews. He has also been an Associate Director at the Old Vic on King Lear and A Christmas Carol. Jamie has since directed The Day After (ENO, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and Paul Bunyan (ENO, Wilton’s Music Hall, Alexandra Palace Theatre). He will revive Calixto Bieto’s Carmen for ENO later in the year.

IWAN DAVIES, HEAD OF MUSIC & CHORUS Iwan Davies trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio, where he participated in a variety of performances in collaboration with Opera North, Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera. He is a staff conductor at the Salzburger Landestheater, and in their 2018-19 season he conducted La Gazzetta (Rossini), The Trial (Glass) and Wiener Blut (J. Strauss). He conducted the world première of Gareth Glyn’s Welsh-language opera, Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd and Fidelio, both for Opra Cymru, and the première of Pilgrimages by Ellen Davies, for Ensemble Cymru. He participated in the 2018 Cardiff International Academy of Conducting.

JUSTIN NARDELLA, DESIGNER Justin Nardella graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, Sydney. His awards include the BMW Young Artists award and William Fletcher Grant. He is the International Associate Designer on Priscilla Queen Of The Desert The Musical. Justin has worked alongside Wolfgang Tillmans on War Requiem (ENO), Anish Kapoor on Tristan and Isolde (ENO), Jean Kalman and Deborah Warner on King Lear (The Old Vic), and Tom Pye The Testament of Marie (Comedie Français). His theatre designs include: La Traviata (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées), Songs For Nobodies (West End), The Hunting of the Snark (West End), The Life (Southwark Playhouse), Depths of Dead Love (The Print Room), Legends! (Australian Tour), Where Do Little Birds Go? (Vault Festival, Edinburgh Fringe), Hansel and Gretel (Opera in Space), Tender Napalm (Brisbane Festival), Orfeo (Brandenburg Orchestra), and Before and After (Sydney Theatre Company).

ZOE SPURR, LIGHTING DESIGNER Zoe is a theatre lighting designer. Since she graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama her work has been seen throughout the UK and internationally. She won the 2019 OFFIE award for her work on Tiny Dynamite at the Old Red Lion Theatre. Zoe’s recent designs include Nigel Slater’s Toast at

The Other Palace; Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre; The Phlebotomist for Hampstead Theatre; The Maids for Manchester HOME; Silence at Mercury Colchester; The Unreturning for Frantic Assembly. After Eugene Onegin and Georgiana for the Buxton International Festival, upcoming productions include How Not To Drown at Traverse Theatre, Hedda Tessman for Chichester Festival Theatre, A Friendly Society at Kiln Theatre, and An Edinburgh Christmas Carol for the Royal Lyceum Theatre.

MATTHEW HOLMQUIST, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Matthew is Associate Director at The Other Room Theatre as well as Artistic Director of Red Oak Theatre. Directing credits include: Cardiff Boy (Red Oak Theatre, The Other Room), A Recipe for Sloe Gin (Clocktower Theatre, World of Boats), Blue Stockings (Sherman Players, Sherman Theatre), The River (Red Oak Theatre, Loco Bristol), We Had a Black Dog (Red Oak Theatre, Theatre De Menilmontant, Paris). Associate Director credits include: Le Vin Herbe, Don Giovanni (Welsh National Opera), A Christmas Carol (Simply Theatre, Geneva). Assistant Director credits include: Tremor, Taming of The Shrew (Sherman Theatre),Simplicius Simplicissimus (Independent Opera), Insignificance (Theatre Clwyd), Kommilitonen! (Welsh National Youth Opera).

JOSHUA BLOOM, PRINCE GREMIN Australian/American bass Joshua Bloom is a versatile bass with a repertoire ranging from Mozart to contemporary works. He has sung with Opera Australia, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, ENO, Oper Köln, Israeli Opera and Garsington Opera. In 2018-19 role debuts include Méphistophélès Le Damnation de Faust, title-role Bluebeard’s Castle, Oroveso Norma, Kecal The Bartered Bride and the world première of Richard Ayres’s The Garden (Asko Schönberg Ensemble and London Sinfonietta). Next season he makes his Royal Opera House debut (Red Knight/Humpty Dumpty Alice’s Adventures Under Ground) and returns to Oper Köln (Ghost/Player 1/ Gravedigger Hamlet). Recent highlights include the world première of Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (Los Angeles Philharmonic and Britten Sinfonia); his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic cond. Rattle and role debuts as Bottom A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Faraone Mosè in Egitto, and Kaspar Der Freischütz.

Dance Scholarship, and a BA in Drama from the University of Exeter. Credits as Movement Director/Choreographer include Paul Bunyan (ENO, Alexandra Palace Theatre, Wilton’s Music Hall), The Day After (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and ENO: Studio Live); Home (Arcola Theatre), No Quarter (Duelling Productions, Network Theatre); Emma’s Place (Laban Studio Theatre); A Single Act (Duelling Productions, Theatro Technis); Blink (RAW Emerging Arts Festival, Exeter Northcott Theatre); Iolanthe (Exeter University and Northcott Theatre); Normal (Theatre with Teeth).

She will be Movement Director for The Elixir of Love (Into Opera).

CHRISTOPHER CULL, ZARETSKY Baritone Christopher Cull is an alumnus of Queen’s University Belfast, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Opera Course) and the National Opera Studio. Roles include Marcello La bohème, Masetto Don Giovanni, Tarquinius The Rape of Lucretia, Valentin Faust, Bank Account Billy The Rise and the Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Le Geôlier/ Javelinot Dialogues des Carmélites, and Lane/Merriman The Importance of Being Earnest. Christopher has sung in Bach St John Passion, Walton Belshazzar’s Feast, Mendelssohn Elijah, Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem and in a concert of arias with the Ulster Orchestra broadcast by the BBC. Upcoming engagements include Pan Daphnis et Chloé (NI Opera) and Donner Das Rheingold (Birmingham Philharmonic).

JASMINE RICKETTS, CHOREOGRAPHER Jasmine Ricketts holds an MA in Choreography from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, kindly supported by the Trinity Laban

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JOSEPH DOODY, M. TRIQUET Joe Doody studied at Edinburgh University, the Royal College of Music, and the National Opera Studio.

He has sung in the UK and abroad with the Dunedin Consort, the BBC Singers, Cappella Nova, and Britten Sinfonia Voices, including Bach St John Passion, Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Rossini Stabat Mater, Britten Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings and Les Illuminations, Carmina Burana, and Monteverdi Vespers (St John’s Smith Square). Operatic roles, dominated by the bel canto tradition, include Count Almaviva Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ramiro La Cenerentola, Leicester Maria Stuarda, Ernesto Don Pasquale, Jupiter Semele, and Pylade Iphigénie en Tauride. Future engagements include Southwell Music Festival and Messiah at Cadogan Hall.

GEORGE HUMPHREYS, EUGENE ONEGIN George Humphreys, baritone, studied at St John’s College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. He is a graduate of the International Opera Studio at Zurich Opera House. He made his debut as Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas with Opera Dijon (2011). George has sung with ENO, Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, Welsh National Opera, English Touring Opera, Nederlandse Reisopera, and Salzburger Landestheater. Roles include: Curio Julius Caesar, Belcore

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L’elisir d’amore, Starveling and Demetrius A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Morales Carmen, Jake Wallace Fanciulla del West, Schaunard. La Bohème, Kreon Oedipus Rex, Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro and Lescaut Manon . In concert and recital he has sung at the Oxford Lieder Festival, London Handel Festival and at Wigmore Hall in works such as Bach’s oratorios, Handel’s Messiah, Mahler Symphony No 8, and Peter Maxwell Davies’s 8 Songs for a Mad King.

SHELLEY JACKSON, TATYANA Winner of the second prize at the 2017 Maria Callas International Grand Prix, this American soprano is quickly establishing herself on the international opera stage. This season her roles include Manon and Donna Anna Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Landestheater, and Anna Bolena at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and with Opéra de Lausanne. Highlights have included Mary Crawford in the première of Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park at Grange Park, Mimì La bohème at Dorset Opera, and a concert of arias and duets with the Hamilton Philharmonic in Canada. Recent roles include Mimì at the Salzburg Landestheater, Micaëla Carmen at Palermo, and her UK debut as Micaëla at the Grange Festival. She returned to Santa Fe Opera as the Italian Singer in Capriccio, directed by Tim Albery. Shelley received the Joan Sutherland Prize at the 2016 Veronica Dunne Competition.

GAYNOR KEEBLE, MADAME LARINA British mezzo Gaynor Keeble studied at the University of Warwick and the Royal Academy of Music, where she was a Countess of Munster scholar. She made her Royal Opera House debut as Dritte Dame Die Zauberflöte, and has since regularly performed there as Annina La Traviata, and The Voice of Antonia’s Mother Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Further highlights include Marcellina Le nozze di Figaro, Berta Il barbiere di Siviglia, The Councillor’s Wife Osud, Ragonde Comte Ory, Annina La Traviata (Welsh National Opera); Gertrude Roméo et Juliette, Mother/Witch Hansel and Gretel, Marcellina Le nozze di Figaro, Hippolyta A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Dame Hannah Ruddigore (Opera North); Katisha The Mikado (ENO); Auntie Peter Grimes (Aldeburgh Festival, on the beach); Baba the Turk The Rake’s Progress and Marquise de Birkenfeld La Fille du Régiment (English Touring Opera).

ANGHARAD LYDDON, OLGA Welsh mezzo Angharad Lyddon is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. She made her professional debut with ENO as Kate in Pirates of Penzance (2015). She sang the Daughter of Akhnaten in ENO’s production of Akhnaten this year. Other roles include Hansel in Iford Arts’s Gingerbread, Julia Bertram in Mansfield Park for Grange Festival and Dritte Dame Die

Zauberflöte in Finland. Angharad is a Samling Artist. Concert highlights include Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, Bach Cantatas and Handel’s Messiah.

Following her success at the 2018 Welsh Singer Showcase with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Gareth Jones, Angharad represented Wales in this year’s BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition,

DAVID WEBB, VLADIMIR LENSKY Tenor David Webb is a graduate of the Opera School of the Royal College of Music, and of the ENO Harewood scheme. He has appeared at ENO, Teatro Real, Madrid, Opéra Comique, Paris, Théâtre Caen, Salzburg Festival & Glyndebourne where he sang Lysander A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Frederic The Pirates of Penzance, Young Sailor Tristan und Isolde, Messenger Aida, First Priest/First Armed Man The Magic Flute, Liberto/ Soldato II/Tribune L’incoronazione di Poppea, Arsace Hipermestra and Brighella Ariadne auf Naxos. In concert he has sung in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, St John Passion, and Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s Messiah, and Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge. He has sung at the Wigmore Hall with Joseph Middleton and at Ludlow Festival with Iain Burnside.

PHIL WILCOX, CAPTAIN Phil Wilcox, baritone, studied at Leeds College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Alex Ashworth and Audrey Hyland.

For four years he has been a member of the BIF Chorus and covered principal roles. He sang Apparizione Macbeth (2017) and Ataliba Alzira (2018) in Elijah Moshinsky’s productions. Recent roles include The Major General Pirates of Penzance, title-role Gianni Schicchi, Don Geronio Il Turco in Italia (all for Proper Opera); Sir Thomas Bertram in Dove’s Mansfield Park for Waterperry Opera Festival; and Almaviva in Merry Opera’s jazz production of The Marriage of Figaro. He sang in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s King Lear at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.

CERI WILLIAMS, FILIPYEVENA Mezzo Ceri Williams studied at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.

She sang in the chorus for D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, Opera Nationale de Lyon and with Welsh National Opera. In 2002 she joined the Mannheim company for three years and from 2005 to 2007 was a member of Deutsche Opera Berlin. Her roles included Amneris Aida, Ulrica Un ballo in maschera, Azucena Il Trovatore, Geneviève Pelléas et Mélisande, and Mrs Quickly Falstaff.

From 2007 Ceri has been a freelance singer. Recent engagements include Jezibaba Rusalka, Auntie Peter Grimes, Martha The Gospel According to the other Mary (John Adams), and Helene in Jonathan Dove’s new opera Marx in London and in Bonn (2018).

Wagner roles have included First Norn Götterdämmerung in Venice and Palermo, Erda The Ring for Opera North, and Mary The Flying Dutchman for Nederlandse Reisoper.

SCENES FROM THE OPERA:EUGENE ONEGINX] MONDAY 15 JULY 2 - 3PM, PALACE HOTEL Reinterpretation of the Festival operas, reimagined by the Assistant Directors and showcasing members of the Festival Chorus covering the principal roles Eugene Onegin Tatyana Olga Lensky Larina Filipyevna Gremin Zaretsky Captain Director Musical Director

Christopher Cull Isolde Roxby Bethany Yeaman William Searle Aurelija Stasiulytė Imogen Garner Rhys Thomas Phil Wilcox Edward Robinson Matthew Holmquist Berrack Dyer

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BUXTON I N T E R N AT I O N A L F E S T I VA L CHORUS

Chorus Soprano: Fiona Finsbury, Eleri Gwilym, Isolde Roxby, Georgina Stalbow Mezzo-Soprano: Imogen Garner, Anna Jeffers, Aurelija Stasiulytė, Bethany Yeaman Tenor: George Curnow, Joseph Doody, Gethin Lewis, William Searle Baritone/Bass: Christopher Cull, Brian McBride, Luke Scott, Phil Wilcox Young Artists Soprano: Olivia Carrell, Yara Zeitoun Mezzo-soprano: Rhiannon Doogan, Naomi Rogers Tenor: Matthew Curtis, Andrew Masterson Baritone/Bass: Edward Robinson, Einar Steffánsson

Formed in the late 1960s and based in Manchester, the NCO is now one of the country’s top professional chamber orchestras, with its concerts and recordings warmly received by critics. In a ground-breaking move in 1986, under their young leader, Nicholas Ward, NCO became one of the first orchestras in the country to work regularly without a conductor.

For their 2018 - 2019 season, NCO will be performing with leading soloists such as Freddy Kempf, Nicholas Mulroy, Julian Bliss, Martin Roscoe, Jennifer Pike and Matthew Wadsworth. The orchestra will also be working with its two Artists in Association, Chloë Hanslip and Matthew Sharp. We are proud of the ongoing relationship between NCO and Chetham’s School of Music and look forward to continuing our collaboration at The Stoller Hall – Manchester’s newest space for performance.

NORTHERN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

The orchestra also collaborates with the BBC, Buxton International Festival, Orchestras Live, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chetham’s School of Music and leading Music Hubs. The Orchestra’s ethos is to provide young people and adults with opportunities to engage with enjoyable and inspiring projects and under this auspice provide an extensive learning and development programme to educational establishments.

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As well as being Orchestra in Residence at Buxton International Festival, NCO also has over thirty critically acclaimed recordings to its name including a series of Mozart and Haydn symphonies.

Violin I Nicholas Ward Paula Smart Louise Latham Sarah Whittingham Shirley Richards Sarah White Violin II Simon Gilks Rebecca Thopson Ann Lawes Toby Tramaseur Judith van Ingen Viola Richard Muncey Michael Dale Raymond Lester Jacq Leighton Jones

Cello Tim Smedley Barbara Grunthal Amanda Turner Bass James Manson Sian Rowley Flute Conrad Marshall Nichola Hunter Oboe Kenny Sturgeon Jane Evans Clarinet Elizabeth Jordan Daniel Bayley Bassoon Benjamin Hudson Rachel Whibley

Horn Naomi Atherton Jenny Cox Alan Tokeley Peter Richards Trumpet Tracey Redfern Peter Mainwaring Trombone Tim Chatterton Tom Berry Les Storey Timpani John Melbourne Harp Lauren Scott

Creating my own journey.

Watch Richard’s story derby.ac.uk/richard

University of Derby Proud sponsor of the Buxton International Festival 23

MUSIC FROM: THOMAS LINLEY (1756–78); WOLFGANG A M A D E U S M O Z A R T ( 1 7 5 6 – 9 1 ) ; G I O VA N N I PA I S I E L L O ( 1 7 4 0 – 1816); VICENTE MARTÍN Y SOLER (1754–1806); STEPHEN S T O R A C E ( 1 7 6 2 – 9 6 ) ; G E O R G I A N A C AV E N D I S H ( 1 7 5 7 - 1 8 0 6 )

GEORGIANA 24

MUSIC COMPILED BY MARK TATLOW LYRICS BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS, TEXT BY JANET PLATER SUNG IN ENGLISH, WITH SIDE-TITLES SUNDAY 7 JULY 2PM, FRIDAY 12 JULY 7.15PM, MONDAY 15 JULY 7.15PM, SATURDAY 20 JULY 7.15PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE A Buxton International Festival production, with the Northern Chamber Orchestra

CAST Georgiana Duke of Devonshire Bess Lady Spencer Fox Sheridan Grey Blackmailer

Samantha Clarke Benjamin Hulett Susanna Fairbairn Olivia Ray Aled Hall Geoffrey Dolton Katherine Aitken Rhys Alun Thomas

CREATIVES Conductor Director Designer Lighting Designer Assistant Director/ Movement Stage Manager Deputy Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager Assistant to the Director Transcription

Mark Tatlow Matthew Richardson Jon Morrell Zoe Spurr Shelby Williams Checca Ponsonby Martha Everett Ryan Jacques Thomas Henderson Rode Gustavsson

THANKS TO THE GEORGIANA SYNDICATE Richard Eastwood, Brian Spiby, Louise Potter, Prof Felix Schmid, Bill & Sue Tyson.

The Duke of Devonshire’s Charitable Trust, Granada Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Ida Carroll Trust.

SYNOPSIS The Duchess of Devonshire prepares for an evening with the Ton (members of British High Society) and remembers her friend fondly and the outrageous lifestyle they once lived. She conjures up a memory of the Ton at play.

ACT I A gathering of London’s High Society is playing the card game of Faro. Fox, a Member of Parliament, and Sheridan, the notorious playwright, comment on the party. Georgiana Cavendish enters, inviting everyone to a night of pleasure.

She gambles and loses a fortune; the Blackmailer buys her debt. The Duke rebukes Georgiana for her behaviour and the fact that she has not produced an heir.

In Bath people gossip about the state of the unhappy marriage of the Duke and Duchess and the arrival of the mysterious Lady Bess Foster. Bess has been abandoned by her husband and happens to meet Georgiana who introduces her to the Duke of Devonshire.

Fox informs Sheridan that Lady Bess Foster has moved into Chatsworth. Lady Spencer, Georgiana’s mother, is outraged at Bess’s presence and demands that she leaves.

Georgiana and Bess have become fast friends and flirt with each other.

Georgiana assists Fox in his political campaign and buys votes with kisses in Covent Garden. She meets Charles Grey and is immediately attracted to him. The crowd adore Georgiana but she is harassed by the Blackmailer who demands payment.

The Duke wants to know the extent of her debt and berates her for her gambling habit. Georgiana informs her husband that she is pregnant. She discovers that Bess is also pregnant with the Duke’s child. They decide to find a way of living together much to the horror of Lady Spencer, Fox, Sheridan and the Ton.

ACT II The household staff is confused and astonished at the complexities of managing a ménage à trois. Bess encourages Georgiana to have an affair with Charles Grey. Fox informs Sheridan of their affair.

Grey promises Georgiana a new life, but their affair is discovered by the Duke, who threatens to divorce his wife. Georgiana confesses that she is pregnant with Grey’s child. The Duke sends her away to France to have the child, and insists that she gives up the infant or he will ruin Grey’s career.

Georgiana gives up her child and, bereft, she decides to continue living the high life. The Blackmailer demands payment and allows her one more game of Faro to repay her debts. The Ton gathers for another evening of revelry but Georgiana’s health is failing. She falls ill and is cared for by Bess.

Georgiana hands over her letters to Bess and asks her to marry the Duke and care for him after she dies. Lady Bess Foster does so, and becomes the new Duchess of Devonshire. She remembers her friend as she and the Duke meet the Ton for another night of revelry.

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BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS

G E O R G I A N A : T H E A N AT O M Y O F C R E AT I N G A PA S T I C C I O 26

The idea of Georgiana was born on a cold Sunday afternoon before my job interview with the trustees of the Buxton International Festival. I braved the snowy day for a wander around Buxton and was fascinated by the information on the boards blocking entry to the elegant Crescent. I was amused by the slightly bored-seen-it-all expression of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, gazing so placidly upon the passers-by, which reminded me of something I couldn’t place. That evening I worked through my notes for my interview, with the scratchy feeling that my preparation seemed incomplete. I woke up at a very rude 5:22 the following morning with the idea compressed into two words: ‘Georgiana’ and ‘scandal’.

Georgiana was the elusive missing piece I was seeking.

Once the board had appointed me as CEO designate and approved the idea of Georgiana (dependent on sufficient funding), a pasticcio based on the life of Georgiana Cavendish, Lady Bess Foster and the Duke of Devonshire, I began creating the work and, simultaneously, writing applications to foundations and trusts for support of the project.

The initial proposal for funding brought up all the questions a writer ponders when firing up a furnace for a new piece: What would it be? What were the forces involved? Who are the characters and what is the size of the cast? What musical language should be employed? Why tell this story today? Reading Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana and Caroline Chapman’s Elizabeth and Georgiana, it became very clear that the story lent itself to the dramma giocoso form so favoured by 18th century composers and librettists who explore both comedy and tragedy in an opera (think Mozart’s Don Giovanni).

The creation of an opera is a collaborative beast. A director, composer and writer are the crucial roles which have to be filled. I approached Matthew Richardson, who had done such an excellent job directing Poet and Prophetess (Mats Larsson Gothe), a Cape Town Opera/NorlandsOperan commission to be the director; I am a great admirer of Mark Tatlow, one time Artistic Director of Drottningholm Opera House and an expert on 18th century opera, and asked him to be both composer/compiler and conductor; we asked Janet Plater, a writer from Newcastle with an impressive repertoire of plays under her belt, to join the team. We had several meetings and together we thrashed out the slimmest of outlines for Act 1. Janet was thrown into the deep end (this was her first opera) and very quickly produced dialogue for several scenes which helped provide the reason for a musical number. Mark supplied a list of possible arias, duets and ensembles for the plot

lines we wanted to focus on. However, the second act, as is often the case with new works, was proving more difficult.

Then we received news regarding some of the applications we had written: The Duke of Devonshire’s Charitable Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the Ida Carroll Trust and the Granada Foundation would provide some support towards the production costs. The idea of Georgiana was gaining traction and the Development team, Jo Williams and Lucy Marsden, had found several individuals who were willing to contribute and become part of the Georgiana syndicate. The Board gave its approval and all that had to happen now was, well, to go into the potting shed and start working.

Over the Christmas holidays I listened over and over to the music that Mark had offered and began the task of creating a new lyric to existing vocal music.

And so my journey through the scansion labyrinth began: breaking up the original Italian verses into feet, identifying the accented and unaccented syllables, working out the metre, whether it should rhyme or not, as well as counting syllables and matching them with corresponding musical notes. Aside from the technical aspect of this endeavour, I had to bear in mind that sometimes the plot of the opera had to be advanced in the course of the number, and in other cases the aria/ duet had to express an inner truth of the character’s situation. Clichés and platitudes are to be avoided at all costs and the language cannot be faux 18th century-speak, but rather a clean, modern (without anachronism) text that sings well and can be heard above the orchestra. It’s a bit like playing Sudoko,

Boggle and doing a crossword puzzle simultaneously, while listening repeatedly to a musical phrase. Getting the lyrics past Mark’s and Matthew’s eagle eyes was no mean feat either: Mark demands musical accuracy, sense and sing-ability; Matthew demands truth, intention and drama.

After we had all wrestled with the second act and beat it into submission, the writing increased apace. Janet finished Act 2 and Mark produced (miraculously) the scores which were given to the singers for the threeday workshop we held in March 2018. Then the next tier of collaborators came into play: the singers, the set and costume designer, movement director, and répétiteur. Our work over the last six months was ruthlessly interrogated and brought to life by the singers at one moment and then dashed the next; the structure was scrutinised and reorganised; the beats of the dramatic architecture were identified, discussed, debated (sometimes heatedly) and, when an impasse was reached, the much hated but much needed truism was trotted out: ‘Kill your darlings!’ The three days produced some light-bulb moments for all of us. The shape started emerging but there was still another rewrite needed. And so the process began all over again.

At the time of writing, rehearsals have not yet started.

Once again the furnace will be heated for one last firing of Georgiana, a pasticcio which will then be delivered to the final tier of collaborators: you, our audience, for your input, criticism and enjoyment.

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B Y M A R K TAT L O W

GEORGIANA: A PROGRAMME NOTE 28

When Michael Williams asked me to compile the music for Georgiana, I accepted with alacrity. The chance to create a ‘new’ 18th century opera pasticcio was not something I could turn down, despite the string of somewhat deprecating synonyms in the standard dictionary definition: ‘Pasticcio … 1752 … a medley; a hotch-potch, farrago, jumble; spec. a. A musical composition made up of pieces from different sources, a pot-pourri …’

I had no difficulty in imagining the final result, but how could it be achieved? The answer came when I realised that the concept of the pasticcio (Italian for pastry), was not completely unrelated to that of the Swedish ‘smörgåsbord,’ a table spread with delicious open sandwich ingredients, something my 20+ years in Stockholm had made me very familiar with. So the first thing to do was to source the potential musical ingredients and lay them out on the table. Georgiana was a lady of sensibility, influenced by the ideas of Rousseau, and inextricably caught up in contemporary political debate. She was prepared to rebel against the social mores of the time, but unable to escape the constrictions of her station. She came to a tragic end. It needed music of great psychological insight to tell her complex story, but also music that would allow the more superficial aspects of her lifestyle to fall into place.

I decided to concentrate (for the most part) on pieces that were performed in London during Georgiana’s lifetime, which she herself might even have heard. The insatiable appetite of London audiences for new theatrical pleasures mirrored the febrile search for new experiences that completely enveloped Georgiana and her circle. Gradually the table was spread.

Martín y Soler (known in London as Martini) was an obvious choice for the party scenes: exuberant, colourful, tuneful and pleasing to listen to. Mozart would feature as well, but not with anything too familiar. Paisiello was an easy pick, with his attractive and deceptively simple Italianate melodic lines and affective pasticcio harmonies. But then I started to look further afield – or rather closer to home: what about English composers? How about Thomas (Tom)

Linley the younger, known as the English Mozart? A member of the hugely talented Linley family from Bath, Tom was a teenage friend of Mozart, whom he had met in Italy. He died tragically in a boating accident aged 22, but not before he had written much of the music for The Duenna, to a libretto by playwright Richard Sheridan. Sheridan, a central character in our opera, was a friend of Georgiana, and later married Tom Linley’s sister Elizabeth. Tom’s father, Thomas the elder, had been Georgiana’s singing teacher ...

This small, intimately connected world also included Stephen Storace, the virtuoso English-Italian composer. It was for his sister Nancy that Mozart created Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. Then, as now, opera was a cosmopolitan art-form, though unlike today, individuality was not always sought after. The borrowing of ideas from one’s own earlier works or from other successful composers was quite normal. This resulted in the development of a musical lingua franca that enabled the pasticcio to flourish. The vocal and dramatic skills of singers like Nancy Storace influenced the composers they sang for, as did the words of expert librettists such as Lorenzo da Ponte (who worked with Martini and Storace as well as with Mozart).

Our opera pasticcio was to be a two-act dramma giocoso that blended comic and tragic elements in the way we are used to in, for example, Don Giovanni. With so many musical riches on offer, the problem became one of selection: how to choose music that would both fit the moment-by-moment storyline and create a satisfying whole? I decided to start by creating a strong overall structure of overture, opening ensemble, and two finales, and to continue by filling in the gaps, scene by scene, with music that precisely underlined each dramatic moment. I wanted to create a multifaceted work that included the standard fare of arias, duets and trios, ensembles and finales. I also wanted to stretch the boundaries of genre, just as Mozart had, by including stage music (albeit played from the pit), popular songs, melodrama and accompanied recitative, all at the service of story-telling.

While compiling Georgiana I also looked at other late-18th-century pasticcios performed in London. I saw the liberties taken, for example by Storace, in shortening, transposing, re-orchestrating, and re-composing vocal lines etc. and I realised that the same freedom was mine to enjoy! Hidden in the opera is a piece of music, the melody of which is attributed to Georgiana herself. The text is by Sheridan, and perhaps it encapsulates Georgiana’s take on her own situation: ‘I have a silent sorrow here / A grief I’ll ne’er impart. / It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear, / But it consumes my heart.’ Georgiana’s charismatic brilliance and zest for life led to wild excesses. Although she couldn’t get her life together, her warmth, affection and sensibility were never in doubt.

Just as a Swedish smörgåsbord or an Italian pasticcio delights our tastebuds and surprises us in its inventive combinations, my hope is that in Georgiana you will experience musical tastes both familiar and new, and that you will be transported back in time to the paradoxes of Georgiana’s life, realising along the way that they are not so far removed from our own.

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MARK TATLOW, CONDUCTOR British-Swedish conductor Mark Tatlow was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the University of London, the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio. He has had a distinguished career over 30 years in major opera houses as conductor, répétiteur and harpsichordist, on the concert platform as pianist and accompanist, and in international archives as a researcher and scholar.

His engagement with young musicians has spanned his entire career, including appointments in England, a professorship at the University College of Opera, Stockholm (2002-12) and an active role as Music Advisor to Scandinavia’s only specialist music school, Lilla Akademien. He was Artistic Director of Drottningholm from 2007 to 2013, where, as well as operas by Cavalli, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, he conducted Sweden’s first Monteverdi cycle. He was a visiting research professor at Stockholm University of the Arts, leading ‘Performing Premodernity’, a five year research project dedicated to finding new ways of communicating the essence of late 18th century opera today. Within Performing Premodernity his research interests include vocal and instrumental performance practice of 17th and 18th century recitative and text declamation, and the influence of orchestral layout on musical leadership and interpretation.

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MICHAEL WILLIAMS, LIBRETTIST Michael Williams is a writer of plays, musicals, operas and novels. He has written several operas for young people based on African mythology: The Orphans of Qumbu, The Milkbird, Child of the Moon, Seven Headed Snake which were published by Heinemann Press in the anthology South African Operas for Young People. He wrote the book and lyrics for the Stephenson musicals Who Killed Jimmy Valentine?, Animals, Wonderfully Wicked which have toured theatres throughout South Africa. In 2017 his musical Tiger Bay – The Musical (James), commissioned by the Wales Millennium Centre, opened at Artscape in Cape Town and transferred to the Donald Gordon Theatre in Cardiff.

His play Water Carriers was performed in Indianapolis, Brooklyn and New York. He has written the libretti for several symphonic operas with Roelof Temmingh – Enoch Prophet of God, Sacred Bones, Buchuland, – which premiered in opera houses in Pretoria, Windhoek, and Cape Town. He wrote the lyrics for a jazz opera, Love & Green Onions (Weale) based on Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying which was invited to open the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. He was commissioned

by NorrlandsOperan in Sweden to write Poet & Prophetess (Larsson-Gothe) and The Elephant Man (Unander-Scharin) which had performances in Umeå, Cape Town and Stockholm. He wrote the book and lyrics for Mandela Trilogy (Van Dijk/ Campbell) which has toured to theatres in Ravenna, Munich, Manchester, London, Birmingham, Southampton, Dublin, Cardiff, Dubai and Hong Kong.

He is the prize winning author of thirteen novels published by Penguin Random House and Little, Brown. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Buxton International Festival.

JON MORRELL, DESIGNER Jon Morrell trained at the Central School of Art and Design in London. He was awarded the Olivier Award for Best Costume Design in 2013 for the musical Top Hat. He has worked with Matthew Richardson (Rigoletto, Scottish Opera) and has collaborated with directors such as David Alden, Tim Albery, Graham Vick, Christopher Alden, Nick Hytner and Keith Warner. Recent designs for opera include: Otello (ENO/ Royal Swedish Opera/ Teatro Real Madrid/ Canadian Opera); Rossini’s Maometto Secondo (Santa Fe Opera/Canadian Opera). He has designed costumes for Tannhäuser (Royal Opera Covent Garden), and Partenope and Jenůfa (ENO). He has collaborated with many choreographers at The Royal Ballet Covent Garden, San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, Scottish Ballet and New York City Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet.

JANET PLATER, WRITER Playwright and scriptwriter Janet Plater has worked extensively in theatre and radio. Born in Hull, her credits include The Gaul (Hull Trick Theatre), Gaslight on Grey Street (Theatre Royal Studio Newcastle/ The Arts Theatre London), Hull’s Angel (Kardomah, Hull/ Alphabetti Theatre, Newcastle), Shoes, Camden Carter and Natalie and the Eclipse (Alphabetti Theatre), Lydia’s House (Washington Arts Centre and

Arts Council Tour), Stephenson 200 (George Stephenson High School, North Tyneside), Haddock and Chips Twice (Octagon Theatre, Bolton) The Dolls House Project (Vault Festival London).

Her BBC radio credits include Telephone In The Deep Freeze and comedy sketches for Jesting About. Now living in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Janet’s stage adaptation of A Very British Coup will premiere at Live Theatre Newcastle in 2020.

MATTHEW RICHARDSON, DIRECTOR Matthew Richardson was born in England. He trained and worked in theatre in New Zealand before returning to the UK. Operatic engagements include: Anthropocene, The Devil Inside, Ghost Patrol (all by Stuart MacRae); Rigoletto, The Tales of Hoffmann, Jenůfa, (Scottish Opera); Poet and Prophetess by Mats Larsson Gothe (NorrlandsOperan Sweden, Cape Town); Macbeth (Malmö); Turandot, The Cunning Little Vixen, Fortunato, A Midsummer Night‘s Dream (NorrlandsOperan); Boris Godunov, Rigoletto (New Zealand Opera); The Marriage of Figaro (BBC Television); L’altra Euridice by Jonathan Dove, Ariadne by Elena Langer (Almeida Opera); Oedipus by Qu Xiao Song (Folkoperan Stockholm); Line of Terror

by Ian McQueen (Almeida Festival); Faust, Macbeth, Eis Thanaton by John Tavener (Birmingham Opera Company); Apollo and Daphne, Rodelinda, Euridice (Batignano Italy).

SHELBY WILLIAMS, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR/MOVEMENT Shelby Williams trained at London Studio Centre and The Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. She performed (19992011) for Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and Adventures in Motion Pictures in Cinderella, The Car-Man, Nutcracker!, Highland Fling, and Swan Lake; and with Martin Creed in Ballet Work 1020 in London, Brussels, Chicago and New York. Credits include: Guys and Dolls (Stanwix Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Philadelphia, Lyon, Milan); Twilight Zone (Ambassadors); Buttons (Kings Head); Adventures of Anansi (Hackney Empire); Little Women (Stanwix Theatre); Wind In The Willows (Palladium); Bend It Like Beckham (Phoenix); Made in Dagenham (Adelphi); Lucrezia Borgia (ENO); Turandot (ENO); Magical Night (ROH); Sweet Charity (M/c Royal Exchange); Merchant of Venice (Almeida); Anna Nicole - The Opera (BAM); Idomeneo (Grange Park); Carmen (Salzburg); Dido and Aeneas (Opera North); and Claustrophobia (Edinburgh Fringe). She has worked on several films.

KATHERINE AITKEN, GREY Scottish mezzo-soprano Katherine Aitken is a graduate of the RCM and RAM. Her roles have included Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) and La Ciesca (Gianni Schicchi). Katherine became a member of the Studio Opéra

de Lyon where she sang L’Enfant (Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges) and Valetto (Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea). Recent highlights include Witness 2/Singer 2/Woman 2 (Lessons in Love and Violence by George Benjamin), Tisbe (Rossini La Cenerentola) and Pippetto (Donizetti Viva la Mamma!) for Opéra de Lyon and Grand Théâtre de Genève, Tisbe (Edinburgh Festival), and Cherubino for English Touring Opera.

Katherine recently premièred Wild Woman in Aurora by Noah Mosley with Bury Court Opera.

SAMANTHA CLARKE, GEORGIANA Australian/ British soprano Samantha Clarke completed a Postgraduate Diploma and Master of Music at the RNCM, studying with Mary Plazas, and an Artist Diploma on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She now studies with Yvonne Kenny. Samantha’s awards include the Leverhulme RNCM Award, the Dame Eva Turner Award and the Michael and Joyce Kennedy Award for the singing of Strauss. She was awarded a RNCM Gold Medal (2017) and Nora Goodridge Developing Artist Award through the Australian Music Foundation (2017-18 and 2018-19). She is a Samling scholar.

Samantha has performed at Wigmore Hall and The Foundlings Museum.

Her operatic roles include: Helena A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fiordiligi Così fan tutte and Anna Gomez The Consul (GSMD); Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress and Donna Elvira Don Giovanni (BYO); Handel’s Theodora (RNCM); Pamina Die Zauberflöte (Longborough Festival Opera); and Beth in Mark Adamo’s Little Women (WAAPA). Later this year she will sing Musetta La Bohème with Opera North.

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Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room, and recorded her debut solo CD, Songs of Geoffrey Bush and Joseph Horovitz.

GEOFFREY DOLTON, SHERIDAN Baritone Geoffrey Dalton studied at the RAM and National Opera Studio. Highlights include: Guglielmo, Eisenstein, Duke of Plaza-Toro (ENO); Count Almaviva, Lescaut, Don Alfonso, Baron Zeta, and Ponche (Opera North).

He has performed at Glyndebourne, Garsington Opera, La Fenice, Flanders Opera and Opera Zuid and broadcast on Channel 4. He created the role of Dr Needlemeier in David Sawer’s Skin Deep (Opera North, 2009). Between 2012 and 2018 he sang Frank Maurrant in Street Scene at the Châtelet, Paris, Barcelona’s Liceu, Madrid’s Teatro Real and will appear in this role at Opéra Monte-Carlo in 2020.

SUSANNA FAIRBAIRN, BESS Soprano Susanna Fairbairn studied at the Wales International Academy of Voice and Trinity College of Music, London, having studied flute at Magdalen College, Oxford. She won the Dvořák Prize at the Emmy Destinn Young Singers Awards and was a Handel Singing Competition finalist. Operatic highlights include Countess (Le nozze di Figaro) for Longborough Festival Opera; Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) and Belinda (Purcell Dido & Aeneas) for English Touring Opera; Galatea (Handel Acis and Galatea) for Opera Theatre Company, and Juliette (Korngold Die tote Stadt) for RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Ireland. Susanna has performed at

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ALED HALL, FOX Tenor Aled Hall was born in South Wales and studied at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, the London Royal Schools’ Faculty Opera School, and at the National Opera Studio. With natural comic timing, he has excelled in the character tenor repertoire.

Highlights have included Valzacchi Der Rosenkavalier (Royal Swedish Opera and Opera North); Pang Turandot, Spoletta Tosca, Dance Master Manon Lescaut, Abbé Andrea Chénier (Royal Opera House); Don Curzio Le nozze di Figaro (Aix-en-Provence, Tokyo, Baden Baden); Maintop Billy Budd and Gherardo Gianni Schicchi (Opera North); Don Basilio/Don Curzio (Welsh National Opera); Don Basilio, Bardolpho (Garsington Opera); Chekalinsky The Queen of Spades, Isèpo La Gioconda, Lord Cecil Roberto Devereux, Trabuco La Forza del destino (Opera Holland Park); Gastone (English National Opera); Borsa Rigoletto & Almeric Iolanta (Scottish Opera); and Danilowitz L’Etoile du Nord (Wexford Festival).

BENJAMIN HULETT, DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE Tenor Benjamin Hulett studied with David Pollard at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was with

Hamburg Opera 2005-09, and has sung at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, Salzburger Festspiele, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and Opera di Roma. Benjamin has performed with Glyndebourne Festival, Royal Opera House, Opera North, Grange Park, Holland Park, Garsington, and Welsh National Opera and has appeared at the BBC Proms. Concert highlights include Yeoman of the Guard (John Wilson) and Mendelssohn Symphony No. 2 (Edward Gardner), Arbace Idomeneo with Fabio Biondi, Die Frau ohne Schatten (Amsterdam, Vladimir Jurowski), titlerole in J.C.Bach’s Lucio Silla (Salzburg Mozartwoche, Ivor Bolton), Bernstein’s A Quiet Place (Montreal, Kent Nagano), L’heure Espagnole (Boston, Charles Dutoit), and Tamino (Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle. His recordings range from baroque to contemporary. This season includes his Carnegie Hall debut (Jupiter Semele), debut with Teatro Real Madrid (Arbace Idomeneo), Jonathan Saul at the Théâtre Châtelet, Paris, David Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Antonio Pappano, and a return to Covent Garden as Tamino.

OLIVIA RAY, LADY SPENCER Mezzo soprano Olivia Ray studies with Robert Dean. She trained at the RNCM, ENO The Knack, and the GSMD, and studied with Susanne Mentzer in Aspen, Colorado. Roles include Gertrude Roméo et Juliette, Flora La Traviata and Enrichetta I puritani (Grange Park Opera); Mrs Noye Noyes Fludde (London Philharmonic Orchestra); Alisa Lucia di Lammermoor, Curra La forza del destino, Mrs Fox Fantastic Mr Fox, and Suzy/Lolette La rondine (Opera Holland Park); Juno Orpheus in the Underworld and Olga Eugene Onegin (Scottish Opera); and Rosina The Barber of Seville (Stanley Hall Opera). Concert highlights include Mahler Symphony No 8 (Royal

Festival Hall) and Symphony No 2 (Slaithwaite PO), Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle (Three Choirs Festival), Tippett A Child of Our Time (Oxford Harmonic Choir), and Elgar The Apostles (Gloucester Choral Society and the Philharmonia Orchestra).

SCENES FROM THE OPERA: GEORGIANA [IN A OX]

WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2 - 3PM PALACE HOTEL Reinterpretation of the Festival operas, reimagined by the Assistant Directors and showcasing members of the Festival Chorus covering the principal roles

RHYS ALUN THOMAS, BLACKMAILER Welsh bass Rhys Alun Thomas planned to study Geography but his love of singing won. Aged 17, he began his studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama with Janet Price. He graduated in 2015 and spent the next two years freelancing across the UK in various operas, musicals and concerts. Rhys later graduated from the Opera School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where he spent his last year studying with Scott Johnson. Operatic roles have included: Motorcycle Cop & Prison Guard Dead Man Walking, Simone Gianni Schicci, Presto Les Mamelles di Tirésias, Dottore Grenvil La Traviata, Superintendent Budd Albert Herring, Sarastro Die Zauberflöte and Don Basilio Barber of Seville.

Georgiana Bess Duke of Devonshire Lady Spencer Grey Fox Sheridan Blackmailer Director

Yara Zeitoun Georgina Stalbow Joseph Doody Rhiannon Doogan Naomi Rogers Andrew Masterson Edward Robinson Einar Stefánsson Shelby Williams

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ANTONIO CALDARA (1670-1736)

L U C I O PA P I R I O D I T TAT O R E 34

LIBRETTO BY APOSTOLO ZENO. SUNG IN ITALIAN, WITH ENGLISH SIDE-TITLES TUESDAY 9 JULY 7.15PM, SATURDAY 13 JULY 7.15PM, THURSDAY 18 JULY 2PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE A Buxton International Festival production with the Buxton Festival Chorus in collaboration with La Serenissima CAST Lucio Papirio Marco Fabio Quinto Fabio Papiria Rutilia Cominio Servilio

Robert Murray William Towers Owen Willetts Rowan Pierce Elizabeth Karani Eleanor Dennis Gareth Brynmor John

CHORUS Soprano: Fiona Finsbury, Eleri Gwilym, Georgina Stalbow, Olivia Carrell* Mezzo-Soprano: Anna Jeffers, Aurelija Stasiulytė, Bethany Yeaman, Naomi Rogers* Tenor: George Curnow, Gethin Lewis, William Searle, Andrew Masterson* Baritone/Bass: Brian McBride, Luke Scott, Edward Robinson*, Einar Steffánsson* *Member of the Young Artist Programme CREATIVES Director Designer Lighting Designer Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager

Mark Burns Kitty Callister Zoe Spurr Rosie Morgan Ryan Jacques

ORCHESTRA Violin/ Co-music Director Adrian Chandler Harpsichord/ Co-music Director Giulia Nuti Violin 1 Joanne Green Guy Button Mayah Kadish Violin 2 Camilla Scarlett Simon Kodurand Ellen Bundy Thomas Kirby Viola Jim O’Toole Jam Orrell Vladimir Waltham Cello (continuo) Carina Drury Carina Cosgrave Double bass Lynda Sayce Theorbo Rachel Chaplin Oboes Mark Baigent Louise Strickland Chalumeau Joe Qiu (9 & 13 July), Bassoon Andrew Watts (18 July) Simon Munday Trumpets Paul Sharp Ross Brown Peter Mankarious Alan Emslie Timpani

LA SERENISSIMA La Serenissima is recognised as the UK’s most dynamic voice of Italian baroque music. Hailed by The Guardian as ‘presenting an avant-garde approach that would have awed Hendrix’, La Serenissima has become synonymous with virtuosity, dynamism and accessibility, uncovering a plethora of new repertoire and making it available to all through live performance, high calibre recording and outreach work. Uniquely, its entire repertoire is edited from manuscript or contemporary sources.

SYNOPSIS ACT I Lucio has returned to Rome to pay tribute to the Gods, convinced that victory in the war will follow this action. One of his advisors, Marco Fabio, expresses concern that without the leader on the battlefield the enemy may take advantage, but is reassured that the army is in good hands with Marco’s son, Quinto, in charge. Lucio has instructed Quinto not to engage the enemy until his return to the battlefield.

Lucio comforts his daughter, Papiria, who is married to Quinto, and assures her that her husband will be home soon. He also assures Rutilia that her lover, Cominio, will also return before too long. Servilio arrives with a message from the battlefield but before he can reveal its content shouts of ‘Hurray for Fabio!’ can be heard outside. Lucio rushes off to investigate. Cominio arrives and tells Papiria and Rutilia what happened: the enemy provoked and mocked Quinto on the battlefield so he engaged them and then won the ensuing battle. Servilio expresses his love for Rutilia, but says that as she cares for Quinto he will try to help.

Rutilia rebukes his advances and reminds him that he cannot love her for he is not of noble station. Quinto arrives back at court and mocks Lucio. Even less impressed with this behaviour, Lucio sentences Quinto to death. Marco requests that Lucio allows Quinto to be tried in the senate for his crimes. Lucio, sensing that public opinion will turn against him if he does not comply, agrees.

ACT II Papiria manages to motivate Quinto to apologise to Lucio and persuades her father to grant Quinto an audience. Lucio says he will forgive his son-in-law if he is humble.

La Serenissima has been universally applauded for its recordings, receiving regular award nominations, frequent rankings in the Top 10 of the UK Specialist Classical Chart and featuring as ‘Editor’s Choice’ and ‘Concerto Choice’ (Gramophone Magazine), ‘Disc of the Month’ (BBC Music Magazine), and on Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. In 2010 and 2017 the group won the ‘Baroque Instrumental’ Gramophone Awards for Vivaldi: The French Connection and The Italian Job.

Cominio pleads with Lucio to be more lenient with Quinto, who did, after all, win the battle. Lucio tells Cominio that nevertheless he must punish Quinto’s disobedience to prove that he is a strong and just leader that cannot be insulted. Quinto arrives to make his apology. He lays down his sword and embraces Lucio’s knees. As he does so Lucio reveals the court and everyone can see Quinto begging forgiveness. Facing this embarrassment Quinto wishes he could instead die a hero. Lucio says that now his insult has been repaid, Quinto can be tried.

ACT III The trial commences with a backdrop of cheering from the people in favour of Quinto. Marco makes a moving speech requesting that his son be spared. Lucio commands the people to make their decision and the votes are cast. Rutilia and Cominio worry for their future as Marco has all but promised her to Servilio if he helps to sway the voting. Rutilia tells Cominio that she will love him regardless. When Servilio arrives with the results, Rutilia lets rip with her hatred for him. Before the result is announced, Lucio, satisfied that his honour has been saved, decides to forgive the whole thing, but the people’s vote sentences Quinto to death. Lucio says that he cannot go against the will of the people and will uphold the rule of law. After much pleading from all parties to no avail, the moment of execution approaches, but at the last hour Cominio arrives with the army. A mutiny is in full swing and Lucio is told that he cannot punish the whole army. Lucio wishes he could change things, but states that he cannot change the law and the will of the people.

Servilio steps forward and authorises Lucio to grant a pardon. In gratitude Marco offers Rutilia to him as a bride, which he gallantly refuses and instead insists she marry Cominio. All is forgiven and everyone celebrates Lucio.

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BY ADRIAN CHANDLER

L U C I O PA P I R I O D I T TAT O R E – DRAMMA PER MUSICA

Antonio Caldara was born in Venice in 1671 and probably received his early music education from Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-90).

Legrenzi’s appointment as Maestro di Capella at the Basilica di S. Marco in 1685 must have eased the way for the young Caldara to find employment there both as a cellist and as an alto chorister.

Caldara left Venice for Mantua in 1699 to serve as Maestro di Capella da Chiesa e del Teatro to Ferdinando Carlo, the last Duke of the Gonzaga family. This service ended in 1707, and in 1708 he moved to Rome to seek new engagements. But due to the siege of Rome by Habsburg troops shortly after his arrival, Caldara soon moved to Barcelona where he found temporary employment with Charles III, the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne and the future Holy Roman Emperor. In 1709 he was back in Rome again following in Handel’s footsteps as Maestro di Capella to Prince Ruspoli, before finally leaving Rome to take up the post of ViceKapellmeister at the imperial court of Vienna in 1716. He soon became the highest-paid composer of the court, earning more than the Kapellmeister, Johann Joseph Fux.

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It had long been Caldara’s ambition to gain employment at the imperial court due to its renowned musical pedigree. Music had played a huge part in court life for well over a century; indeed, Charles VI and his predecessors, Leopold I and Joseph I, were all accomplished composers, performers, and directors.

Antonio Caldara is best remembered today for a setting of the Crucifixus, yet during his lifetime his music was performed the length and breadth of Europe. In addition to providing small compositions for intimate or private performance, his work at the imperial court in Vienna involved composing sacred music for the chapel, occasional oratorios, serenatas and operas, both for the imperial Hoftheater and for the Teatro della Favorita. Due to this workload, it wasn’t unusual for Caldara still to be composing operas dangerously close to their opening night and, given such pressures, it is amazing that he neither borrowed from his own work nor plagiarised from others, a common trait amongst his contemporaries. The most lavish operas were those composed for the name-days and birthdays of the Emperor and Empress. Lucio Papirio Dittatore was composed for the name-day of the Emperor and received its première at the Hoftheater on 4 November 1719.

The libretto was by the fellow-Venetian librettist and court poet Apostolo Zeno (1669–1750), the ballets were by the Direttore della Musica Instrumentale, Nicola Matteis the Younger (c1678–1737), and the choreographers were Pietro Levassori della Motta (dates unknown) and Alessandro Philebois (dates unknown).

Zeno’s libretto is set in 324 BC and relates to an episode that occurred during the Second Samnite War, the background to which is explained in Zeno’s Argomento. The Dictator, Lucio Papirio, leaves the Roman army at Imbrinium and returns to Rome to renew the auspices; he entrusts the army to the Commander of the Cavalry, Quinto Fabio, but with strict instructions not to engage the enemy; Quinto, however, is bamboozled into launching an

assault which wins a great victory. The opera picks up the story in Rome with the arrival of the news of Quinto’s victory which provokes jealousy and paranoia in Lucio. The Dictator claims that such disregard for his orders and the laws of Rome should result in Quinto’s death; Marco Fabio and the people of Rome sue for clemency.

Zeno’s Argomento explains that the source for the story can be found in Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy). Zeno informs the reader that in order to preserve the unity of time and place, Quinto Fabio has been brought to Rome with the army after his victory; he also confesses to the fabrication of all the love stories which are intended ‘to add interest to the drama’.

The wealth of historical detail included in the libretto would no doubt have pleased Charles VI and the highbrow court audience.

It is no coincidence that the plot is set in ancient Rome and that it shows some of the challenges faced by a supreme ruler. The flaws in Lucio’s character enable Zeno to praise Charles VI more fully in the laudatory Licenza that follows the opera, typical of works written for the greatest state occasions in Vienna: where Lucio shows human failings, Charles is shown as god-like. The audience would have been expected to deduce from this that Charles’s empire was vastly superior to that of ancient Rome.

The division of labour between the voice types is fairly typical: there are three roles for soprano, two for alto and one each for tenor and bass-baritone. As one might expect, the quality of the singers was very high in Vienna in 1719 and included the likes of the castrato Pietro Casati (one of Senesino’s great rivals), the tenor Silvio Garghetti, and Maria Landini, known as ‘La Conti’ on account of her marriage to court composer Francesco Bartolomeo Conti who probably played as a theorbist in Lucio. The opera also contains substantial choral material (by 18th century operatic standards).

In addition to the standard strings and continuo, Caldara calls for oboes, bassoon, chalumeau and two choirs of 4 trumpets and drums. The quality of Charles VI’s trumpeters was the highest in any European court and multiple choirs were used for great state occasions; we have reduced these forces to a single choir.

Despite the newfound craze for baroque opera, it is surprising that the latest statistics for the top 100 ‘most played titles’ from operabase.com show just three operas written prior to 1750: two by Handel, one by Monteverdi. It is therefore hardly surprising that the 40-odd surviving operas by Caldara have received very few revivals in modern times. Given the quality of Lucio and other operas by Caldara, we can consider ourselves fortunate to be part of the rediscovery of one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.

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BY MARK BURNS

DIRECTOR’S NOTE 38

The words, ‘Would you like to direct something that no one has heard for 300 years?’ were music to my ears. There are no preconceptions of what Lucio Papirio Dittatore is, how it should look or what we have to aim for on stage. We have a completely blank canvas from which to work and we can focus on just telling the story to our audience. It’s rare as a director to have this situation and I relish the challenge of bringing a ‘lost’ opera back into the mainstream. Then the question of how we do precisely that rears it’s head. My designer, Kitty Callister, and I spent a lot of time discussing the plot and what the major driving forces are behind the story. One of the main things we found was the idea of freedom versus control. It’s a theme that we find in almost every story: one character vying for the freedom to act how they please and say what they want versus another having the power to control or influence the course of events. The struggle between these two forces forms the basis of the plot. Here we have a man sentenced to death for winning a war; a dictator trying to save face and retain power; and the damned fighting for his life.

It was during our discussions on these ideas that we came across the work of Bulgarian artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (b1935) and his French wife Jeanne-Claude Marie Denat (1935-2009). Their work was borne of Christo’s escape from Communist Russia and showed how even when faced with constriction, freedom will always prevail somehow. They began by wrapping up small items like shoes and then went all the way to wrapping the Reichstag and the Pont Neuf. Christo says: ‘By wrapping items up you actually reveal some of their most basic features. The effect lasts longer than the actual work of art. Years after every physical trace has been removed, original visitors can still see and feel them in their minds when they return to the sites of the artworks.’ Kitty and I have looked at how we might translate some of these ideas to the stage: how we might reveal the basic features of the set even when constricted; how we allow the space to have this freedom, but at the same time be oppressed. This in many ways mirrors the plot of the opera: how one secures freedom in the face of the most restrictive of situations, i.e. a death sentence; how various characters are bound by honour and duty, yet long for liberation and release. And, most importantly, how people don’t always get what they want.

BUXTON OPERA HOUSE & PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

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ADRIAN CHANDLER, MUSIC DIRECTOR / VIOLIN Adrian Chandler was introduced to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the age of ten, the experience resulting in a lifetime’s dedication to Italian baroque music of which he is a leading interpreter.

Whilst a student at the Royal College of Music, he founded the ensemble La Serenissima with whom he has performed numerous recitals, concerts and operas worldwide. He has appeared as guest director with various ensembles and in 2020 will make his debut directing Concerto Copenhagen in Denmark. Adrian was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council fellowship at Southampton University, where he subsequently held a twoyear post as a Turner Sims Professor.

His combination of research, editing and performing has been recognised by twice winning the Gramophone Award for Baroque recording projects: The French Connection (2010) and The Italian Job (2017). Adrian and La Serenissima released in 2018 a disc of double concertos, Vivaldi x2.

GIULIA NUTI, MUSIC DIRECTOR / HARPSICHORD Harpsichordist Giulia Nuti has appeared as a soloist and ensemble player in concerts and festivals throughout Europe. Her first solo CD, Les Sauvages: Harpsichords in pre-Revolutionary Paris (2014) was awarded a Diapason d’Or

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and her next CD, Le Coeur et l’oreille: Manuscript Bauyn received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2017. A specialist in Italian music and treatises of the late renaissance and baroque, her book The performance of Italian basso continuo is an essential text for performers and scholars of basso continuo. Giulia teaches harpsichord at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, where she leads the department of Early Music.

She has given masterclasses, seminars and lectures at the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the University of Birmingham, and the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana.

MARK BURNS, DIRECTOR Mark Burns grew up in Buxton and trained as a baritone at the RNCM. He works extensively as a director and has a keen interest in opera education, working with major companies including the Royal Opera, Glyndebourne, BIF, RNCM, Royal Academy Opera, National Youth Orchestra, West Green House, Opera North, Bury Court Opera and Silent Opera. Mark has directed opera scenes with students at the Royal Academy of Music and this autumn will work with students at the RNCM as Associate Director on their production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. He directed last year’s production of Tisbe at BIF and after this year’s Festival he will make his directing debut at West Green House Opera with a new production of Rossini’s L’inganno Felice.

KITTY CALLISTER, DESIGNER Kitty Callister is a multidisciplinary set and costume designer working in opera, theatre (including children’s productions) and television. She is associate artist for Silent Opera. She studied Fashion Textile Design at the University of Brighton and in 2011 she finished studying for an MA in Theatre Design at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Previous engagements include: Sounds and Sorcery (The Vaults Theatre), Vixen (for Silent Opera in London, Helsinki, Beijing, and Trento), Mozart vs Machine, The Rattler, & Church Parables (Mahogany Opera), Second Star To The Right & The Snow Queen (Hijinx/Odyssey), Macbeth (Glyndebourne), Nye and Jennie (Theatr na nÓg), The Yellow Sofa (Glyndebourne On Tour), and The Rake’s Progress (London Philharmonic Orchestra).

ELEANOR DENNIS, COMINIO Soprano Eleanor Dennis is a graduate of the Royal College of Music’s International Opera School and was a Harewood Artist at ENO. She has appeared with ENO, Scottish Opera, Drottningholm, Salzburg Landestheater and English Touring Opera. Her roles have included Helena A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Laura Fleet Marnie, High Priestess Aida, Micaëla Carmen, Countess Almaviva Marriage of Figaro, First Lady The Magic Flute & Ginevra Ariodante. Eleanor sang the title-role in Rodelinda at the

London Handel Festival for which she received resounding praise. Concert engagements include the LPO/ Jurowski, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Volkov, BBC Philharmonic/ Mena, RPO/Brabbins, CBSO/Nelsons, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra/Schiff, Bamberger Symphoniker/Beck and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Meister.

GARETH BRYNMOR JOHN, SERVILIO Winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award, baritone Gareth Brynmor John studied at Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio.

With Welsh National Opera he sang Schaunard La bohème and Masetto Don Giovanni. Recent roles include Sharpless Madama Butterfly and Edoardo Siege of Calais (Donizetti). He will sing in Purcell’s The Indian Queen with Opéra de Lille.

Concerts include Elijah, Carmina Burana, Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, The Dream of Gerontius, Stanford Missa via Victrix, and Elgar’s The Kingdom. Gareth is with the Songsmiths and sang in the London English Song Festival. He has given recitals at, among many, St John’s Smith Square, Wigmore Hall, Barber Institute, King’s Place, Ludlow Festival of Song, Wallace Collection, Bath International Festival, and Leeds Lieder.

ELIZABETH KARANI, RUTILIA Soprano Elizabeth Karani studied at the RNCM, the Guildhall, and the National Opera Studio. She made her debut at

the Royal Opera House (Nanna/Embla, The Monstrous Child by Gavin Higgins) and at ENO/Regents Park Open Air Theatre (Gretel in Hansel and Gretel).

She sang in Mozart’s Requiem with the Münchner Philharmoniker. She will sing Isabella in Rossini’s L’Inganno Felice for West Green House Opera this summer.

Roles include Tatyana Eugene Onegin (Mid Wales Opera), Rosalinde Die Fledermaus (Diva Opera), Musetta La bohème (Opera Holland Park), Jano Jenůfa (Longborough Festival), Lauretta Gianni Schicchi (Festival Azuriales), Jay The Cunning Little Vixen (Garsington), Helena A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Aldeburgh), and Angel Jephtha (Buxton Festival). Elizabeth has performed in recital with pianist Edmund Whitehead, at venues including St John’s Smith Square, Wigmore Hall and Westminster Abbey.

ROBERT MURRAY, LUCIO PAPIRIO Tenor Robert Murray studied at the Royal College of Music and National Opera Studio. He won second prize in the Kathleen Ferrier awards 2003 and was a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House. He has sung for the Royal Opera House, ENO, Opera North, Garsington, Welsh National Opera, Norwegian Opera, Hamburg State Opera and Salzburg Festival and has performed in recital at Wigmore Hall, and at the Newbury, Two Moors, Brighton, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh festivals. He has sung in concert with the London Symphony, Simon Bolivar, Le Concert D’Astrée, City of Birmingham Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Philharmonia and at the BBC Proms (Gardiner). He sang Dream of Gerontius with the Seattle Symphony (Gardner).

Future engagements include Written on Skin (China), Merry Widow (ENO), Peter Grimes (Bergen Philharmonic) and a return to the Royal Opera House for Gerald Barry’s Alice.

ROWAN PIERCE, PAPIRIA Yorkshire born soprano Rowan Pierce studied at the Royal College of Music, generously supported by a Countess of Munster Award and Midori Nishiura. She is a Samling Artist and has performed at festivals with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Florilegium, Scottish Chamber, CBSO, and BBC Scottish SO. Roles have included Galatea Acis and Galatea, Susanna The Marriage of Figaro, and Miss Wordsworth Albert Herring. Recent and future performances include The Fairy Queen (Academy of Ancient Music and Gabrieli Consort), Belinda Dido and Aeneas (AAM), Bach B minor mass (City of London Sinfonia), Strauss songs (BBC Scottish Symphony), Barbarina The Marriage of Figaro (Nevill Holt Opera and Grange Festival), Tiny Paul Bunyan and Papagena The Magic Flute (both ENO).

WILLIAM TOWERS, MARCO FABIO Counter tenor William Towers read English at Cambridge University and was a postgraduate scholar at the Royal Academy of Music. He has sung major roles at the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne and at major theatres throughout the UK , Europe and Canada. In oratorio and recital he has appeared in many venues and festivals in the UK and abroad with distinguished conductors and orchestras. He was a soloist in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s

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Bach Cantata Pilgrimage and his performances have been issued on CD. Recent and future highlights include Death in Venice (Staatstheater Stuttgart), Rinaldo (Glyndebourne on Tour), title role in Radamisto (English Touring Opera), Rodelinda (Bolshoi), and concert appearances with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Orquestra Simfònica Illes Balears, and with Roger Vignoles at Fundación Juan March, Madrid.

Iain Leadingham and David Lowe at the Royal Academy of Music. He has worked with many of the leading names in historical performance. Recent and future opera engagements include the title role in Handel’s Orlando for Staatstheater Darmstadt and for the Halle Händel Festspiele; Orfeo ed Euridice (Opera Queensland, Brisbane Baroque, Boston Baroque), Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen (Bayerische Staatsoper), Rodelinda (Göttingen Händel Festspiele), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Staatstheater Hannover and Virginia Opera), and L’Incoronazione di Poppea (for Pinchgut Opera, Sydney, and Theater Aachen). In concert Owen has sung with many major ensembles and conductors worldwide.

SCENES FROM THE OPERA: LUCIO PA P I R I O DITTTORE

TUESDAY 16 JULY 2 - 3PM PALACE HOTEL Reinterpretation of the Festival operas, reimagined by the Assistant Directors and showcasing members of the Festival Chorus covering the principal roles Lucio Papirio Marco Fabio Quinto Fabio Papiria Rutilia Cominio Servilio

OWEN WILLETTS, QUINTO FABIO Counter tenor Owen Willetts was a choral scholar at Lichfield Cathedral and then studied with Noelle Barker,

Gethin Lewis Aurelija Stasiulytė Anna Jeffers Eleri Gwilym Olivia Carrell Fiona Finsbury Luke Scott

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Our 2019/2020 holidays include: Music in a French Village - St Magnus Festival, Orkney - Opera in Verona Lucerne Festival - Buxton Festival - Lake District Summer Music - New York Met’ Schubertiade en Bugey - Chamber Music in Mantua - West Cork Chamber Music Opera in Munich - Three Choirs Festival - Tanglewood - Chamber Music in Cuenca Oxford Lieder Festival - Savolinna Festival - Wagner’s Ring in Chicago - and many more…

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JACQUES OFFENBACH (1819-80)

ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD

NEW ENGLISH VERSION BY JEFF CLARKE NEW ORCHESTRAL ARRANGEMENT BY THIBAULT PERRINE MONDAY 8 JULY 7.15PM, THURSDAY 11 JULY 2PM, WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 7.15PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE A Buxton International Festival Production in collaboration with Opera della Luna.

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CAST IN BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Public Opinion Katharine Taylor-Jones IN THEBES Eurydice Daire Halpin Orpheus Tristan Stocks Pluto, disguised as Aristaeus, a shepherd Anthony Flaum ON MOUNT OLYMPUS Matthew Siveter Jupiter Louise Crane Juno Kristy Swift Venus Freddie Conway Cupid Samuel Witty Mars Lynsey Docherty Diana Paul Featherstone Mercury Joshua de la-Garde Guards & Charlie Mula IN THE UNDERWORLD Paul Featherstone John Styx Joshua de la-Garde Infernal Dancers Samuel Witty Charlie Mula Freddie Conway

CREATIVES Conductor Director Choreographer Set designer Costume designer Lighting designer Assistant Director Assistant Choreographer Assistant Conductor Stage Managers

Toby Purser Jeff Clarke Jenny Arnold Elroy Ashmore Maria Lancashire Ian Wilson Alex Howarth

Paul Isles Michael Waldron Joe Jenner & Hannah Williams ORCHESTRA OF OPERA DELLA LUNA Mackenzie Richards Violin 1 Anna Roder Violin 2 Frances Higgs Viola Robbie Stanley-Smith Cello Pete Fry Bass Conrad Marshall Flute/Piccolo Anthony Friend Clarinet Peter Facer Oboe Adam Stockbridge Trumpet Jonathan Pippen Trombone Steven Fawbert Percussion

OPERA DELLA LUNA This year is Opera della Luna’s 25th anniversary. Over the last two decades the company has risen in popularity and profile to become one of the country’s most respected and admired touring companies. They remain the UK’s only full-time comic opera company, and their repertoire includes most of the G&S canon, as well as operettas and comic operas by Lehár, J. Strauss, and many works

by Offenbach. Led by artistic director Jeff Clarke, the company takes its name from Haydn’s operatic setting of Goldoni’s farce Il Mondo della Luna. Their policy is to create new and innovative productions of musical theatre, comic opera and operetta, and to tour them to mid-scale venues all over the UK. The company has won considerable acclaim for its highly entertaining and inventive performing style, and its production of The Daughter of the Regiment was a big hit at Buxton.

SYNOPSIS AND A NOTE ON THE VERSION

BY JEFF CLARKE

ACT I A rustic landscape near Thebes.

Public Opinion arrives to assess tonight’s performance for the Arts Council of England.

Eurydice is ‘playing away’, and is hoping to meet Aristaeus, the handsome young shepherd who has caught her eye. Much to her chagrin she meets her husband Orpheus instead. Orpheus is a composer and insists on playing her his latest violin concerto. She can bear it no longer and tells him she is leaving him. Aristaeus arrives (with his sheep), but he is not all he seems: he is in fact the god Pluto in disguise. He abducts Eurydice and carries her off to the Underworld. Orpheus is delighted to be rid of Eurydice at last. Public Opinion is not impressed by his behaviour, and decrees that he must go to Mount Olympus and plead with the gods for his wife’s return and Public Opinion will accompany him.

ACT II Mount Olympus The Gods are either sleeping or returning from a night out. The clocks chime from 1am to 4am. Jupiter is awoken by the arrival of Diana. Word has reached him of goings-on below and he has summoned Pluto to account for himself. The gods are all restless and growing tired of ambrosia and nectar and Jupiter soon has a rebellion on his hands. He discovers that they are all aware of his escapades and his weakness for disguising himself. Orpheus and Public Opinion arrive to ask for Eurydice’s return.

Jupiter feels he should go down to the underworld himself to investigate, and with an uncharacteristically generous gesture, he offers to take the gods with him to give them a holiday from Mount Olympus.

INTERVAL ACT III Pluto’s boudoir In the Underworld, Eurydice expresses her disappointment that Hell is not all it was cracked up to be. A permanent resident,

John Styx, has been appointed to attend Eurydice, and he tells her of his former life when he was king of Boeotia. Jupiter arrives and decides that he wants Eurydice for himself. In order to seduce her, he effects yet another metamorphosis by turning himself into an insect. They plan their escape from Hell.

ACT IV The Underworld Pluto is hosting a hell of a party. Jupiter requests a dance and excels at a minuet, but Pluto turns the temperature up with an infernal galop. Jupiter is just about to leave with Eurydice when Orpheus and Public Opinion arrive. Jupiter agrees to restore Eurydice to Orpheus as long as she follows him out of hell and he doesn’t turn around to look at her. Sadly, a misplaced bolt of lightning causes Orpheus to turn around – and Eurydice is lost. It is the ending everyone except Public Opinion wanted.

Orpheus in the Underworld was first presented in 1858 in two acts each with two scenes. In 1874 Offenbach created a four act version, described as an Opéra Féerie, with considerable new music. Each act had a new ballet and there were a number of new arias. Most modern productions base themselves on the 1858 version, but ‘cherry pick’ some of the later material such as Eurydice’s Act 3 aria (Couplets des Regrets), Mercury’s number, and Pluto’s aria extolling the delights of Olympus. The later version has an extensive showy overture containing the famous Galop tune (though this is not the familiar concert overture), but we have chosen to begin with the more interesting and intriguing 1858 opening. We have closely (but not exactly) followed the version prepared by Marc Minkowski and Laurent Pelly for their acclaimed 1998 production at Lyon. Much of the rarely heard ballet music has been restored along with interesting material for Public Opinion in Act 1, and the ground-breaking offstage Chorus of Disapproval for the audience.

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BY JEFF CLARKE (DIRECTOR)

OFFENBACH, THE CANCAN, & “ L’ H U M E U R M O N T I E PAT O N N E ” 46

Offenbach still remains largely misunderstood. Legions of well-meaning am-drams and naff commercial managements continue to peddle his creations as celebrations of a Paris he never knew, and turn his energised concise satire into vacuous flim-flam. Nowhere is this more evident than in the perpetual nonsense of the Cancan. Mention the dance to anyone and the image is of a troupe of screaming dancing girls waving frilly petticoats around and throwing themselves on the floor in the splits with eye-watering force, invariably to the music of Offenbach.

The cancan began as a dance to be danced not watched. It was danced predominantly by men and frequently by men on their own. Its origins appear to lie in the Quadrille, a popular society dance performed by four couples (not unlike a Scottish reel). It had five constituent sections, the last of which was a fast movement in 2/4 time. The music was often used for another dance - the Galop, the couples careering around the ballroom like galloping horses. The cancan (the word means tittle-tattle or scandal), or as it was often called then, the chahut (brouhaha), first appeared in the 1830s. Some historians claim that it began in the working class dance halls of Montparnasse, where young men revelled in expending as much energy as possible by kicking their legs wildly and screaming loudly.

Whether the dance was banned is not clear. Undoubtedly it caused much disapproval and young men were often arrested for dancing it. In no way was it salacious or sexually suggestive. The authorities were more concerned about its anarchic possibilities of public disorder, and its potential to contribute to the ever-present fear of revolution.

A popular entertainer of the period, Charles Mazurier, was celebrated for his acrobatic prowess which included the grand écart (jump splits) and this was soon incorporated into the dance. Later male cancan stars began to appear in music halls and vaudevilles. From the 1880s onwards solo women dancers such as La Goulue and Jane-Avril (immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec) were paid large sums to perform. The routine we now expect is properly called the French Cancan, and was created for spectacular dance halls like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. The routine of a troupe of girls in identical scant and frilly costumes appears not to have been created till the 1920s by which time Offenbach had been dead for 40 years.

Picture credit Nathan Cox

In its original anarchic form, the dance is similar to many other dances of protest or subversion, whether it be of head-banging rockers or pogo-ing punks. Its subversive potential was clearly of great appeal to Offenbach who wouldn’t miss an opportunity to ‘cock a snook’ at respectable society. His and his librettists humour was both acerbic and visionary. I am delighted to have found a company in France, the Compagnie des Brigands, which can perceive the operas as they should be seen, away from the ‘frilly knickers’ brigade. At a recent meeting with their director Loic Boissier I was puzzled by his references to ‘l’humeur montiepatonne’ until a little later in the conversation the penny dropped and I realised it was his very French pronunciation of Monty Python! But he was right: there are many similarities in their brands of humour. As a child I watched Monty Python with my father and we roared with laughter while my mother, who loved Morecambe and Wise, sat there stony-faced and bewildered. Maybe it’s the same with Offenbach. Rupert Christiansen, reviewing our production of Orpheus in 2015, gave us a glowing four stars but confessed that he can’t quite see what Offenbach is all about. Orpheus was his first great triumph but it anticipates the craziness to come. The satire is delicious, showing the hypocrisy of Jupiter and the gods, who must be seen to be impeccable whilst being far from blameless. Offenbach’s gods – be they of religious, authoritarian, or aristocratic origin (for me they embody those who are born to greatness, rather than achieve it) - are shown finding their final rewards in hell, joyously swapping their crowns for the trophies

of death in their infernal galop. A certain forecast of the race’s impending doom. This satire and its wry but accurate portrayal of human nature is just as loaded and penetrating as a Norse myth about stolen gold. And with tunes that refuse to leave your head.

Offenbach’s influence on J. Strauss in one direction and Gilbert and Sullivan in the other, is undeniable. The big difference between him and those who came later (including Lehár and Kálmán) is his acceptance of, and alarmingly frank references to, sex. No-one’s oeuvre highlights the potency and power of sex more than Offenbach’s. What he deplores about the Jupiters of this world is not what they get up to, but the lies they tell, and the hypocrisy of it all. Of course Jupiter is a thinly veiled portrait of Napoleon III and we know that sort of thing has always gone on in France. Imagine if it were to happen here. I know it’s unthinkable but just imagine if, say, a high-ranking member of the House of Lords, someone responsible for maintaining standards, were to be caught taking part in drug-fuelled orgies with prostitutes. Or a President of the United States were to lie about paying hush-money to porn-stars. It’s unthinkable isn’t it?

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Jacques Offenbach, the bicentenary of whose birth is celebrated this year, is one of the most significant creative figures in the entire history of music and theatre. That may seem an extraordinary claim, but consider this: if Offenbach cannot quite be credited for inventing operetta, it was certainly he who established the genre and gave it an international presence.

BY GEORGE HALL

O F F E N B A C H , O P E R E T TA AND ORPHEUS

In Vienna, he encouraged and was emulated by Johann Strauss II, who provided the local variant with its first permanent classic in Die Fledermaus. In England, Gilbert & Sullivan sprang up in the wake of the success of London transfers of his shows. From Strauss grew the entire later tradition of Viennese operetta, while from Gilbert & Sullivan and their followers came the musical comedy and later the American musical. All the musicals playing in the West End or on Broadway today, and thousands of other pieces of lighter musical theatre performed over the last 150 years or so, can trace their ancestry back to Offenbach.

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Who was this individual with such an extraordinary impact?

Jacques (originally Jacob) Offenbach was born in Cologne in 1819. His father, Isaac Juda Eberst, had moved there from the city of Offenbach-am-Main, and in Cologne became known as ‘der Offenbacher’ and later just ‘Offenbach’. He pursued a career variously as a bookbinder, musician and cantor in a synagogue. He encouraged the musicality of his two sons, Julius and Jacob, the younger of whom soon developed considerable proficiency on the cello and also began to compose, publishing his first work at the age of 14.

That same year (1833) Offenbach’s father took his two talented boys to Paris, then the centre of the musical world, and auditioned them for the celebrated Conservatoire. As foreigners, they were not qualified for admittance, but the director, Luigi Cherubini, decided to relax the rule on this occasion. Leaving his sons behind at the prestigious institution, Isaac Offenbach returned to Cologne.

Formal study seems not to have suited young Jacques (as he now was) and he left after a year. But he continued his studies privately, notably with the renowned Fromental Halévy, composer of the hugely successful grand opera La Juive, meanwhile gaining work as a cellist in various orchestras and eventually settling into the pit of the Opéra-Comique. Gradually he became known as a soloist, launching a career as a virtuoso and in 1844 making the first of his visits to England, where he performed with Mendelssohn and Joseph Joachim and played for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as well as the Tsar at Windsor Castle. He must clearly have been an outstanding performer, but his ambitions lay elsewhere. He had set his sights on composition and specifically on comic opera.

This already had a long history in France, though Offenbach himself had noted a tendency for the genre to become more serious over the years. The theatre known as the Opéra-Comique was its natural home, though the form known as ‘opéra-comique’ is not, confusingly, merely the equivalent of the English term ‘comic opera’; it meant specifically opera with spoken dialogue. According

to some ancient and arcane laws governing exactly what could or could not be performed at the various Parisian theatres, only the Opéra itself was allowed to perform works sung throughout in French. Dialogue was obligatory at the Opéra-Comique, but librettists and composers were continually stretching out towards more serious subjects. In Offenbach’s words, the result was becoming closer and closer to ‘small grand operas’. He aspired instead to cultivate a genre that was purely humorous.

For years he beat on the doors of Parisian theatre managements without persuading any of them to let him in. Following several such disappointments he determined to promote his own works.

After a concert performance of his one-act L’alcôve in 1847, he staged a handful of similar small pieces from 1853 to 1855, then seized the opportunity of the International Exhibition held in Paris in 1855 to hire and renovate a tiny theatre near the Exhibition site which he called the Bouffes-Parisiens. The venue was minute, seating only 50 spectators and – by another Parisian theatrical law – only three performers were allowed to sing on its stage. But his triple bill containing the wry comedy Les deux aveugles (The two Blind Men), which opened on 5 July 1855, was the hit of the season, and both Parisian and other Exhibition visitors flocked in. As both manager of and chief composer to the enterprise, thereafter Offenbach kept up a steady production of new works for the Bouffes-Parisiens, all in one act and necessarily small-scale.

At the end of the year he moved to a larger theatre, where he was allowed four people on stage. Only when such laws were entirely relaxed in 1858 was he able to achieve a long-held ambition: to write a bigger, two-act piece involving multiple principal roles and a chorus.

The subject, which his librettist Ludovic Halévy (nephew of the composer) had been pondering for years, was the well-known classical legend of the musician Orpheus, who is grief-stricken by the death of his wife Eurydice and is allowed to go down to the Underworld to bring her back to the realm of the living.

Unfortunately Halévy, whose day-job was as a civil servant, had recently been appointed General Secretary to the Ministry for Algeria (then a French colony), and in his new-found respectability had neither the time nor the inclination to sacrifice his position in the cause of frivolous entertainment. His colleague Hector Crémieux thus did most of the work, but Offenbach appealed to Halévy to supply some lyrics, which he did on condition that his name would not appear on the bill. Instead, the work was dedicated to him.

Orpheus in the Underworld opened at the Bouffes-Parisiens on 21 October 1858. The first-night reception was mixed, but from the second night onwards the piece began to win admirers.

Offenbach and his collaborators were undoubtedly helped a few weeks later by the attitude of an important critic who had written a negative review; in fact, they seem to have laid a trap for him, into which he duly fell. Jules Janin was France’s most eminent theatre critic, having written for the influential Journal des Débats 49

Gods include, from left to right: Mercury (winged helmet and staff); Bacchus (grapes in hair); Venus next to Mars (splendid golden helmet) - they argued a lot; Pluto (sitting on his three-headed dog); Cupid (winged cherub); Jupiter (sitting on the eagle) next to his wife Juno (blue dress) with Diana behind (crescent moon on head)

for nearly 30 years. He had been much amused by Offenbach’s previous efforts and had said so in print.

But to a high-minded individual steeped in the world of classical antiquity, Orpheus in the Underworld was a step too far – a vulgar profanation of the ancient authors who still provided the ultimate models for France’s academic literary elite. He loathed and despised it. Unfortunately, Janin had not noticed that the libretto put into the mouth of Pluto a substantial speech that was lifted, bodily, from an article he himself had written only six months before. Once his negative review had appeared, Offenbach wrote a letter to Le Figaro pointing this out. A contretemps ensued in the newspaper columns which ensured that Orpheus became a production that everyone simply had to see. It was the talk of artistic Paris. It ran for an unprecedented 228 performances and was only taken off because the cast was too exhausted to continue.

Offenbach now entered upon a decade of glory. He followed Orpheus with another piece based on the classical world, La Belle Hélène (1864), turned to French medieval legends for Geneviève de Brabant (1859) and Barbe-bleu (1866), viewed modern Paris sceptically in La Vie Parisienne (1866), took a sideswipe at Prussian militarism in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and purloined recent French literature in La Chanson de Fortunio (1861) and La Périchole (1868). Meanwhile his works became ever more international in their appeal and did the rounds of theatrical Europe. The Vienna Court Opera granted him musical respectability by commissioning his three-act opera Die Rheinnixen in 1864. Even the Opéra-Comique, which presumably still thought of him as an orchestral cellist, changed its mind and commissioned Barkouf (1860), Robinson Crusoe (1867) and Vert-Vert (1869) – musically slightly more 50

ambitious than his operettas, yet still sticking to the comic vein in which he specialised.

The crisis of Offenbach’s career came as part of a much greater disaster that engulfed the French nation in 1870-1. The Prussian chancellor Bismarck had long schemed to establish German dominance on the continent of Europe by toppling the French. By some clever doctoring of a genuine telegram, he succeeded in goading Emperor Napoléon III into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870. Within six weeks Napoléon and his entire army were taken prisoner at the Battle of Sedan.

This catastrophic humiliation resulted in Napoléon being deposed by a Government of National Defence which hastily reassembled the remainder of France’s troops and endeavoured to fight on. This in turn led to the miseries of the Siege of Paris, which was followed (after the exultant Germans had left, taking Alsace and Lorraine with them) by the chaotic revolution of the Commune, which was itself brutally quashed by French troops under General Thiers. By then much of Paris lay in ruins, and many thousands of its citizens had died.

Who would want operetta now?

Offenbach had additional problems. He was German by birth. His operettas, according to his scapegoat-seeking critics, had not only been relished by Napoléon III and the leading lights of his discredited regime but had also, through their incessant mockery and underlying cynicism, helped to undermine France’s moral strength.

Offenbach, who had wisely taken himself and his family off to Spain for the duration, defended himself ably in print, was forgiven by the public, welcomed back and resumed his activities. The pieces he wrote following this great debacle contained less of the satire that had,

in retrospect, proved so controversial, and more of the sentiment that was the other side of his unique coin.

Even with more competition now – from composers like Charles Lecocq, whom he had earlier helped to launch – he had further significant successes with pieces such as Fantasio (1872), Madame Favart (1878) and La Fille du Tambour-Major (1879). Orpheus returned in triumph in a much-expanded version in 1874 (Buxton will hear the original, which is widely preferred by Offenbach experts).

He also worked, from 1877, on a major project that he hoped would affirm his credentials as a composer of serious opera – The Tales of Hoffmann – which, sadly, he did not live to complete. As (largely) orchestrated, rearranged and even rewritten by other hands, the work became a mainstay of the French repertoire following its première at the Opéra-Comique on 10 February 1881. Offenbach had died four months earlier. He was buried in the cemetery in Montmartre after a service at the Madeleine (he had converted to Catholicism in 1844, shortly before his marriage) with the full military honours to which he was entitled as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

But were Offenbach’s contemporary enemies correct?

Were works like Orpheus, La Belle Hélène and La Vie Parisienne essentially flippant and destructive satires?

The answer cannot be a simple one. Like W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Offenbach and his collaborators were not bent on bringing down a society in which they were keen to play a prominent part and from which they benefited significantly – but they could all see the ridiculous side of things. When Jupiter is attacked in Orpheus for his constant amatory escapades, frowned on by his wife Juno, the work’s creators and its first

audiences would instantly have thought of Napoléon III’s notorious string of mistresses, so thoroughly disapproved of by the Empress Eugénie. When the inhabitants of Olympus rush in singing a parody of the Marseillaise and threatening revolution, audiences might have thought of those who wanted to tear down the rackety glitter of the Second Empire and everything it stood for – though it was not these opponents that would eventually do so. And everything and everyone in Orpheus finally has to bow before the hypocritical morality of Public Opinion.

One of Offenbach’s French biographers, Alain Decaux, defined his position vis-à-vis his own society very neatly: ‘Second Empire society discovered in Offenbach a barometer of its own sensibilities. Politically stifled, it liberated itself through laughter. Offenbach was that laughter.’ Equally pertinently, early audiences, like today’s, might have seen in the reversal of the traditional Orpheus and Eurydice story – in which, far from being devoted, the two cannot stand each other – or in the carefree libidinousness of most of the operetta’s characters, a wider satire on human nature that is not, arguably, such a parody of reality as idealists might like to suppose. And all set, in Offenbach’s consistently inventive score, to music of a melodic vitality, rhythmic buoyancy and orchestral elegance that would summon from Rossini an enormous compliment when he dubbed its creator ‘the Mozart of the ChampsElysées.’

George Hall worked for the Decca Record Company as a literary editor (1978-85) and at the BBC (1985-97), editing the Proms Guide and programmes. He writes regularly for The Stage, Opera, Opera Now, Opera News and BBC Music Magazine.

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TOBY PURSER, CONDUCTOR Founder and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orion Orchestra, Toby Purser’s music-making has prompted invitations from ENO (where he conducted The Turn of the Screw, The Marriage of Figaro and La traviata), Bampton Classical Opera, Chelsea Opera Group, Grange Park Opera, Iford Arts and Pimlico Opera, and from orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He is Music Director of New Sussex Opera, for whom he recently conducted Stanford’s The Travelling Companion, a production nominated for ‘Best Rediscovered Work’ at the 2019 International Opera Awards. Current engagements include La bohème and Fidelio for Lyric Opera, Dublin, Beethoven Symphony No 9 and Mahler Song Cycles with the Orion Orchestra, The Magic of Italian Opera at the Royal Festival Hall and Symphonic Fantasy with the London Concert Orchestra. For Opera della Luna, he has conducted The Daughter of the Regiment, Tales of Offenbach, and the UK première of Johann Strauss’ Das Spitzentuch der Königin, as well as Orpheus in the Underworld.

JEFF CLARKE, DIRECTOR Jeff Clarke has been Artistic Director of Opera della Luna since its inception in 1994. He has worked for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sydney Opera House, Scottish Opera, Lyric

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Opera of Queensland, and the State Opera of South Australia. Last year’s hit production of The Daughter of the Regiment was followed by Bernstein’s Candide for the Iford, Cheltenham and Stowe festivals and later this year his production of La Belle Hélène will be seen at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. His many productions include Don Giovanni, The Rake’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Rusalka, The Tales of Hoffmann, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Mondo della Luna, L’Elisir d’Amore, La Vie Parisienne, The Barber of Seville, Sweeney Todd, Romeo and Juliet (Brussels) and Pagliacci (Hanoi Opera House, Vietnam). His new version and translation of The Tales of Hoffmann was performed by English Touring Opera, and with OdL he recently staged the British première of Johann Strauss’s operetta, The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.

JENNY ARNOLD, CHOREOGRAPHER Jenny Arnold is Resident Choreographer for Opera della Luna. Works include Twelfth Night (RSC), Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado about Nothing (RSC, Chichester and The Haymarket), Nightingales and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bath), Spamalot (London), The Rocky Horror Show (London and Korea), The Clockmaker’s Daughter, Urinetown and Suessical (Laban Trinity), Dr Who Live (Arena tour), Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz (Birmingham Rep and W. Yorkshire Playhouse).

Jenny was nominated for an Olivier for her choreography for Jerry Springer the Opera (National Theatre),The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Comedy of Errors (The Globe). She also works on films and in television and choreographed The Tweenies and Thomas the Tank Engine (Arena Tours).

ELROY ASHMORE, SETS Elroy studied stage design on the Motley Design Course. After assisting at The Young Vic, the National Theatre and ENO, he became Head of Design for The Pitlochry Festival Theatre, the Haymarket Theatre in Basingstoke and the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. He now works as a freelance designer and has designed for over 40 production companies, theatres and organisations throughout the UK, and abroad. Work includes drama in Germany, Austria, USA and Malta, ballets in New Zealand, USA, Japan, and South Africa, and opera in Iceland. He recently designed productions for The Minack Theatre in Cornwall and TARA Theatre in London.

Elroy has a passion for musical theatre, has worked with Jeff Clarke on many occasions and designed numerous shows for Opera della Luna.

MARIA LANCASHIRE, COSTUMES Since graduating with a BA Hons in Theatre and Performance Design & Technology at LIPA in 2006, Maria has enjoyed working with many theatres as both designer and wardrobe assistant, including Opera della Luna, Storyhouse, HOME, The Library Theatre, The Royal Exchange Theatre, and The Lowry. Maria is thrilled to work alongside Opera della Luna once again bringing Orpheus in the Underworld to the Buxton International Festival. For Opera della Luna she has also designed and produced costumes for La Vie Parisienne and The Daughter

of the Regiment as well as working as wardrobe mistress for HMS Pinafore, The Ghosts of Ruddigore, The Gondoliers, and Don Giovanni.

IAN WILSON, LIGHTING DESIGNER Ian has worked as a lecturer and production technician at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and has tutored in all aspects of stagecraft at the National Youth Music Theatre. He has worked on the technical side of Buxton Festival since 2007, and has been the lighting programmer for all their major operas since 2015. He is delighted to be working with Opera della Luna this summer designing the lighting for Orpheus in the Underworld.

Ian’s credits include touring as a relighter and LX #1 for Bill Kenwright Limited & UK Productions, and working as programmer for, among others, productions at the Bolton Octagon (And Did Those Feet, The Winter’s Tale), and Buxton Opera House (West Side Story, Dick Whittington, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White). Design credits include The Daughter of the Regiment for Opera della Luna at Wilton’s Music Hall, The Liverpool Passion Plays in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, and the Council for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre’s 2017 showcase performance.

FREDDIE CONWAY, CUPID/INFERNAL DANCER Freddie has danced since the age of 6 and performing has always been his

passion. He recently graduated from the Urdang Academy in central London after training for 3 years in all aspects of dance and musical theatre performance.

He is very excited to be performing in Orpheus in the Underworld with Opera dells Luna.

LOUISE CRANE, JUNO Mezzo Louise Crane studied at the Guildhall, the RNCM and the National Opera Studio. She joined the D’Oyly Carte as a principal contralto, singing six roles in London and on tour in Britain and the USA. Louise has worked as a principal with Glyndebourne, ENO, La Monnaie in Brussels, Opéra de Lyon, ETO, Aldeburgh Festival, Chelsea Opera Group, Opera Factory, Opera Holland Park, Opera East, Impropera, Edinburgh Festival and Mid-Wales Opera. She has an active career in oratorio and has broadcast for the BBC and Classic FM. Her previous roles with Opera della Luna include Mrs Goodbody, Ruth, Edith, Policeman, Little Buttercup, Alice, Amanda Goodheart, Sir Gilbert Murgatroyd, Orestes and The Marchioness of Market-Harborough.

Louise runs vocal workshops and masterclasses and is a visiting singing teacher at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

and Opera Anywhere. Roles include Leonora Il Trovatore, Mimì and Musetta La Bohème, Violetta La Traviata, Donna Anna Don Giovanni, Tatyana Eugene Onegin, Tosca, Lauretta Gianni Schicchi, Hanna The Merry Widow, and Rosalinde Die Fledermaus. Concert appearances include Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms and Fauré Requiem, Rossini Petite Messe Solonelle, Strauss Vier letzte Lieder and Beethoven Ah! Perfido.

Lynsey founded the Celebrate Voice Festival in Salisbury, and produces concerts and opera education events across the UK. Previous roles with Opera della Luna: Rosalinde Die Fledermaus, Peasblossom/Theodorine Tales of Offenbach, Gianetta The Gondoliers, Constance The Sorcerer.

ANTHONY FLAUM, PLUTO/ARISTAEUS Tenor Anthony Flaum is a graduate of the RAM and the National Opera Studio.

Roles have included Borsa Rigoletto (ENO); Macduff Macbeth (Scottish Opera); Tybalt Roméo et Juliette, Motel Fiddler on the Roof, Tchekalinsky Queen of Spades and Lensky Eugene Onegin (Grange Park); Nemorino L’elisir d’amore (NI Opera and Nevill Holt Opera); Rodolfo La bohème and Pinkerton Madame Butterfly (Iford Arts); title-role in UC Opera’s production of Aroldo; and Rodolfo, Lensky, Don José and Don Ottavio for OperaUpClose. He has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra (Fiddler on the Roof at the BBC Proms).

This season he sings Gonzalve L’heure espagnole for Mid Wales Opera.

LYNSEY DOCHERTY, DIANA Soprano Lynsey Docherty has sung with Dorset Opera, Iford Opera, Opera della Luna, The Mastersingers Company, The Wagner Society of Great Britain,

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PAUL FEATHERSTONE, MERCURY / JOHN STYX Tenor Paul Featherstone was born in Australia. He read Drama and Philosophy at Glasgow University and worked as an actor in Scottish theatres and television. He later studied singing at RSAMD with Peter Alexander Wilson and sang in Scottish Opera’s chorus before embarking on a solo career.

He was associate director of English Pocket Opera, introducing opera to schoolchildren at home and abroad. Paul has given solo recitals and has sung with various opera companies and at major festivals in the UK. He previously sang with Opera della Luna in the title-role of The Tales of Hoffmann at Iford festival in 2005.

DAIRE HALPIN, EURYDICE Irish soprano Daire Halpin graduated in Music and Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin, then studied music and drama in Dublin, Florence and London.

She has sung principal roles for Opera Ireland, Irish National Opera, Northern Ireland Opera, Les Bougies Baroques, Scottish Opera, ENO, European Opera Centre and Theater Magdeburg. Opera roles include Amor, Theodora, Adina, Susanna, Despina, Zerlina, Pamina, Musetta, Tytania, and Gianetta (The Gondoliers). Concert repertoire includes Bach St John Passion, Brahms and Fauré Requiem, Handel Messiah, and Mozart C Minor Mass. Recent highlights include The Maid in Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face (Irish National Opera, 2018).

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JOSHUA DE LA-GARDE GUARD/INFERNAL DANCER Joshua has recently graduated from Urdang Academy. Whilst there he has performed as Ernst in Spring Awakening, and various roles in DCP and King of New York. Other professional credits include appearances as a dancer in Young Voices Choir- Urban Strides. He is delighted to be making his opera debut in Orpheus in the Underworld.

CHARLIE MULA GUARD/INFERNAL DANCER Charlie has been training for 6 years and has attended Italia Conti Theatre Arts School Of London and is a recent graduate of Wilkes Academy Of Performing Arts. Charlie is 20, and is making his professional debut in Orpheus In The Underworld.

sang music from Sullivan’s The Light of The World. He has worked with Rotary to fundraise Age UK. Previous roles with Opera della Luna: seven roles in Bernstein’s Candide.

TRISTAN STOCKS, ORPHEUS Tristan Stocks, tenor, studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at Dennis O’Neill’s International Academy of Voice. He was awarded a Susan Chilcott Scholarship, the Grange Park Opera Scholarship and a prize at the John Lill Awards. He was a BrittenPears Young Artist at Aldeburgh in Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Roles have included: Tonio La fille du regiment, Alfredo La Traviata, Ernesto Don Pasquale, Tamino The Magic Flute, Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi, Nemorino L’elisir d’amore, Nanki-Poo The Mikado, Frederic The Pirates of Penzance and Paris La belle Hélène. With Opera Anywhere, 2016-17, he sang the principal tenor roles in HMS Pinafore, The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.

MATTHEW SIVETER, JUPITER Baritone Matthew Siveter graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London. He has appeared with The National G&S Opera Company, Charles Court Opera, Opera della Luna, Tarantara Productions and Ohyezitis Productions. G&S roles include the Mikado, the Pirate King, Despard, and John Wellington Wells. He also sang Katisha in The Mikado and has played the Dame in pantomine. Matthew revived The Fringes of the Fleet by Rudyard Kipling with music by Elgar, and

KRISTY SWIFT, VENUS British-Australian soprano Kristy Swift graduated from Queensland University.

She received awards and scholarships, including the Herald Sun Aria and she won the National Oratorio Award and the Robert Salzer scholarship at the Australian National Liederfest. She broadcasts regularly on Australian radio

and television. Roles includes Violetta La Traviata, Tatyana Eugene Onegin, First Lady The Magic Flute, Marzelline Beethoven’s Leonore (Buxton 2016), First Sprite Cendrillon (Royal Opera House), Naiad Ariadne auf Naxos, Paquette Candide, Young Heidi Follies, Angelica Orlando, Norina Don Pasquale, First Niece Peter Grimes and Micaëla Carmen. This is her first appearance with Opera della Luna.

KATHARINE TAYLOR-JONES, PUBLIC OPINION Contralto Katharine Taylor-Jones has appeared with Opera North, ENO, D’Oyly Carte, Carl Rosa Opera Company, National G&S Company at Buxton, and at Bregenz Festival.

Roles include Bianca The Rape of Lucretia, Rossweisse Die Walküre, French Mother Death in Venice, Frau Schulz Die Heimkehraus der Fremde (Mendelssohn), Mrs Noye Noye’s Fludde, Anna Tobias and the Angel, Marcellina The Marriage of Figaro and Berta The Barber of Seville. With Opera North she appeared in Pinocchio, Peter Grimes, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet; and with D’Oyly Carte Katharine appeared in Yeomen of The Guard, Iolanthe and HMS Pinafore. Previous roles with Opera della Luna: Marsha Berkenfield in The Daughter of the Regiment, and The Marchioness in The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.

SAMUEL WITTY, MARS/INFERNAL DANCER Sam has been studying dance and Musical Theatre for more than 10 years, specialising in commercial dance, contemporary dance, and acrobatics.

While studying at the Urdang Academy he had the opportunity to work on projects such as Dean Lee’s Eryka and Ben and Ross – Duke Dumont - Real Life music video. Since graduating in 2018, Sam has been seen in Bring It on at Southwark Playhouse, Chicago at the Minack Theatre, Cornwall, and in various music videos.

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Page

ALLAN STEPHENSON (B 1949)

THE ORPHANS OF KOOMBU 56

BOOK AND LYRICS BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS, BASED ON HIS NOVEL THE SECRET SONG FRIDAY 12, SATURDAY 13, MONDAY 15, TUESDAY 16, WEDNESDAY 17, FRIDAY 19, SATURDAY 20 JULY 10.30AM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE A Buxton International Festival Production with members from the Young Artists Programme and the Festival Chorus CAST Sticks Sofia Silas Beadle Judge Policeman Innkeeper Farmer Farmer’s Wife

Daniella Sicari Fiona Finsbury Edward Robinson* Andrew Masterson* Einar Stefánsson* Peter Lidbetter Rhiannon Doogan* Jordan HardingPointon Molly Barker

CREATIVES Conductor Director Designer Stage Manager Project Coordinator

Tom Newall Mark Burns Kitty Callister Emma Furness Lucie de Lacy

*Young Artists PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS Anthony Gell School, Wirksworth; Buxton Community School; New Mills School; Hope Valley College; St Philip Howard Catholic Voluntary Academy, Glossop; St Thomas More Catholic School, Buxton; Tinderbox Performing Arts; Mad Hatters Youth Choir.

THANKS TO THE KOOMBU SYNDICATE John & Maggie Hays, Jennifer Coffey, Daphne Burnett, Hilary Armitage, Doris Turck, Pauline & Stephen Glover. LG Harris Trust, Derbyshire Music Hub, Devonshire Educational Trust, Andre Bernheim, Charitable Trust, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Derbyshire County Council Action Grants,Tesco Bags of Help, N Smith Charitable Settlement, Bingham Trust, Waitrose Community Matters.

SYNPOSIS After a long journey through the desert, three travellers arrive at a mountain pass above the Koombu valley. They are led by Sophia, who has had a vision about the verdant valley below, where she understands she will find a cure for her illness.

Silas, a storyteller, has grown weary of life.

He thinks he will find a story in Koombu worth more than all the stories he has ever told. Sticks carries a basket, which is the only link he has to his parents. He believes he will find the answers to the whereabouts of his family in Koombu. The travellers hear the sound of singing from a group of young people who are digging holes. When the travellers step forward to introduce themselves, the young people take fright and run. In their scramble to escape, one of them inadvertently takes Sticks’s basket.

Once the travellers arrive in Koombu they meet the Beadle, the Judge, the Judge’s Wife, the Innkeeper, the Policeman, the Farmer and his Wife. The Townsfolk are quick to tell the travellers how happy and prosperous they are but their enthusiasm seems insincere. The Innkeeper invites Sophia, Silas and Sticks to spend the night at her inn. While the travellers prepare for the night, they again hear the sound of the young people singing. Sticks goes to find them to retrieve his basket. At first the young people reject him, but when he explains that he is an orphan they accept him, explaining that they are all orphans as well. As he starts to question them about their strange circumstances, the Policeman, Beadle and Judge come to lock the young people up for the night. Frightened, they ask Sticks to leave.

land was stolen. The orphans are the children that were left behind after the massacre.

The orphans of Koombu are heard marching into town. They demand to know what happened to their parents and why they do not share in the town’s prosperity. Sticks shares with them the secret of Koombu. The angry young people want to burn the town down. Sophia stops them. She tells them the Koombu spring has dried up and, without the spring, the town and the valley will die. She says she will divine a new source of the spring, enough for everyone, but all must share in its bounty. She charges the Policeman, Beadle and Judge to admit to their crimes and leave the town. Sophia divines a new source for the Koombu spring, and the water flows as sweetly and abundantly as it did before.

Sticks discovers that his father was Okri, the leader of the original inhabitants. Silas finds a new story that he will tell over and over again.

That night Sophia has a dream about a spring which once flowed in Koombu. In her dream the water from the Koombu spring cures her illness. The following day Sophia, Silas and Sticks press the Innkeeper to tell them more about the town, the orphans, and the spring. The Innkeeper, cautious at first, and then needing to unburden herself, tells the travellers the terrible secret of Koombu: the original inhabitants of the valley were killed by the townsfolk and their

57

BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS

THE ORPHANS OF KOOMBU – AN AFRICAN CHAMBER OPERA 58

The term opera, to the uninitiated, often conjures up the image of grand ladies in pointed helmets singing in a foreign language to short large-bellied men wearing bad wigs. Opera is also often associated with high-brow European culture that takes place in ornate opera houses. When I began writing operas for young people, I wanted to alter this perception by creating a musical theatre experience that was meaningful, relevant and fun. There are not many opera houses in South Africa so it was important that this experience could happen in a classroom, a playground, or a school hall.

At the end of the Apartheid era, opera – stigmatized as a ‘Eurocentric art form’ – was a symbol of Western dominance and colonial imposition and seemed to be dead in South Africa. Opera was seen as some kind of foreign, alien import inimical to the development of the people’s real music. However, in truth, over the past 20 years, the world has come to see (and hear) a real blossoming of outstanding classically trained South African opera singers.

When I ran the Outreach department at the opera company in Cape Town in the 1990s, the emergence of large numbers of exceptional operatic vocal talent among the black community could no longer be denied. What became a pressing artistic issue was the creation of a suitable operatic repertoire for these singers who had joined the company.

Telling stories through music is said to be part of township culture, a trend which translates easily into opera performance. There is a song for everything, whether it’s marriage, a child’s birth, a boy’s initiation, courtship or a funeral. This may also point to why opera is popular with black singers in South Africa, despite the art form’s historical links with Apartheid South Africa and subsequent colonial associations.

However, the political tensions in 1993 polarised the black and white communities and made inter-cultural exchange and access to performances difficult. Entering the townships with an opera company representing an art form which was associated with the Apartheid government was not without its risks. I believe that finding the way into the hearts and minds of young people is through participation. The creation of The Orphans of Qumbu (the original title) started with the question: How can I get a chorus of young people to sing in an indigenous opera with professional singers?

In 1992, I had toured The Milkbird (a folk opera with five singers) to primary schools in the townships around Cape Town. The word had got around about opera singers performing in the community and when I approached several headmasters of secondary schools, they were curious about the possibility of their choirs working with the opera company. After extensive consultation with community leaders, I was able to secure four schools in the townships, and six schools from Mitchells Plain, Cape Town and the Boland to take part in the very first performance of The Orphans of Qumbu. In that first (1993) season, 350 young people from ten different communities in the Cape Peninsula, for the first time sang in an opera. For the next ten years the company mounted seasons of The Orphans of Qumbu in the Boland and Eastern Cape, at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal. In all the subsequent seasons the principle remained the same: train young voices, match them with opera singers, and perform the work in a playground, a classroom or a school hall. My proudest moment was to receive a call from Accra, Ghana, from the head of the Canadian Library Association asking if a local theatre community group could perform the opera. (Years later, I had the privilege of meeting the cast, who then performed extracts from the opera for my class of Acting I students on Semester at Sea.) The joy of singing a story, the fun of rehearsing and the excitement of performance are all aspects of the artistic development of any young person. Using a marimba, piano and percussive elements as a cushion for the voice not only places the work in Africa where so many traditions of percussion music exist, but also provides

great scope for the young singer to freely interpret the score. The story of The Orphans of Qumbu came all at once, in one sitting, as I considered what reconciliation meant in a post-apartheid South Africa. The opera is a parable of colonialism and works with archetypes which are recognisable in every developing nation. Its power resides in the voices of young people who bravely confront injustice and then choose to forgive rather than destroy.

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BY MARK BURNS

THE ORPHANS OF KOOMBU, DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BY MARK BURNS

LET THEM SING! 60

Being asked to direct The Orphans of Koombu was a chance to continue the legacy of inspiring and ambitious work that the Buxton Festival produce. After all, my career started as a participant in an Outreach project at the Festival and having the opportunity to give something back is hugely important to me. This opera is about young people finding their voice in society. In a world where young people often feel left out and ignored, this piece helps us to understand that by giving everyone an equal voice and an equal share of society’s riches, we can better the world we live in. It certainly promotes a level of soulsearching amongst the current political backdrop, as it did when it was first performed in South Africa in the early nineties during the final years of the Apartheid era. So how do we give the young people their voice? Right from day one I wanted this show to belong to them. Yes, it’s my job to steer the ship, but I want the young people to feel that they own a part of the opera, otherwise how can I expect them to deliver a truthful version of the message? All the participants have designed their own costumes with the help of our designer, Kitty Callister, using stencils that include aspects of their school, or group logos and colour schemes. A lot of the work we’ve done on stage has come directly from the young people, such as their ideas about what the words mean and how to respond to that physically. This isn’t just about performing in a show – it’s about performing their show. I wanted them to feel included every step of the way and to feel that their ideas are being used to create this production. Our cast of principals comprises a fantastic group of young artists, many at the beginning of their careers, some still studying. Because of their current experience of arts education and breaking into the industry, the young people can really get a sense of what it’s like to explore performance as a career option. Working with artists not so vastly older than our school groups, helps to produce role models that the young people can look up to and be inspired by. It also helps to reinforce in our principals the importance of arts education as a facet of their careers. There really is so much more to this project than meets the eye. If it results in just one child being inspired to launch a career in the arts, as the Festival inspired me 19 years ago, then I consider all the hard work we’ve done to be a success. The effects of this work will go way beyond our final performance and I hope that in years to come one of our participants will be writing a similar piece to this in a similar programme.

Outreach, Education, Learning, Participation, Access: no matter what buzzword you want to use, it is a vital and necessary limb of any theatrical entity. Where government funding is fast falling short, arts organisations must prove their worth within the communities they serve and a strong programme of Outreach events alongside their main offering can make all the difference between ticking the boxes on a funding application or being considered elitist, unworthy and out of touch with modern society. Real terms arts funding in England decreased by £7.2m in 2015-16 compared with 2010-11 and companies are now under more pressure than ever to create a diverse and engaging Outreach offering to tempt the funders. But do these projects just serve as a tick-box exercise to make up the funding shortfall or do they actually work? As a former participant in one of these projects, I can give you a resounding ‘YES’ as an answer to that question.

Attending a Catholic school meant that singing was on the agenda every day, but it never occurred to me that something like singing could develop into a career in the arts and certainly no one ever told me that it could be an option. It wasn’t until I was in secondary school that the option of singing lessons piqued my interest to pursue things further.

It was at roughly the same time that the Buxton Festival arrived at school with quite an adventurous project up its sleeves.

Burning Waters by Russell Keable was premièred as part of the Festival’s millennium celebrations and featured children from schools across Buxton and the High Peak. Not only were we to perform in the opera, but several of us with an expressed interest in drama were chosen to help write some of the libretto, and we also took part in design workshops helping to create some of the puppets used in the performance. The production was a huge promenade piece that took the audience around the Pavilion Gardens as they followed the action. A massive undertaking for all the forces involved, it was a shining example of immersive theatre and an early example of the shift in taste towards this type of theatre in the UK. Thus began a journey that would see me go from children’s chorus to opera singer to director, all signposted

by Outreach projects that would inspire me to take the career path that I walk down today.

Having been inspired to pursue singing as a career by my experiences of Burning Waters, I continued my singing lessons and joined a local drama group as well as taking part in the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival’s Youth Productions every year. I also performed in another of the Festival’s Outreach productions, Britten’s Noye’s Fludde with Donald Maxwell and Yvonne Howard, both of whom I’ve since gone on to work with as a professional.

It’s safe to say I was hooked and I went on to study Musical Theatre at Sixth Form in Manchester. During my sixth form studies, the Royal Northern College of Music took my class and put us on stage in a series of opera scenes.

Coincidence No 1: the director of this project, Michael Barry, had directed me in Noye’s Fludde at the Festival – a clue, perhaps, that opera might be calling me. Having relished my experience during these opera scenes, my singing teacher in Buxton, Clare O’Neill, persuaded me to audition at the RNCM and I was offered my place on the spot. Walking back down the stairs after that audition, I made the decision that opera was what I was going to do and that was the beginning of a wonderful time in Manchester.

In the second year of my degree an advert went out from the Outreach department: ‘Apprentice Assistant Director required to work on college youth musical theatre project’. Directing had never crossed my mind as something I might be interested in, but I’d always been so keen to get involved in education projects following my own experiences, that I decided to apply. As it turned out the opera scenes I had taken part in were the pilot for this project, another coincidence (No 2) that helped to steer my path. I never thought that I would do anything other than singing, and then directing came along and it was again an Outreach project that served as the catalyst that guided my career. My mentor on this project was Caroline Clegg who, lo and behold (Coincidence No 3), was the director of Burning Waters all those years before. It was as if everything had come full circle and my destiny was laid out. And this was all down to Outreach projects. I’ve since assisted Caroline on a number of projects, including one at Longborough Festival Opera, and we’ve become close friends through our work.

Using our resources to inspire children won’t just benefit the future artists in the class – it will benefit all of the participants. The future scientist who has to make a presentation of his findings must be able to perform; the future surgeon must be able to keep calm under pressure and beat the nerves; the future CEO must be able to communicate effectively and have the confidence to lead. Participation in the arts provides transferable skills that are fundamental to so many professions and we must encourage this to continue and invest in it if we want to get young people ready to take on the challenges of adulthood.

Of course, it’s not just young people that benefit from participation. People of all ages and from all walks of life can benefit from these projects: the homeless person who feels a sense of community and belonging through a group project, or an older person suffering from dementia who finds empowerment through music. The list goes on, but having the opportunity to work with and learn from professional artists, singers, conductors, directors, designers and librettists, all in one project, is something that schools and community groups just cannot facilitate.

Yet to an opera company, who have all of these tools at their disposal, it’s just another day in the office and long may this vital work continue.

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TOM NEWALL, CONDUCTOR Tom Newall studied at Durham University and the RNCM. He is dedicated to music education and has worked on a number of outreach projects for Blackburn Cathedral and Opera North. Tom is Music Director of Blackburn Music Society, Salford Choral Society and of Leeds Youth Opera and is the Artistic Director of Piccadilly Symphony Orchestra which he founded in 2014 to help young musicians bridge the gap between student experiences and professional orchestras. The orchestra has a busy schedule, with large-scale projects at its community hub in Harpurhey, North Manchester. It also delivers the ‘Young Explorers’ concert series for children in collaboration with the RNCM. Tom has a passion for opera and has conducted Macbeth, La bohème, The Magic Flute, A Masked Ball and The Turn of the Screw with Leeds Youth Opera; Così fan tutte with Flatpack Music; Die Fledermaus with Fulham Opera; and two premières with Manchester Opera Project.

MOLLY BARKER, FARMER’S WIFE Molly Barker is a mezzo-soprano from the Peak District and has recently completed her Master’s degree at the RNCM studying with Hilary Summers.

She has been generously supported by the Michael Kennedy Award and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation.

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Molly is a newcomer to the professional singing world, her first appearance being in the chorus of Tisbe with La Serenissima at Buxton last year. She has since sung La Zia Principessa Suor Angelica and Zita Gianni Schicchi (Puccini) in the RNCM productions. This year she performed with Birmingham Opera Company in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Shostakovich) and sang Ino in Handel’s Semele. Later this year she will sing Madame de Croissy in Poulenc‘s Dialogues des Carmélites at the RNCM.

RHIANNON DOOGAN, INNKEEPER Rhiannon Doogan, mezzo-soprano, is studying for her Master’s at the RNCM with Eiddwen Harrhy, kindly supported by the Sophie’s Silver Lining Trust, Kathleen Trust and Annie Ridyard Scholarship. Roles have included Lucretia Rape of Lucretia, Veronique Le Docteur Miracle, Dorabella Così fan tutte, appearances in Semele and in Peter Grimes with Elemental Opera, and Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. At the RNCM she recently sang the Abbess in Suor Angelica and Shining One in The Pilgrim’s Progress. Rhiannon was the recent winner of the Chris Petty English Song Prize.

FIONA FINSBURY, SOFIA Fiona Finsbury, soprano, studied at the RNCM, where she sang Cendrillon, Gretel an Métella in the college operas.

She has a keen interest in contemporary

opera and created Hanna in the world première of Adam Gorb’s The Path To Heaven. She is in the chorus Eugene Onegin and Lucio Papirio Dittatore, and is singing Sophia in The Orphans of Koombu. This year she is an Iford New Generation Artist, and will be performing in Iford’s production of L’elisir d’amore at Belcombe Court in September. Prior to her studies at the RNCM, Fiona was a professional actor and was in the West End cast of The Phantom of the Opera (2013-15).

JORDAN HARDING-POINTON, FARMER Baritone Jordan Harding-Pointon is a music graduate of Manchester University and a postgraduate student at the RNCM studying with Matthew Best. Roles have included Falke Die Fledermaus and Mountararat Iolanthe.

In 2017 he created the Prisoner in Louis Ashton Butler’s opera The Ephemeral Legend of the Madman’s Handkerchief. He has sung in the chorus for The Marriage of Figaro, Acis and Galatea, Il Trovatore and, with Opera della Luna, The Gondoliers. In concert, Jordan has sung in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater.

This year he sang Silvio in Manchester Opera’s Pagliacci.

PETER LIDBETTER, POLICEMAN Peter Lidbetter is a bass-baritone

who graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 2015. He is in his second year of a Master’s degree at the RNCM, studying with Nicholas Powell. Peter performed in the choruses of Verdi’s Alzira and Mozart’s Idomeneo with BIF last summer and this year sings the Policeman in Michael Williams’s The Orphans of Koombu. Roles include Sid Albert Herring, Figaro Le nozze di Figaro, Colline La bohème, Zebul Jephtha, Evangelist Pilgrim’s Progress, Sarastro Die Zauberflöte and Simone Gianni Schicchi. He created The Count in Owain Park’s The Snow Child at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Solo performances include both Bach Passions, Haydn’s Creation, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers and Mozart’s Requiem.

ANDREW MASTERSON, BEADLE Andrew is an Irish tenor. Having studied at Queen’s University Belfast from 2015, he then achieved a distinction in his Masters degree in 2018 at the RNCM and is now studying there for a PostGraduate Diploma with Nicholas Powell.

He has performed widely as a chorus member in companies such as NI Opera, Wexford Festival Opera, and Bergen Nasjonale Opera. Roles include Harry La Fanciulla del West (WFO), 1st Prisoner Fidelio (BBC Proms) and Lord Lechery The Pilgrim’s Progress (RNCM). He is a Young Artist at Buxton International Festival 2019 and is grateful for the support of The Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust.

Fée (Cendrillon) and Gretel (Hansel and Gretel). Daniella’s prizes and awards include the WA Young People & The Arts International Award, Amanda Roocroft Prize, the Joyce & Michael Kennedy Strauss Prize, John Cameron Award for Lieder, The Elizabeth Harwood Prize and Robin Kay Memorial Prize. She has worked with Clonter Opera in various projects throughout 2018 including their School Workshops and Touring Opera Gala.

EDWARD ROBINSON, SILAS Edward, baritone, is a Master of Music graduate of the RNCM. His operatic roles include Pilgrim in Vaughan Williams’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Marco in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Valens in Handel’s Theodora, Bobinet in Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne, Le Surintendant des plaisirs in Massenet’s Cendrillon, Antonio in Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro and Boy 2 in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Edward has performed with Dorset Opera and Clonter Opera, and was a Young Artist at BIF’s 2018 season. He has recorded Sir John Bantam in Cellier’s Dorothy, conducted

by Richard Bonynge. In August Edward will sing Don Pedro in Stanford’s Much Ado About Nothing with Northern Opera Group as part of Leeds Opera Festival.

DANIELLA SICARI, STICKS Daniella is an Australian/British soprano who trained at The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Music and Post-Graduate Diploma in Classical Voice studying with Patricia Price. She received a Master of Music and Advanced Graduated Diploma in Performance at the RNCM studying with Mary Plazas and generously supported by the James & Mary Glass Scholarship. Roles at the RNCM included Despina (Così fan tutte), Lady Ellington (La Vie Parisienne), La

EINAR STÉFANSSON, JUDGE Icelandic/Norwegian bass Einar Stefánsson is studying with Matthew Best at the RNCM supported by the Waverly Fund and a James and Mary Glass Award. He is part of the Young Artist Programme at the Bergen National Opera mentored by distinguished bass-baritone Simon Kirkbride. Recent engagements include Brühlmann Werther with Bergen National Opera, performances at the Norwegian festival Mimì Goes Glamping, and performing with the choruses of Opera North and Bergen National Opera. Einar has a particular passion for contemporary music. He created Kapo/Nazi Officer/Dr Rudi in Adam Gorb’s opera The Path to Heaven at Howard Assembly Room, Leeds (2018). At Buxton Einar is singing the Judge in The Orphans of Koombu and is in the chorus for Eugene Onegin and Lucio Papirio Dittatore. He is also taking part in the opening concert.

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O P E R A TA L K S

VARDELLS B u s i n e s s

S o l u t i o n s

Join our creative teams for insights into the history, music and vision behind this year’s operas.

BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Duration of talks: 30 minutes.

All talks at 6pm unless otherwise stated: Eugene Onegin: Saturday 6 July, Wednesday 10 July, Sunday 14 July (12.45pm), Tuesday 16 July, Friday 19 July Orpheus in the Underworld : Monday 8 July, Thursday 11 July (12.45pm), Wednesday 17 July Lucio Papirio Dittatore: Tuesday 9 July, Saturday 13 July, Thursday 18 July (12.45pm) Georgiana: Friday 12 July, Monday 15 July, Saturday 20 July

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N E W V O I C E S F E S T I VA L F O U N D AT I O N C O N C E R T

FRIDAY 5 JULY 7.30 – 9.30PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE

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To mark the opening of the Festival’s 40th Anniversary season, singers from the Buxton Festival Company combine with visiting young artists from Cape Town Opera Young Artists Programme and rising stars from the Royal Northern College of Music for a celebratory concert, accompanied by the Northern Chamber Orchestra conducted by incoming Artistic Director, Adrian Kelly.

They will present extracts from well-loved works by Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Bizet, Johann Strauss II and other composers. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute are two of his most enduring masterpieces. We will hear scenes from the beginning of one work and the rousing conclusion of the other. Bizet’s Carmen boasts perhaps more memorable tunes than any other opera in the repertoire, including the famous ‘Toreador Song’. And finally, Johann Strauss’s greatest operetta, Die Fledermaus, conjures up the decadent world of fin-de-siècle Vienna.

All funds from this evening’s performance will go to the Buxton Festival Foundation to grow an endowment fund to ensure the long-term stability and development of BIF. Join us to support the festival for future generations to enjoy.

FROM CAPE TOWN OPERA Sopranos Brittany Smith, Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi

FROM BUXTON FESTIVAL COMPANY

Tenors Lunga Hallam, Sipho Fubesi

Mezzos Anna Jeffers, Aurelija Stasiulytė, Bethany Yeaman, Imogen Garner, Rhiannon Doogan, Naomi Rogers

Mezzo Ané Pretorius

Bass Thando Zwane

FROM THE RNCM Sopranos Eliza Boom

Director Mark Burns

Sopranos Georgina Stalbow, Eleri Gwilym, Isolde Roxby, Fiona Finsbury, Yara Zeitoun, Olivia Carrell

Tenors Joe Doody, Gethin Lewis, William Searle, George Curnow, Andrew Masterson, Matthew Curtis Baritones/Basses Christopher Cull, Luke Scott, Phil Wilcox, Rhys AlunThomas, Edward Robinson, Einar Stefánsson

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-91): Le Nozze di Figaro Overture Duet: Cinque…dieci Recitative: Cosa stai misurando; Duet: Se a caso madama la notte ti chiama; Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi (Susanna), Thando Zwane (Figaro) Trio: Cosa sento!

Georgina Stalbow (Susanna), Joseph Doody (Basilio), Luke Scott (Count Almaviva) Recitative: È decisa la lite Sextet: Riconosci in questo amplesso Brittany Smith (Susanna) Imogen Garner (Marcellina) Andrew Masterson (Don Curzio), Luke Scott (Count Almaviva) Phil Wilcox (Figaro) Einar Stefánsson (Don Bartolo) GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868): La cenerentola Aria: Principe piu non sei… Si ritrovarla io giuro!

Lunga Hallam (Don Ramiro) and men’s chorus LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): Fidelio Quartet: Mir ist so wunderbar Isolde Roxby (Leonore), Yara Zeitoun (Marzelline), Gethin Lewis (Jaquino), Rhys Alun Thomas (Rocco) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-91): Die Zauberflöte Quintet: Hm, hm, hm, hm Fiona Finsbury (First Lady), Bethany Yeaman (Second Lady), Anna Jeffers (Third Lady), Sipho Fubesi (Tamino), Phil Wilcox (Papageno) Duet: Bei Männern welche Liebe fühle Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi (Pamina), Luke Scott (Papageno) Act 2 Finale: Papagena, Papagena, Papagena!

Christopher Cull (Papageno) Yara Zeitoun (First Boy) Olivia Carrell (Second Boy) Rhiannon Doogan (Third Boy), Georgina Stalbow (Papagena), Eleri Gwilym (Queen of the Night), William Searle (Monostatos), Fiona Finsbury (First Lady), Naomi Rogers (Second Lady),

Anna Jeffers (Third Lady), Rhys Alun Thomas (Sarastro) and chorus INTERVAL GEORGES BIZET (1838-75): Carmen Overture Habanera: L’amour est un oiseau rebelle Aurelija Stasiulytė (Carmen), Chorus Toreador Song: Votre toast je peux vous le rendre Thando Zwane (Escamillo), Eleri Gwilym (Frasquita), Bethany Yeaman (Mercédès), Ané Pretorius (Carmen), men’s chorus Quintet: Nous avons en tête une affaire Eleri Gwilym (Frasquita), Bethany Yeaman (Mercédès), Aurelija Stasiulytė (Carmen), George Curnow (Remendado), Edward Robinson (Dancaïro) Morceau de’ensemble: Quant au douanier, c’est notre affaire!

Fiona Finsbury (Frasquita), Rhiannon Doogan (Mercédès), Anna Jeffers (Carmen) and chorus Aria: Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante Eliza Boom (Micaëla) Finale: C’est toi?

Ané Pretorius (Carmen), Sipho Fubesi (Don José) and chorus JOHANN STRAUSS II (1825-99): Die Fledermaus Overture Introduction to Act 2: Ein souper Chorus Ensemble and aria: Mein Herr Marquis Ané Pretorius (Orlofsky), Edward Robinson (Falke) Brittany Smith (Adele), Matthew Curtis (Eisenstein) and chorus Brüderlein und Schwesterlein: Edward Robinson (Falke), Bethany Yeaman (Orlofsky), Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi (Adele), Isolde Roxby (Rosalinde), Lunga Hallam (Eisenstein), Naomi Rogers (Ida), Christopher Cull (Frank) and chorus 67

In the USA she has sung Susanna and Barbarina Le nozze di Figaro (Brown University), Clara Porgy and Bess (Lyric Opera of Chicago) and Thérèse Les Mamelles de Tirésias. She sang in Mozart’s Mass in C minor with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the Harare International Festival and in the Last Night of the Proms at The Playhouse.

Brittany Smith, soprano, completed her BMus (Opera) and PG Dip in Music Performance (Operatic Studies) with Distinction at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) South African College of Music, studying with Professor Virginia Davids. As a student she sang in the chorus for UCT SACM’s Don Giovanni and Il viaggio a Reims, and her solo role was Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro in 2016. Then followed Adele Die Fledermaus, Serpina La serva padrona, Pamina Die Zauberflöte and Norina Don Pasquale. Brittany’s awards include the 2013 Ruth Ormond Prize for the Most Promising First Year UCT Female Opera Student, Winner and Audience Prize for the 2016 Schock Foundation Opera Competition in the Female Classical Section.

Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, soprano, obtained her Diploma in Opera in 2010 and her Post-graduate Diploma in Music 2012. She won the 2015 Women’s Voice Fellowship from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, SAMRO, and Muziqanto Singing Competition, and was second in Vienna’s 2012 Hans Gabor Belvedere International Singing Competition. Her roles in Cape Town include Fiordiligi Così fan tutte, Konstanze Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Antonia Les contes d’Hoffmann, Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress, Madama Cortese Il viaggio a Reims and Adina L’elisir d’amore.

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Ané Pretorius, mezzo-soprano, was born in Gauteng and graduated from the University of Cape Town. She completed her BMus (Opera) and MMus in Performance and Dissertation and is studying towards a PGDip in Music Performance. Ané received the second prize in the 2016 Schock Foundation Singing competition. Her roles include Papagena and Second Lady Die Zauberflöte, Adalgisa Norma, Cherubino Le nozze di Figaro, Angelina La Cenerentola, Sesto La Clemenza di Tito, Flora La traviata, La Speranza L’Orfeo, Receptionist The Application.

Lunga Hallam, tenor, completed his post-graduate degree in Music and Honours in Music in 2015, studying with Professor Sidwill James Hartman.

He sang in the chorus of Cape Town Opera/University of Cape Town collaborative operas, including L’elisir d’amore, Five:20 South African Operas, Il viaggio a Reims, La bohème, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and a gala concert with Bryn Terfel. Lunga worked

with the International Choir Academy Lübeck with conductors Rolf Beck and Helmuth Rilling, in Bach’s St Luke’s and St Matthew’s Passion, Motets, Tan Dun’s Water Passion and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Lunga’s role as a conductor with the Western Cape Choral Musical Association led to engagements with the Old Mutual National Choir Festival.

Lunga joined the Cape Town Opera Young Artist’s Programme in 2018. He performed in Mandela Trilogy and sang Ernesto in Don Pasquale. Other roles include Ramiro in La Cenerentola.

Sipho Fubesi, tenor, studied music at the University of Cape Town and from 2008 studied at the RNCM, where he won the Frederic Cox Award and the Elizabeth Harwood Memorial Prize. He also won the Wessex Glyndebourne Association Award in 2012. He made his Royal Opera debut in 2013 as Third Esquire Parsifal. His roles include Paris La Belle Hélène, Governor Candide, the title-role La Clemenza di Tito, Don José Carmen, Anatol Vanessa, Ferrando Così fan tutte, Ruggero La Rondine, and Cavaradossi Tosca. His oratorio repertoire includes Belshazzar’s Feast, Messiah, Ode on St Cecilia’s Day (Handel), Elijah, Christ on the Mount of Olives and Beethoven’s Symphony No 9.

Sipho has recorded the Duke of Mantua Rigoletto for SABC television. He sang Donizetti’s aria ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ from L’elisir d’amore for the soundtrack of the film The Deal (2008).

Thando Zwane, baritone, began singing as a boy soprano aged 9 years. He studied at the Tshwane University of Technology’s Vocal Art Department (TUT), the second Swazi student to be admitted to the programme, studying with Thami Zungu and Laetitia Orlandi. He was a runner up in the first Amazwi Omzansi Singing Competition, quarter-finalist in the Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition (2017) and a semi-finalist in the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition (2018). Thando’s roles include Guglielmo and Don Alfonso Così fan tutte, Méphistophélès Faust, Don Magnifico and Dandini La Cenerentola, Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro, title-role Don Giovanni, Ford Falstaff, and Lord Cecil Maria Stuarda. Thando was a guest soloist at Latvian Opera and Ballet.

Georgina Stalbow, soprano, studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and Wales International Academy of Voice with Dennis O’Neill. Opera credits include Sacerdotessa, Aida, Miss Ellen Lakmé and Barbarina The Marriage of Figaro (Swansea City Opera); Peep-Bo, The Mikado (Co-Opera Co); Amore, Orfeo ed Euridice, Echo, Ariadne auf Naxos and Emmie, Albert Herring (Montepulciano). She sang in the chorus at Buxton for Alzira, Giovanna d’Arco and Macbeth (all directed by Elijah Moshinsky). Georgina sang Woman 2 in the world première of David Blake and Keith Warner’s Scoring a Century and of Norberto Oldrini’s Swimming Paradise (Montepulciano). Recordings include soprano soloist in Fauré Requiem and in Eric Jones’s Great is the Story: The Nativity and The Fulfilment. Georgina is head of singing at SOTE College, Birmingham.

Grose The Turn of the Screw and Mary The Flying Dutchman. She has sung at Buxton Festival for the past five years.

Luke Scott, baritone, is studying with Gary Coward for a Master’s degree at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, supported by the Leverhulme Arts Trust.

He returns to BIF this year in the chorus for Eugene Onegin and Lucio Papirio Dittatore (in which he covers Servilio).

Last year he was part of the Young Artist Programme. Scott has been a soloist for London Symphony Orchestra’s Community Choir and has sung Count Almaviva Le Nozze di Figaro and Demetrius A Midsummer Night’s Dream in opera scenes. He is looking forward to continuing his studies on the opera programme for the 2019-2021 seasons at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.

Imogen Garner, mezzo-soprano, read Economics at Sheffield University before studying at the RNCM. She completed ENO’s Opera Works course in 2012 and in 2016 sang Marnie’s mother in a workshop performance of Nico Muhly’s Marnie. Imogen has performed for Heritage Opera and Impromptu Opera and toured with Swansea City Opera and Young Opera Venture. Roles have included Third Lady The Magic Flute, Marcellina The Marriage of Figaro, Annina La Traviata, Giovanna Rigoletto, Kate Pinkerton Madam Butterfly, Lucia Cavalleria Rusticana, Mrs

Isolde Roxby graduated with distinction from GSMD in 2015. She was supported

by NOS and The Ruby and Will George Trust. Isolde is an International Opera Awards Bursary recipient and won the 2016 John Kerr Award. Isolde has performed with Wexford Festival, Bury Court Opera, Clonter Opera, The Helios Collective, The International Opera Awards, Buxton International Opera Festival and ‘The Opera Company’ and is involved with the contemporary opera scene. Engagements have included Cretan Woman Idomeneo (Buxton 2018); Tatyana (Grimeborn 2018); and title role in Aurora, a new opera by Noah Mosley with BCO (2019). Isolde is due to reprise her role as Aurora at Grimeborn Festival late this year as well as singing Cendrillon (Viardot) with WFO in November 2019.

Gethin Lewis, tenor, graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2014. As a student he sang the title-role in Britten’s Albert Herring and appeared at the Cheltenham Music Festival in Iain Burnside’s A Soldier and a Maker. He

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has sung with Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and he sang Don Ottavio in Hampstead Garden Opera’s Don Giovanni (2015). Gethin has appeared as a soloist at the Llandeilo Music Festival in Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn Masses and Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise and he sang in Jonathan Miller’s production of Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the National Theatre. He recorded Pärt’s Stabat Mater for BBC Radio 3.

Bethany Yeaman is a mezzo-soprano from Scotland. She studied at the Royal College of Music with Dinah Harris and Eiddwen Harrhy, and received a first class honours degree. She is studying for her Masters degree at the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg, where she studies singing with Barbara Bonney and Lieder with Wolfgang Holzmair and Helmut Deutsch. Bethany has sung in concerts and oratorios in the Salzburg Cathedral, St Michael’s Church, Hamburg, and in Munich at the Milstatt and Gasteig.

Anna Jeffers, mezzo-soprano, studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where she sang many operatic roles and was a major prize winner. She continued her studies on the ENO Opera Works course and was supported by an International Opera Awards bursary. Anna has worked with Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, Wexford Festival Opera, Buxton Festival Opera, Opera Holland Park, Irish National Opera and Longborough 70

Festival. Highlights include Claire Morgan Nine Stories High, a community opera with Welsh National Opera, Hansel Hansel and Gretel, Nunzia Mala Vita and Mother/Weathers Dubliners for Wexford Festival Opera.

Eleri Gwilym, soprano, graduated from Cardiff Law School before studying at the Royal Academy of Music with Mary Nelson and Audrey Hyland. She has sung in the chorus of Trouble in Tahiti (Bloomsbury Opera), Hedd Wyn (WNO), Der Freischütz (OAE), May Night (RAO), The Threepenny Opera (RAO), Dido and Aeneas (Royal Academy Early Music), La bohème (Vivo D’Arte) and in the world première of Wythnos yng Nghymru fydd (OpraCymru). Other roles include Pamina Die Zauberflöte, First Witch Macbeth, and Prima Cercatrice Suor Angelica. Eleri has taken part in masterclasses with Bertie Rice, Mary King and Susan Bullock.

William Searle graduated with a BA in music from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and studies with Robert Dean and Adrian Thompson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Roles include Anatol Vanessa, Vašek The Bartered Bride, Lysander A Midsummer Night’s Dream, title-role Idomeneo, and Tony West Side Story. Oratorio repertoire includes Bach’s Magnificat and St John Passion, Monteverdi Vespri della Beata Vergine, Britten’s St Nicolas, Beethoven Symphony No 9 and Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle. Future engagements include St John Passion at the Chapel Royal, Tower of London,

and a disc of Lieder of Robert Franz with pianists Marc Verter and Sebastian Wybrew.

Aurelija Stasiulytė is a mezzo-soprano born in Lithuania. She graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and is studying with Welsh mezzo Buddug Verona James. At the Academy she sang Suora Zelatrice Suor Angelica, Arsamene Serse, Meg Page Falstaff and also sang Ines Il Trovatore for Vilnius City Opera. She recently sang Dorabella Così fan tutte for Swansea City Opera. She has won various competitions, including Llais Llwyfan Llambed (2017). Future engagements include concerts in Lithuania and as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah at Gloucester Cathedral conducted by Adrian Partington.

George Curnow was born in Cardiff and started singing in church and in local choirs at an early age. He is a third year undergraduate at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama studying with Marilyn Rees. He has given recitals and appeared on television in Wales. Oratorios performances include Stainer Crucifixion, Mozart Requiem, and Handel Messiah and he will perform Handel Dixit Dominus in the autumn.

George gained first prize in the ‘Music in the Vale’ competition. He has recently sung Don Basilio and Don Curzio in The Marriage of Figaro for the Guildhall’s undergraduate opera project. Hzze has a keen interest in the song repertoire and in contemporary music.

ORCHESTRA Violin I Nicholas Ward Sarah Whittingham Louise Latham Paula Smart Shirley Richards Rob Adlard

Eliza Boom studied at Vision College and the University of Waikato. As a Dame Malvina Major Scholar with New Zealand Opera she performed in productions of The Mikado, Don Pasquale and Carmen. Later in 2017, Eliza moved to Manchester to study a Master of Music in Performance with soprano Mary Plazas at the Royal Northern College of Music. She performed the role of Nella in Gianni Schicchi and covered the title role in Suor Angelica. In September 2019 Eliza will begin a year of training at the National Opera Studio in London. She gratefully acknowledges the support of the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.

Violin II Simon Gilks Rebecca Thompson Sarah White Ann Lawes Toby Tramaseur Viola Richard Muncey Michael Dale Raymond Lester Jacq Leighton Jones Cello William Hewer Barbara Grunthal Amanda Turner

Bass James Manson Sian Rowley Flute Conrad Marshall Nichola Hunter Oboe William Oinn Jane Evans

Trombone Tim Chatterton David Price Les Storey Timpani John Melbourne Percussion Joy Powdrill Harry Percy

Clarinet Daniel Bayley Helen Blamey Bassoon Benjamin Hudson Rachel Whibley Horn Naomi Atherton Jenny Cox Alan Tokeley Peter Richards Trumpet Tracey Redfern Peter Mainwaring

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KI RK E R OPER A HOLIDAYS F OR DI S C E RN I NG TR AVEL L ERS Kirker Holidays offers an extensive range of independent and escorted opera holidays. These include tours to leading festivals in Europe such as the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Verona and the Verdi Festival in Parma, as well as Glyndebourne and opera weekends in Vienna, Milan and Venice. We also host our own exclusive music festivals on land and at sea, and arrange short breaks with opera, ballet or concert tickets, to all the great classical cities in Europe.

Prices shown are per person and include flights (excluding UK holidays), transfers, accommodation with breakfast, meals and guided excursions as described and the services of a Kirker Tour Leader.

THE VERDI FESTIVAL IN PARMA

AUTUMN AT GLYNDEBOURNE

A SIX NIGHT HOLIDAY | 10 OCTOBER 2019 The annual Verdi Festival takes place in one of Italy’s most beautiful historic cities, Parma. It is here in the countryside around Parma that Verdi was born, grew up and lived for much of his life. The special charm of Parma’sVerdi Festival is that performances take place not just in the Teatro Regio, but also at the Teatro Verdi in Busseto, and this year’s performances include Nabucco, Aida and I due Foscari.We will be based at the 4* Mercure Parma Stendhal and there will be visits to the important art collection at the Palazzo della Pilotta, the small town of Busseto, where we shall see the Villa Verdi and the Museo Nazionale Giuseppe Verdi, and historic Cremona.

THREE NIGHT HOLIDAYS | 15, 22 & 31 OCTOBER 2019 The opening of the Glyndebourne tour heralds the beginning of autumn every year and provides an annual feast for opera lovers everywhere. The 2019 tour includes performances of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Handel’s Rinaldo. This year you can choose from three departure dates: the first two based at Deans Place Hotel in the pretty village of Alfriston, which include two operas and a visit to Charleston Farmhouse; and a third based at the impressive Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, which includes all three operas.

Price from £2,998 (single supp. £398) for six nights including two dinners, three lunches and tickets for three operas.

Price from £929 (15 & 22 Oct, single supp. £120) or £1,224 (31 Oct, single supp. £198) for three nights including three dinners, top category opera tickets, excursion to Charleston Farmhouse (15 & 22 Oct only) and the services of a guest speaker.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

CHRISTMAS IN VIENNA

FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAYS | 18 NOVEMBER 2019, 30 MARCH & 28 APRIL 2020 Enjoy three star-studded performances at the Metropolitan Opera featuring some of the world’s greatest opera singers including Ailyn Pérez, Plácido Domingo and Sonya Yoncheva as well as a backstage tour of the Met. In addition to the opera we will visit museums and galleries including the Metropolitan, the MOMA, where we enjoy a private visit before the crowds arrive, and the Botanical Gardens. We stay at the Hotel Empire (4*), located just across the street from the Lincoln Center, and a couple of minutes’ walk from the Met.

A FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAY | 22 DECEMBER 2019 Vienna is at its best at Christmas time, when exquisitely decorated shop windows and elegant festive lights brighten up the medieval streets in the city centre. Based at the 5* Hotel Bristol, located opposite the State Opera House, we include a performance of Puccini’s La bohème on Christmas Day. We shall enjoy a panoramic sightseeing tour of the Ring, including the Houses of Parliament, the University and the Burgtheater. Visits will be made to the Belvedere Palace, where we see Klimt’s The Kiss (1908), and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s greatest art collections.

Christmas lunch is included at Vienna’s grandest and most historic hotel, the fabled Sacher.

Price from £2,833 (Nov, single supp. £660), £2,735 (Mar, single supp. £530) or £2,998 (Apr, single supp. £690) for five nights including accommodation on a room only basis, tickets to three operas and two dinners (including one at the Met’s Grand Tier).

Speak to an expert or request a brochure:

020 7593 2284 quote code GBOF www.kirkerholidays.com 72

Price from £2,655 per person (single supp. £478) for five nights including two dinners, Christmas Day lunch and a ticket for the performance as described.

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I find it fascinating how spaces can be transformed by music, and it has been a challenge and a privilege to put together a programme to suit all tastes and to match the splendour of Buxton’s wonderful array of concert venues. The refurbishment of the Octagon is now complete, and we are delighted to salute its reopening by welcoming the BBC Philharmonic, who are appearing at the Festival for the first time. Their programme celebrates the Festival’s 40th Anniversary, and the concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The Octagon will also host a concert by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, returning after their successful visit last summer, and on the final Saturday of the Festival the atmosphere will be very different as the Carnival of the Animals comes to town.

In the Pavilion Arts centre, our Artist-inResidence for 2019, pianist Peter Donohoe, offers four diverse programmes, a testament to his extraordinary range and versatility. He includes a generous helping of Russian repertoire, a conscious link to our main opera production, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. The Victoria String Quartet perform a complete cycle of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartets. There are other connections between the different branches of the Festival this year. I enjoy putting music into context and understanding which aspects of life and art were inspiring their composers. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, in the two piano version, follows Gillian Moore’s talk about the work’s infamous opening night in Paris; Richard King’s book The Lark Ascending, about the role of nature in English music, will be followed by the BBC Philharmonic’s performance of Vaughan Williams’s beloved work.

Garry Magee and Tim Lole’s recital is paired with Melissa Harrison and Tim Pears’s books reflecting upon the idea of the English rural idyll before and

after the First World War, and there are several book and music events with a Georgian theme, linking into our new opera, Georgiana.

Along with distinguished artists who have built a following in Buxton, I have invited performers who will be appearing here for the first time, some of them still at the outset of what promise to be stellar careers. I am certain that you will enjoy getting to know them, and I hope that they will establish themselves as Festival favourites for years to come. New this year are the BIF Vocal Recitals: in these informal hour-long recitals, we have the opportunity to hear some of the talented young singers from the chorus, who play such an invaluable part in the Festival’s success. There will be three Festival masses and some outstanding choral concerts in St John’s Church as well as jazz and folk music in the Pavilion Café, and a number of concerts in the Opera House itself. I will be try to take in as many events as possible, and I look forward to meeting you there!

ADRIAN KELLY ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

A S O N G AT S I X Saturday 6 Monday 8 Tuesday 9 Wednesday 10

Thursday 11 Friday 12 Sunday 14 Monday 15

Tuesday 16 Wednesday 17 Thursday 18 Friday 19

Saturday 20 July all at 6pm.

Join members of the Festival Chorus and our Young Artists Programme for 15 minutes of al fresco song in the Bandstand of the Pavilion Gardens.

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W E A R E D E L I G H T E D T O C E L E B R AT E O U R R E L AT I O N S H I P W I T H T H R E E G R E AT S E AT S O F L E A R N I N G – T H E R O YA L N O R T H E R N C O L L E G E O F M U S I C , C H E T H A M ’ S S C H O O L O F M U S I C , A N D T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F D E R B Y – A N D T O P R E S E N T R E C I TA L S P U T T I N G T H E R I S I N G S TA R S O F T H E F U T U R E I N T H E S P O T L I G H T.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT 76

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC RECITALS SARA LIBER SALLOUM, LUTE & VANESSA GUINADI, SOPRANO SATURDAY 6 JULY 12PM – 1PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Francesco da Milano (1497-1543): Toccata Francesco da Milano (1497-1543): Fantasia 33 & 34 Bartolomeo Tromboncino (1470-1535): Vergine Bella Bartolomeo Tromboncino (1470-1535): Ostinato vo seguire Marchetto Cara (fl. 1465-1526): Io non compro più speranza Marchetto Cara (fl. 1465-1526): Hor vendut’ho Clément Janequin (1485-1558): Orsus Orsus Josquin des Prez (c1440-1521): Praeter rerum seriem Barbara Strozzi (1619-77): Che si può fare Barbara Strozzi (1619-77): O vive rose John Dowland (c 1563-1626): Semper Dowland semper dolens John Dowland (c 1563-1626): Come again sweet love John Dowland (c 1563-1626): Away with these self-loving lads Thomas Campion (1567-1620): Oft have I sigh’d Vanessa Guinadi, soprano, is a third year undergraduate studying with Deborah Rees at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). She previously studied at the School of the Arts, Singapore, a specialist music school, under Dr Thomas Manhart and William Lim. She has a keen interest in Early Music and receives Historical Performance coaching from Roger Hamilton and Paula Chateauneuf. Vanessa was the soprano soloist in Handel’s Dixit Dominus with the Midlands Early Music Forum and Judas Maccabeus with the Border Marches Early Music Forum, both conducted by David Hatcher. She has performed in lutesong recitals around Manchester: at the RNCM, Whitworth Art Gallery, Didsbury Methodist Church, St Paul’s Church Withington and St Ann’s Church.

Sara Liber Salloum is a lute and archlute player studying on the joint music course at Manchester University and the RNCM. Of Ukrainian and Lebanese heritage, Sara was born in Liverpool, but much of her schooling took place in New Zealand. She lived in London, Beirut, Oxford and Aberdeen before coming to study in Manchester. Sara studied classical guitar from the age of seven, winning awards nationally and internationally in her teenage years. She was a guitar student at the RNCM, but her natural affinity for Renaissance music led her to become the RNCM’s first principal-study lutenist. Sara is in her final year and she studies with Jacob Heringman, one of the world’s most respected lute players.

Vanessa and Sarah both appear by kind permission of the RNCM. FESTIVO WINDS LEILA MARSHALL, FLUTE; ADAM BOWMAN, OBOE; ANDREW MELLOR, CLARINET; HOLLY REDSHAW, BASSOON, AND TOM EDWARDS, HORN WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 12PM – 1PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Festivo Winds is a dynamic group of young musicians formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in December 2017. Within their first year the group went from strength to strength, winning the John Fewkes Chamber Music Prize and the audience award at the Christopher Rowland Chamber Music Prize at the RNCM, and in July 2018 they won the June Emerson Launchpad Award. The group specialises in the core repertoire for wind quintet, whilst maintaining a strong interest in new works and arrangements. They have maintained a busy schedule at the RNCM, performing at the Open Day and in the Chamber Music Festival on multiple occasions. All members of the group have enjoyed a number of personal accolades. Highlights include performing with the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic orchestras in Manchester, and in venues across the UK. Festivo Winds appears by kind permission of the RNCM.

KELSEY AND THE EMBERS FRIDAY 12 JULY 9PM – 10.30PM PAVILION CAFÉ Kelsey and the Embers are a four-piece, up and coming indie-pop rock band from Nottingham. They have recently reached 23K streams of their debut single, Howlin’, becoming regulars on the music circuit, with performances at The Bodega and Rescue Rooms and many more gigs planned throughout the year.

CHETHAMS RECITAL ELIAS ACKERLEY, PIANO MONDAY 15 JULY 12PM – 1PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Robert Schumann (1810-56): Fantasiestücke, Op 12 (nos. 1-4) 1. Des Abends (Evening) 2. Aufschwung (Soaring) 3. Warum? (Why?) 4. Grillen (Whims) Between 1830 and 1840 Schumann composed a number of piano works, including some of his best and most characteristic music. He was at his happiest and most successful when working on a smaller scale, his great strength as a composer in these early years being his ability to capture single moods or sensations in short, self-contained pieces, which he would then group together to form larger works.

The Op 12 Fantasiestücke (‘Fantasy pieces’) were composed in 1837, the year in which he and Clara Wieck became secretly engaged. Schumann insisted that the descriptive titles for each piece were added afterwards, suggested by the character of the music. Today we will hear the first four pieces.

The confiding intimacy of Des Abends is followed by Aufschwung, the best-known of the eight, full of fiery energy. After Warum?, with its tender yearning, comes the quirkily impetuous Grillen.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Gaspard de la nuit (complete) 1. Ondine 2. Le Gibet 3. Scarbo Beneath the cool, polished surface of Ravel’s music lurks a fantastic, almost macabre, streak that occasionally becomes more overt, nowhere more powerfully than in these three pieces, written in 1908, based on prose poems by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841). The title Gaspard de la Nuit suggests someone who guards the night’s treasures, or reveals its secrets. Ondine is a portrait of a seductive water-nymph who tries to seduce the poet with a ring and the promise of an underwater kingdom. Le Gibet is a scene of grisly stillness, with a corpse swinging from a gallows in the setting sun. Scarbo, the most flamboyantly virtuosic of the three pieces, is a brilliant scherzo, conjuring up the image of a malevolent dwarf who appears in the poet’s moonlit bedroom, leaping from place to place with bewildering quickness before suddenly disappearing like a snuffed-out candle.

Ferenc [Franz] Liszt (1811-86): Apres une lecture du Dante: Fantasie quasi Sonata Often known simply as Liszt’s Dante Sonata, this is the last of the seven pieces that make up Book 2, Italy, of his three-volume collection Années de Pèlerinage (Pilgrimage Years). Composed in 1839 and revised 10 years later, it takes its title from a poem by Victor Hugo (1802-1885), and both Liszt and Hugo take their cue from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), his visionary account of a journey through hell, purgatory and paradise. Although Liszt left no precise programme for the piece, it is clear from the start that we are in hell. The work is based on two main themes, a wailing chromatic idea, and an affirmative chorale-like melody which forms the basis of the powerful closing pages, into which the chromatic wailing is swept up into a passage of mounting excitement.

Elias Ackerley was born in 2001 and began his piano studies aged five. While studying with Russian pianist Oleg Shitin, Elias won the junior prize at the 2012 Gumi National piano competition and in 2013 gave his debut recital in Chester. He studies with Murray McLachlan at Chetham’s School of Music and in 2015 was the youngest ever winner of Chetham’s Beethoven competition. He was a keyboard finalist in the BBC Young Musician 2018 and recently won the Scottish International Youth Piano Competition, EPTA UK, and the Blue Ribbon at the National Eisteddfod. Elias has taken part in masterclasses with Andras Schiff and Stephen Hough. He will continue his studies at the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia.

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CAPE TOWN OPERA 78

OUT OF AFRICA CAPE TOWN OPERA SOLOISTS; MARIE-ELISE BOYER, PIANO SATURDAY 6 JULY 6.30PM, HADDON HALL In this, our first of three Cape Town Opera recitals, we present a kaleidoscope of solos and ensembles that capture the international connections between vocal music traditions, and demonstrate the versatility required of today’s opera artists. Our selections from the European repertoire range from Handel to Puccini, from seduction to love, from intrigue to friendship, from nostalgia and homesickness to hope. They reference Cape Town Opera productions, and bring our artists together in duets and trios that embody the genre’s sublimity and sense of humour. From Africa, we feature a selection of traditional and contemporary songs which are central to the work of our company as we build bridges to new audiences both in South Africa and overseas, engaging with the richness of the continent’s indigenous art and languages. We also acknowledge the thought-provoking history of the United States and its cultural traditions of the past century in jazz, music theatre, and spirituals. Latin music is represented briefly in its classic and contemporary guises. We hope that the flavour of each genre or tradition can cast fresh perspective on the next. This is the global vision of Cape Town Opera.

SBP Mnomiya (b1960): Ngenani Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848): Maria Stuarda: Elisabetta/Leicester duet Ané Pretorius and Sipho Fubesi Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Edgar: Questo amor - Thando Zwane Gospel/Spiritual: Amazing Grace - Lunga Hallam George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Giulio Cesare: V’adoro, pupille - Brittany Smith Sibusiso Njeza (b1982): Wamuhle Mzantsi Thando Zwane Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Così fan tutte: Fra gli amplessi Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Lunga Hallam Gospel/Spiritual: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen - Thando Zwane Manuel de Falla (1876-1946): 7 Canciones Populares Españolas: Jota - Ané Pretorius Jules Massenet (1842-1912): Manon: Mais qui donc?

Brittany Smith, Sipho Fubesi, Thando Zwane & all

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848): La fille du régiment: Ah mes amis - Lunga Hallam George Gershwin (1898-1937): Porgy and Bess: Summertime - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Turandot: Ho una casa Sipho Fubesi, Lunga Hallam, Thando Zwane Astor Piazzola (1921-92) / Horacio Ferrer (1933-2014): María de Buenos Aires: Yo soy María - Ané Pretorius Jacques Offenbach (1819-80): Orphée aux enfers: Duo de la mouche Brittany Smith,Thando Zwane Sibusiso Njeza (b1982): Mama - Lunga Hallam Gospel/Spiritual: My Lord, what a mornin’ Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Salvatore Cardillo (1874-1947): Cor’ngrato Sipho Fubesi Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Der Rosenkavalier Trio - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Brittany Smith, Ané Pretorius African Traditional: Baba yethu - All

CAPE TOWN OPERA SOLOISTS Sopranos: Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Brittany Smith Mezzo: Ané Pretorius Tenors: Sipho Fubesi, Lunga Hallam Baritone: Thando Zwane Marie-Elise Boyer is a French pianist and répétiteur.

She studied with Martin Roscoe and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she was awarded two Masters with distinction. She then studied as a répétiteur at the National Opera Studio. Marie-Elise is passionate about art song and with soprano Leah Gordon she won the Elsa Respighi competition in Verona (2018), and reached the semi-final of the competition Récital-Concours in Montréal (2019).

Marie-Elise was a finalist in the International Song Competitions Nadia et Lili Boulanger, Paris (2009) and the Concours International de Mélodie Française de Toulouse (2013). With soprano Sophie Boyer she is recording creations by French composers such as Lucien Guérinel and Alain Féron.

GRACE NOTES CAPE TOWN OPERA SOLOISTS; JOHN BAILEY, GUITAR SUNDAY 7 JULY 6.30PM, HADDON HALL It has been a pleasure for Cape Town Opera to conceive a program that spiritually unites African sacred music with Western church music and oratorio. By accompanying the repertoire with guitar and drawing on improvisatory aspects of Western baroque music in particular, we hope to distil each work to its core message, and invite you to re-hear all of these masterpieces and their texts through the voices of our artists and the lens of traditional African song.

Traditional Shona song/William Byrd (1538-1623): Meguru / Non nobis domine - All Henry Purcell (1659-95): Orpheus Britannicus: Evening Hymn - Brittany Smith Harmonia Sacra: My song shall be alway of the loving kindness of the Lord - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Traditional Xhosa song: Senzeni na - Sipho Fubesi, All George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): As pants the hart - All Messiah: How beautiful are the feet - Brittany Smith O Death where is thy sting - Ané Pretorius, Sipho Fubesi But thanks be to God - All Traditional Xhosa song: Ndikhokhele Bawo Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, All Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Ave verum corpus Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Ané Pretorius, Lunga Hallam, Thando Zwane Requiem: Recordare - Brittany Smith, Ané Pretorius, Lunga Hallam, Thando Zwane Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47): Elijah: If with all your hearts - Sipho Fubesi Lift thine eyes Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Brittany Smith, Ané Pretorius Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Ave Maria - Lunga Hallam Traditional Xhosa Song / arr. Barrett : Indodana - All Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Requiem: Hostias - Thando Zwane Pie Jesu - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi In Paradisum - All Traditional Swahili song: Baba yethu - All

OUT OF AFRICA CAPE TOWN OPERA SOLOISTS; JOHN BAILEY, GUITAR MONDAY 8 JULY 7.30PM – 9.30PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH For this final recital we have taken a selection of our Out of Africa “kaleidoscope” programme, and our Grace Notes sacred programme, and put them into dialogue, with the traditional African numbers framing the European and American ones as before.

Traditional Shona song/William Byrd (1538-1623): Meguru / Non nobis domine - All Henry Purcell (1659-95): Orpheus Britannicus: Evening Hymn - Brittany Smith Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47): Elijah: If with all your hearts Sipho Fubesi Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Requiem: Recordare - Brittany Smith, Ané Pretorius, Lunga Hallam, Thando Zwane SBP Mnomiya (b1960): Ngenani - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Edgar: Questo amor - Thando Zwane George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Giulio Cesare: V’adoro, pupille - Brittany Smith Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848): La fille du régiment: Ah mes amis - Lunga Hallam Manuel de Falla (1876-1946): 7 Canciones Populares Españolas: Jota - Ané Pretorius Traditional Xhosa song/arr Barrett: Indodana - All Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Requiem: Hostias - Thando Zwane Pie Jesu - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi In Paradisum - All Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47): Elijah: Lift thine eyes Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi, Brittany Smith, Ané Pretorius George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): As pants the hart - All Sibusiso Njeza (b1982): Mama - Lunga Hallam Wamuhle Mzantsi - Thando Zwane George Gershwin (1898-1937): Porgy and Bess: Summertime - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Astor Piazzola (1921-92) / Horacio Ferrer (1933-2014): María de Buenos Aires: Yo soy María - Ané Pretorius Jeanine Tesori (b1961) / Dick Scanlan (b1960): The girl in 14G - Brittany Smith Traditional Xhosa song: Ndikhokhele Bawo Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi & all Gospel/spiritual: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen - Thando Zwane Amazing grace - Lunga Hallam My Lord, what a mornin’ - Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi Salvatore Cardillo (1874-1947): Cor’ngrato - Sipho Fubesi African Traditional: Baba yethu - All

John Bailey is a British guitarist/composer. He has an MA in Jazz from Leeds College of Music and teaches guitar at the University of Liverpool. He has recorded and performed with some of the finest musicians in Europe. He recently released his new album Oneiric Sounds featuring Norwegian double bass legend Arild Andersen and UK saxophonist Julian Argüelles.

He plays guitar for singers Russell Watson and Laura Wright and was the guitarist on Sting’s musical The Last Ship.

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S AT U R D AY 6 J U LY 3 . 3 0 – 5 P M PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

IMOGEN COOPER, PIANO 80

Imogen Cooper is acknowledged as one of the finest interpreters of the Classical and Romantic repertoire, renowned for her virtuosity and lyricism. She has close relationships with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia as player/director. She has appeared with major orchestras and has given recitals throughout Europe and the USA. As a supporter of new music, Imogen has premierèd two works at the Cheltenham International Festival: Traced Overhead by Thomas Adès (1996) and Decorated Skin by Deirdre Gribbin (2003). In 1996 she collaborated with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker in the première of Voices for Angels, a quintet written by the ensemble’s viola player, Brett Dean. Imogen Cooper is a committed chamber musician and performs regularly with violinist Henning Kraggerud and cellist Adrian Brendel. As a Lieder recitalist, she has had a long collaboration with baritone Wolfgang Holzmair. She has recorded Mozart Concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, a solo recital at the Wigmore Hall, and a cycle of solo works by Schubert. In 1997 she was awarded Honorary Membership of the RAM and in 1999 was made a Doctor of Music at Exeter University. In 2007 Imogen was appointed CBE and the following year she received an award from the Royal Philharmonic Society. She was the Humanitas Visiting Professor in Classical Music and Music Education at Oxford University 2012–13. The Imogen Cooper Music Trust was founded in 2015 to support young pianists at the cusp of their careers.

Johannes Brahms (1833-97): 3 Intermezzi, Op 117 1. E flat (andante moderato) 2. B flat minor (andante non troppo e con molto espressione) 3. C sharp minor (andante con moto) Near the end of his life Brahms wrote a number of short piano pieces which include some of his most far-reaching explorations of harmonic and rhythmic subtlety. He published 20 of them in four groups as his Opp 116, 117, 118 and 119, his last published piano music. They were probably written between 1891 and 1893, though some may have been composed earlier. He used various titles for the pieces, generally reserving ‘Intermezzo’ for the intimate and introspective ones, which are the majority.

Nonetheless, there is a remarkable degree of emotional contrast between the three intermezzos that make up Op 117. No 1 is headed (in German) by the opening lines of a Scottish lullaby, ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s lament’; the words fitting the opening phrases of the gently lilting theme closely: Baloo, my babe, lie still and sleep; It grieves me sore to see thee weep.

That theme is heard at the beginning; the delicate arpeggio figures which open the second Intermezzo hint at a theme which only comes into the open in the major-key middle section. The last of the set is the most sombre; in a rare moment of self-disclosure Brahms called it ‘the lullaby of all my griefs’. The luminous textures of the middle section offer a somewhat ambivalent consolation.

Ferenc [Franz] Liszt: (1811-86): Gretchen, second movement from Faust Symphony Goethe’s epic verse drama Faust is arguably the single most influential work of German literature of the 19th century, certainly as far as composers were concerned. Liszt was first introduced to it in 1830 by Berlioz, who would go on to compose his own La Damnation de Faust (1845-46). Liszt began drafting his Faust Symphony in the late 1830s, but it was only in 1848 that he was able to start serious work on it, after he had settled in Weimar, a city closely associated with Goethe himself.

He did most of the work between August and October 1854.

He described it as a symphony ‘in three character sketches.’

Gretchen, heard today in his own piano transcription, is a portrait of the woman Faust seduces and then abandons.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): 11 Bagatelles, Op 119 1. G minor (allegretto) 2. C major (andante con moto) 3. D major (a l’allemande) 4. A major (andante cantabile) 5. C minor (risoluto) 6. G major (andante — allegretto) 7. C major (allegro, ma non troppo) 8. C major (moderato cantabile) 9. A minor (vivace moderato) 10. A major (allegramente) 11. B flat major (andante, ma non troppo)

Johannes Brahms (1833-97): 7 Fantasien, Op 116 1. Capriccio in D minor (presto energico) 2. Intermezzo in A minor (andante) 3. Capriccio in G minor (allegro passionata) 4. Intermezzo in E major (adagio) 5. Intermezzo in E minor (andante con grazia) 6. Intermezzo in E major (andantino teneramente) 7. Capriccio in D minor (allegro agitato) Near the end of his life Brahms wrote a number of short piano pieces which include some of his most far-reaching explorations of harmonic and rhythmic subtlety. He collected and published 20 of them in four groups as his Opp 116-9, his last published piano music. They were probably written between 1891 and 1893, though some may have been composed earlier. He used various titles for the individual pieces, generally reserving ‘Intermezzo’ for the majority, which tend to be intimate and introspective, and ‘Capriccio’ for the livelier pieces of Op 116 (he did not use it for any of the pieces in the other sets). The overall key-sequence and the arrangement of the individual pieces has led some commentators to suggest that Brahms deliberately planned Op 116 as a more unified group than the other three sets.

The word ‘bagatelle’ means a trifle and, in a musical context, a short piece in a light entertaining style. Beethoven was the first to establish it as signifying a specific genre with his three sets of bagatelles for piano, Op 33, Op 119 and Op 126. He put the Op 119 set together between 1820 and 1822. Some pieces were first sketched in the 1790s, but the last five were newly composed for inclusion in an instructional book of piano studies published in Vienna in 1821. The complete set was eventually issued in London in 1823.

Their wide expressive range takes in the clipped minuet-style opening number, the tranquil song-like No 4, and the whimsical sixth piece. The comically brief No 10 is probably the shortest piece Beethoven ever published, over in about 12 seconds, in contrast to the gently thoughtful Bagatelle that closes the set.

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S U N D AY 7 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

I M P R O V I S O - F E A R F U L S Y M M E T RY 82

Fatima Lahham, recorder Elin White, violin Florence Petit, cello Johan Löfving, guitar and theorbo Improviso is a dynamic young quartet who met at the Royal College of Music in London and have been exploring historically informed improvisation and 17–18th century chamber music since March 2017. Highlights have included performances at St James’s Piccadilly, the Wigmore Hall, in Aldeburgh, at the Brighton Early Music Festival, and in a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. In 2018 they enjoyed residencies at Snape Maltings and at the Cultural Centre in Ambronay, France, also performing in Italy as part of Ghislierimusica’s Barocco Fuori festival, in the Utrecht Early Music Festival as semi-finalists in the International van Wassenaer Competition 2018, and in the Festival d’Ambronay, France. In December 2018 they toured their new Christmas programme, taking it to the York Christmas Early Music Festival, and to venues in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Improviso were selected as a beneficiary of the eeemerging project 2017-18 (Emerging European Ensembles), were Brighton Early Music Festival Young Artists 2017-18, and are currently Live Music Now artists. They were selected for the Stroud Green Festival’s Young Ensemble Scheme. Their engagements in 2019 include concerts at St Martin-in-the-Fields, St James’s Church Piccadilly, London Festival of Baroque Music at St John’s Smith Square, and the Brighton Early Music Festival.

Fatima Lahham, recorder, was born in Oxford in 1993. She studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and at the Royal College of Music, and enjoys a freelance career as a recorder player with Improviso. Fatima also teaches privately at a number of schools and in the Royal College of Music’s Historical Performance faculty. She is a PhD student at Cambridge University where she is researching the roles of rhetoric and memory in 17th century improvisation practices, generously supported by a DTP AHRC studentship.

Elin White, violin, studied with Michael Bochmann in Gloucestershire, then at the RCM from 2010 with Dona Lee Croft, Kathron Sturrock, Lucy Russell and Berent Korfker. Elin has appeared in the London Handel Festival, the London Festival of Baroque Music, the Edinburgh Festival, and in concerts on tour in Italy. In 2013 she performed in the international ‘Misiones de Chiquitos’ festival in Bolivia, and played with the acclaimed choir Arakaendar Bolivia on their tour of the USA. She returned to Bolivia the 2016 festival. Elin has played with the Academy of Ancient Music, for La Serenissima and Florilegium at festivals and at the BBC Proms. She appeared in the West End production of Farinelli & the King.

Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747): Les Élémens (Simphonie nouvelle) 1. Le Cahos 2. Loure, La Terre et l’Eau – Air pour les violons 3. Chaconne, Le Feu 4. Ramage, L’Air 5. Rossignols 6. Loure, La Chasse 7. Tambourin 1 and 2 8. Sicilienne 9. Rondeau, ‘Air pour l’Amour’ 10. Caprice From a musical family, Rebel showed musical talent as a child and studied violin and composition with Lully. He composed a number of instrumental pieces expressly for choreography.

The best known of these is the last, Les Élémens, notable for its opening movement, ‘Cahos’ (Chaos), with its extraordinarily daring use of dissonance. Most of the remaining movements are based on dances, the first three also representing one or more of the four elements that were basic to the classical understanding of the universe: Earth and Water are depicted together in the second movement, Fire in the Chaconne, and Air in the Ramage (birdsong) that follows, together with the nightingales of the fifth movement. The moderately-paced Loure, fairly slow, pastoral in character, and with imitations of hunting-horns, is followed by a pair of fast, lively Tambourins, the gently lilting Sicilienne, whimsical Rondeau, and the vigorous concluding Caprice.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Chamber Concerto in D major, RV 84 1. Allegro 2. Andante 3. Allegro Among Vivaldi’s surviving concertos are nearly 30 so-called ‘chamber concertos’, scored for between two and six solo string and wind instruments. As the term ‘chamber concertos’ indicates, they have a dual nature: concerto-like in structure, but closer to the modern concept of chamber music than his other concertos. RV 84 is scored for flute and violin, with a continuo bass line, though it is not designated as such. It is not described as a concerto in the manuscript, but its general style is similar enough to that of Vivaldi’s other chamber concertos for it to be grouped with them. The brisk first movement is followed by an aria-like andante, and a lively finale in the style of a gigue, with occasional passages of rustic-sounding drones.

Florence Petit, cello, is a graduate of the RCM, being awarded her Bachelor and Masters Degrees with First Class Honours and Distinction respectively. Florence studied modern cello with Alexander Chaushian and Alexander Boyarsky and baroque cello with Richard Tunnicliffe. She has participated in masterclasses with Jonathan Manson, Ashley Solomon and Adrian Butterfield. Florence has played at the Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, London Handel Festival, Hatchlands Park, Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Queen’s Gallery. She has recorded for the Royal Collection Trust’s exhibition Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, and has worked with Florilegium, the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists and the English Concert.

La Tarantella (improvised): is a fast dance from the Naples area, taking its name from the town of Taranto. The suggestion that it was once believed to be the result of a bite from the tarantula spider, or a cure for it, has been discredited.

Dario Castello (fl. early 17th century): Sonata Duodecima, from Sonate Concertate Book II; La Bergamasca (improvised) Very little is known about Castello’s life. Two collections of instrumental sonatas were published under this name in Venice in 1621 and 1629. Later reprints of both volumes describe him as leader of an instrumental ensemble, adding that he was ‘musician of the most serene republic of Venice at St Mark’s’, which makes it all the more strange that we have so little information about him. The designation ‘sonate concertate’ implies sonatas (instrumental pieces designed to be ‘sounded’ on wind or string instruments) with melody parts for more than one instrument. Sonata No 12 is fast and brilliant, with some short slower sections and delightful echo effects between the two treble instruments. La Bergamasca is not a dance so much as a tune, its name implying that it originated in the area around Bergamo in northern Italy. It was a popular basis for instrumental pieces in the late 16th and much of the 17th centuries. It was often used by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) and also by French, German and English composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1759): Organ Trio Sonata No 2, BWV 526 I. Vivace 2. Largo 3. Allegro With his keen interest in contemporary music developments, Bach adapted to his own musical style a number of Italian instrumental genres, including the trio sonata, most commonly played by two treble-range instruments, such as pairs of violins or flutes, or one of each, with a bass part. He also explored the possibilities of transferring their characteristic textures to the organ, and in the late 1720s he wrote out a manuscript collection of six organ sonatas which, in turn, readily lend themselves to being transcribed for instrumental ensemble.

In recent years a number of such transcriptions have been performed and recorded. The sturdy opening movement of the C minor Sonata is influenced by the structure of Vivaldi’s concerto first movements. The largo, with its gently undulating main idea, is followed by a fugue with a rhythmically taxing (at this speed) second theme.

Johan Löfving, guitar and theorbo, was a prize-winner in the London International Guitar Competition, and has established himself as an exciting performer on guitar and theorbo. He has given solo recitals at Kings Place and The Sage, Gateshead, and played in chamber music festivals at Spitalfields, Cambridge, King’s Lynn, Stratford-on-Avon and the Brighton Early Music Festival. He has performed at the MuTh-Konzertsaal der Wiener Sängerknaben in Vienna and at the Carinthischer Sommer Festival. After graduating with First Class honours at the RCM, Johan completed his studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg where he studied guitar with Prof.

Robert Wolff and theorbo with Prof. Hans Brüderl, graduating with distinction.

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

S U N D AY 7 J U LY 8 . 3 0 P M – 1 0 P M

ZORADA TEMMINGH, ORGAN

Improvised organ accompaniment to the 1923 silent film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released in 1923 by Universal Studios, starring Lon Chaney, directed by Wallace Worsley, and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. The supporting cast included Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier and Brandon Hurst. The film was Universal’s ‘Super Jewel’ of 1923 and was their most successful silent film, grossing $3.5 million. It is based on Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, and is notable for the grand sets that recall 15th century Paris as well as for Chaney’s performance and make-up as the tortured hunchback Quasimodo. The film elevated Chaney, already a well-known character actor, to full star status in Hollywood, and also helped set a standard for many later horror films, including Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. In 1951, the film entered the public domain in the United States because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.

Zorada Temmingh, organist, was the first South African to improvise an organ soundtrack for a silent film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for which she received a Kanna Award. This year she celebrates 33 years as organist of the second oldest church congregation in South Africa. Zorada has performed as soloist with the Cape Town Philharmonic and Hugo Lambrechts Symphony Orchestras, and this year will tour the USA, Switzerland, Belgium and Namibia with the symphony orchestra of Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival. Zorada

is also part of the Blondes piano-duo. She is an examiner and adjudicator for organ, piano and choir Eisteddfodau and competitions and was a member of the faculty for the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival for two years. She is now a freelance musician and has compiled and presented two series of radio programmes for the Afrikaans national radio broadcaster.

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Huw Watkins studied piano with Peter Lawson at Chetham’s School of Music and composition with Robin Holloway, Alexander Goehr and Julian Anderson at Cambridge and the RCM. He teaches composition at the RAM. Huw has given premières of works by Alexander Goehr, Tansy Davies, Michael Zev Gordon and Mark-Anthony Turnage and presented a programme of Hans Werner Henze’s piano works at the BBC’s Total Immersion day at the Barbican. Many of his compositions have been premièred at the Wigmore Hall and at the Proms. He regularly features on BBC Radio 3 as a performer and as a composer. He has recorded Alexander Goehr’s Symmetry Disorders Reach and Thomas Adès’s The Lover in Winter with countertenor Robin Blaze.

John Adams (b 1947): Hallelujah Junction (in three unnamed movements)

PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

M O N D AY 8 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

P H I L I P M O O R E & H U W W AT K I N S TWO PIANOS

Philip Moore studied at the RAM with Hamish Milne. After graduating he was awarded the Meaker Fellowship, and in 2003 was appointed an Associate of the RAM. In 2004 he became a Steinway Artist.

Philip has performed worldwide with major orchestras. In 2006 he and fellow-pianist Andrew West began a two-year collaboration with Michael Clark Dance Company, playing Stravinsky’s two-piano version of The Rite of Spring on tour worldwide. Philip’s piano duo with Simon Crawford-Phillips gave world premières of Detlev Glanert’s Two Piano Concerto, Anna Meredith’s Two Piano Concerto (BBC Proms 2009); and Steve Reich’s Quartet for two pianos and two vibraphones. In 2017 Philip joined the LSO and Sir Simon Rattle for performances of Petrushka in London and Paris. In 2018 he gave the London and Japanese premières of John Adams’s Roll Over Beethoven for two pianos.

Hallelujah Junction, composed in 1996, takes its title from what Adams calls ‘a tiny truck stop on Route 49 on the Nevada-California border, not far from where I have a small mountain cabin.’ The ‘Hallelujah’ in the title is a tribute to Ernest Fleischmann, the then outgoing Managing Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and ‘Junction’ refers to the way motifs interlock, ‘bouncing back and forth between the two pianos in tightly phased sequences’ in Adams’s words. It opens with a three-note figure he associates with the last three syllables of ‘Hallelujah’, and which gradually expands into the material of the opening section. The gentler middle section moves seamlessly, via a short transition, into the high-kicking finale where ‘the ghost of Conlon Nancarrow goes head-to-head with a Nevada cathouse pianola.’ The reference is to Nancarrow’s studies for player piano, noted for their extraordinarily complex rhythms and textures.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring, arr. for four hands Part 1 (Adoration of the Earth): Introduction; The Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls); Ritual of Abduction; Spring Rounds; Ritual of the Rival Tribes; Procession of the Sage; The Sage;

Dance of the Earth Part 2 (The Sacrifice): Introduction; Mystic Circles of the Young Girls; Glorification of the Chosen One; Evocation of the Ancestors; Ritual Dance of the Ancestors; Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One) While completing The Firebird in 1910, his first ballet for Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, Stravinsky had a dream that gave him the idea of creating a symphonic work based on a pagan ritual sacrifice. Diaghilev was enthusiastic and encouraged him, but when Stravinsky began work on a new piece, it turned out to be a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra that eventually metamorphosed into the ballet Petrushka. Only after this did Stravinsky return to his pagan project, working closely with Nikolai Rörich, an authority on pagan Russian culture. The Rite of Spring finally reached performance at the Théâtre des ChampsElysées in Paris on 29 May 1913, an event deeply engraved in the history of 20th century music on account of the fighting that broke out among sections of the audience (between those who loved the new sounds that Stravinsky was producing and those who hated them!). The keyboard version of the ballet was presumably produced for rehearsal purposes, but the score’s rhythmic vitality is undoubtedly enhanced by the percussive nature of this alternative medium.

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The BIF Recital series offers an opportunity to journey through the musical traditions of some of our European neighbours. Members of the Buxton Chorus and the Young Artist Programme present two lunchtime recitals exploring jewels of the song and operatic repertoire. For the first recital we travel to Italy and to cities like Naples, Florence and Venice, and hear works by composers such as Monteverdi, Tosti and Puccini. In the second recital we travel to Austria where we take in the spectacular scenery and visit the cafés of Vienna, hearing works by composers such as Mozart, Schubert and Lehár. Artistic Director Adrian Kelly will be our guide, introducing the singers and accompanying them, along with other members of the Festival’s music staff.

Following the concerts, there will be an opportunity to meet the performers informally in the tea garden at the Dome.

M O N D AY 8 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M ST JOHN’S CHURCH

B I F V O C A L R E C I TA L S

An hour-long recital exploring the development of Italian Song, taking in the music of Venice, Florence and Naples Giulio Caccini (1551-1618): Madrigal- Amarilli, mia bella Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Duet: Io son pur vezzosetta pastorella Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Duet: Pur ti miro from L’incoronazione di Poppea Antonio Caldara (c 1670-1736): Sebben crudele from La Costanza in amor vince l’inganno Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868): La regata veneziana Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868): La danza Vincenzo Bellini (1891-35): Composizioni da camera ‘Per pieta bell’idol mio’, ‘Malinconia, ninfa gentile’, ‘Vaga luna’ Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Quattro Liriche (Notte, Nevicata, Nebbie, Pioggia) Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916): A vuchella, Ideale Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Two arias from Gianni Schicchi: Firenze è come un albero fiorito and O mio babbino caro Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924): Sole e amore

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Sopranos: Georgina Stalbow, Fiona Finsbury, Olivia Carrell Mezzos: Aurelija Stasiulyte, Rhiannon Doogan, Naomi Rogers Tenors: Joseph Doody, George Curnow, Matthew Curtis Baritones: Christopher Cull, Edward Robinson Piano: Adrian Kelly, Berrak Dyer, Iwan Teifion Davies, Florent Mourier

S U N D AY 1 4 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M PALACE HOTEL

An hour of song and operetta celebrating Austria’s finest composers, including Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Lehár.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Das Veilchen K.476, Dans un bois solitaire K.308, Abendempfindung K.523 Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Die Forelle, Auf dem Wasser zu singen, Fischerweise Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Lieder eines fahrendes Gesellen: No 1: Ging heut’morgen übers Feld Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Rückertlieder: No 5: Liebst du um Schönheit Hugo Wolf (1860-1903): Anakreons Grab: From the Italienisches Liederbuch: Auch kleine dinge können uns entzücken, Ich hab’ in Penna Alban Berg (1885-1935): 2 Songs from 7 Frühe Lieder: Nacht and Die Nachtigall Johannes Brahms (1833-97): Liebeslieder Waltzer: 1. Rede Mädchen, 2. Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut, 3. Oh die Frauen, 4. Wie des Abends schöne Röte, 6. Ein kleiner hübscher Vogel, 9. Am Donaustrande Franz Lehár (1870-1948): Vilja Lied from Die lustige Witwe Carl Zeller (1842-98): Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol from Der Vogelhändler Sopranos: Eleri Gwilym, Isolde Roxby, Yara Zeitoun Mezzos: Anna Jeffers, Bethany Yeaman, Imogen Garner Tenors: Gethin Lewis, William Searle, Andrew Masterson Baritone: Luke Scott Bass: Einar Stéfansson Piano: Adrian Kelly, Berrak Dyer, Iwan Teifion Davies, Florent Mourier

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An Independent Family Business 87

M O N 8 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 P M ST JOHN’S CHURCH

C A S TA L I A N S T R I N G Q U A R T E T 88

Sini Simonen & Daniel Roberts, violin Charlotte Bonneton, viola Christopher Graves, cello Castalian String Quartet was formed in 2011, and studied with Oliver Wille (Kuss Quartet) at Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media. Awards include 3rd Prize at the 2016 Banff Quartet Competition and 1st Prize at the 2015 Lyon Chamber Music Competition. They have received coaching from Simon Rowland-Jones, David Waterman and Isabel Charisius. In 2018 the Quartet received the inaugural MERITO String Quartet Award & Valentin Erben Prize and won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award. This season the Quartet give debut concerts in North America, Canada, Vienna, Paris, Brussels and Lucerne. They appear regularly at Wigmore Hall, Snape Maltings and Saffron Hall.

Last year they performed the complete Haydn Op76 Quartets at Wigmore Hall and gave concerts in Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Heidelberger Frühling, East Neuk, Zwischentöne Festival in Engelberg, Neuchatel Chamber Music in Switzerland and Banff International Festivals and they also toured China and Colombia. The Quartet has performed widely throughout Europe.

Sini Simonen is a Finnish soloist and chamber musician and violinist of Calvino Piano Trio.

She has won top prizes: the Flesch, Lipizer and Cremona competitions and the Brahms, Lyon, ARD, Banff and Citta di Pinerolo chamber music competitions. She studied at the Sibelius Academy, Musikhochschule Hannover and Musik-Akademie Basel appeared in masterclasses and collaborations with Ferenc Rados, Gerhard Schulz, Sir Andras Schiff, Miriam Fried, and Ursula Smith. Sini has appeared as soloist with many European orchestras. Her CD recordings include Bach’s double violin concerto with Helsinki Strings and Vivaldi’s concerto for 3 violins.

Her chamber music partners have included Ferenc Rados, Robert Levin, Midori, and Steven Isserlis. She plays a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin from 1760 on loan from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Daniel Llewellyn Roberts studied with Nigel Murray and Jan Repko. He is a graduate of the RNCM and holds Masters degrees from the RCM and the Hochschule für Musik, Hannover, and has twice been a Leverhulme Chamber Music Fellow at the RAM. As a soloist, Daniel has appeared in the UK, Europe and the USA. He performs internationally as a chamber musician and has collaborated with Simon Rowland-Jones, Tom Poster, Levon Chilingirian and the Primrose Piano Quartet.

He has held teaching posts at Birmingham Conservatoire and St. Paul’s Girls’ School, London, and given masterclasses at St. Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh, and in China. Daniel is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians and is extremely grateful to them for the loan of a fine violin by Joseph Guarneri filius Andrea of 1705.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): String Quartet in D minor, Op 76 No 2 (Fifths) 1. Allegro 2. Andante o più tosto allegretto 3. Menuetto. Allegro ma non troppo 4. Vivace assai Haydn began work on the six quartets of opus 76 in 1796, composing them at the same time as The Creation, and probably finishing them by the autumn of 1797. Charles Burney wrote enthusiastically to Haydn from London in 1799: ‘I had the great pleasure of hearing your new quartetti (opera 76) well performed before I went out of town, and never received more pleasure from instrumental music: they are full of invention, fire, good taste and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much so well already, but one of a highly-cultivated talent, who had expended none of his fire before’. The rigour of opus 76 no. 2 is encouraged by the pervasive use of the motif of a fifth omnipresent in the opening Allegro movement. It features also in the remaining three movements, delineating the contours of the melodic material. Equally fundamental to the uncompromising nature of the work is the opposition of D minor and D major. After a first movement in D minor, one of Haydn’s most radical essays in sonata form, the Andante is in D major and begins with a 15-bar theme played by the violin over an alternating bowed and pizzicato accompaniment.

The design of the movement is Haydn’s personalised form of ABA, in which the return of theme A is varied and a coda added, and B turns to the tonic minor but derives its thematic material from A. The keys of D minor and D major are brought back into even closer proximity in the following minuet: a ruthless canon in D minor is succeeded by a trio that begins in D minor and switches to D major, a moment of conflict that encapsulates the tension of the work as a whole. The D minor finale is given added spirit and rigour by the many ‘Hungarian’ inflections, sharpened fourths in the melody, glissandi, drone harmonics and double stops. The music finally returns to the major after the beginning of the recapitulation.

Charlotte Bonneton studied in her native France and with György Pauk at the RAM, where she obtained a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours and a Master of Arts with Distinction. Charlotte also studied viola with Matthew Souter.

Aged 16, she won 2nd Prize at the Wieniawski International Violin Competition (Junior Category) and subsequently performed as a soloist throughout France. In 2011 she made her recital debut at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Charlotte has appeared as a soloist with orchestra, including the Royal Academy String Orchestra and Royal Academy Concert Orchestra, performing works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and Schnittke. She regularly collaborates with the London Contemporary Orchestra.

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-47): String Quartet in E flat major 1. Adagio ma non troppo 2. Allegretto 3. Romanze 4. Allegro molto vivace Like her younger brother Felix, Fanny studied composition with composer and teacher Carl Zelter, and showed remarkable ability at a similarly early age. But the social standing of women at the time being what it was, both Felix and their father were opposed to her performing in public and having her works published. Her String Quartet, composed between August and October 1834, was not published until 1988. Unusually, the first movement is slow and introspective.

The opening bars suggest a reference to Beethoven, and there are allusions to Felix’s music elsewhere in the quartet. The second movement is a briskly buoyant scherzo, with a central trio section that, instead of providing a moment’s relaxation, is an even more energetic fugue. The Romanze seems to pick up the mood of the first movement, rising to a passionate climax, followed by the finale’s exuberant high spirits.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): String Quartet in E minor, Op 59 No 2 (‘Rasumovsky No 2’) 1. Allegro 2. Molto adagio (Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento) 3. Allegretto 4. Finale. Presto Beethoven composed his three string quartets of Op 59 in 1806, and dedicated them to the Russian Ambassador in Vienna, Prince Rasumovsky, after whom the quartets are often named. In the Prince’s honour, Beethoven wove Russian folk tunes into the music. That in the second quartet is the familiar ‘Slava’ (Glory) melody, used by a number of composers. It provides the theme of the contrasting trio section of the third movement, an otherwise rather serious-minded scherzo with interesting syncopations. Much of the music of the first movement is stormy and restless. With its wide-ranging harmonic language and imaginative treatment of his themes, this is Beethoven at his most profound. He is reported to have said that the inspiration for the slow movement was the star-lit night sky. After the scherzo comes the finale, a march in rondo form.

Christopher Graves studied with Melissa Phelps at the RCM and with Johannes Goritzki at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, and chamber music with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule für Musik, Hannover. His other teachers included Bernard Greenhouse and Kate Beare. He has performed widely as a chamber musician in the UK and abroad and played at international festivals. He was a soloist at the BBC Proms Plus festival with an RCM chamber orchestra, and has given recitals in the UK and Europe. Christopher has coached chamber ensembles at the RCM, Birmingham Conservatoire and Chethams Music School. He has played principal cello with orchestras such as Scottish Opera and Sinfonia Cymru and worked with other orchestras including the Philharmonia.

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Richard Gowers was a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists aged 17 and won first prize at the 2013 Northern Ireland International Organ Competition. He studied organ and piano at the Mendelssohn Conservatoire in Leipzig. From 2014 to 2017 he was the organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, graduating with a starred first class degree. At the RAM he studies piano accompaniment and conducting. Richard serves as Organist of the Old Royal Naval College, is Professor of Organ at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and supervises music students at Cambridge University. He is known for his virtuosic programmes, wide repertoire and humorous introductions. He has given recitals worldwide. In 2018 he gave the première of Nico Muhly’s cycle for organ, The Lenten Gospels. His debut CD, of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur, was released in 2018.

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

T U E S D AY 9 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

M AT I L D A L L O Y D , T R U M P E T RICHARD GOWERS, ORGAN

Matilda Lloyd graduated from Cambridge in 2017. She won the inaugural Eric Aubier International Trumpet Competition in Rouen, France. In 2014 she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Brass Final and the BBC Radio 2 Young Brass Award. This led to concertos with the BBC Concert Orchestra and at the European Brass Band Championships in Scotland. She received the Sidney Perry Brass Award from the Philharmonia and toured with the orchestra in Klosters in 2016. Matilda made her Proms debut in 2016. She has been a soloist with the London Mozart Players and the BBC Concert Orchestra. She made her Wigmore Hall debut in 2018. Matilda was awarded a bursary to participate in masterclasses with Håkan Hardenberger in Snape Maltings.

Petr Eben (1929-2007): Ókna: No 1, Blue Window (con moto) Czech composer Petr Eben is best known for his large number of organ works, though he also wrote orchestral, choral, oratorio, ballet, chamber music, works for piano, and music for children. Ókna (Windows) was composed in 1976, prompted by the series of stained-glass windows depicting the twelve tribes of Israel designed by Marc Chagall for the Hadassah Medical Centre, Jerusalem, although he was not able to see them in person until several years after completing the work. The ‘Blue Window’ includes imagery of the sea, fish, and birds.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): Three Heroic Marches These three marches come from a set of twelve, scored for trumpet and small instrumental ensemble, published in Hamburg in 1728 with the title Musique Héroique, ou XII Marches. (Heroic Music, or 12 Marches). The only known surviving copy is thought to have been destroyed in 1945, leaving a transcription for trumpet and keyboard which was published in 1947 in an edition by composer Ernst Pätzold.

Each march is named after a particular heroic quality: ‘Dignity’, ‘Grace’, ‘Bravery’, ‘Calmness’, etc.

Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani (1638 - c 1693): Sonata No 1 1. Andante 2. Allegro moderato 3. Allegro 4. Allegro 5. Presto Born in Florence, Viviani spent several years working as a violinist and music director in Innsbruck. He returned to Italy and seems to have worked briefly in Venice before going on to posts in Rome and in Naples, where he directed a company of opera singers. His last job was as a music director at Pistoia Cathedral. He composed a number of operas. oratorios and cantatas, as well as instrumental pieces. This sonata is one of two for trumpet and continuo included in a collection of instrumental pieces published as his Op 4 in 1678.

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000): Prayer of Saint Gregory American composer Alan Hovhaness had both Scottish and Armenian ancestry. He studied at the New England Conservatory, Boston. At various times in his career he was influenced by Indian, Armenian, east Asian and Renaissance music. Prayer of Saint Gregory was originally composed as an intermezzo in the first of his twelve operas, Etchmiadzin of 1946. Etchmiadzin is the name of the cathedral regarded as the centre of the Armenian Apostolic Church. St Gregory, patron saint of Armenia, is said to have had a vision showing him where the cathedral should be built.

Petr Eben (1929-2007): Ókna: No 3, Red Window The sea is again central, but now full of leaping marine life. The ‘Red Window’ blazes with sunlight.

Jean-Michel Damase (1928-2013): Trois Prières sans Paroles 1. Moderato 2. Andantino 3. Allegretto Damase was born in Bordeaux, began his formal music education aged 5 and aged 12 went to study with the great pianist Alfred Cortot. He entered the Paris Conservatoire the following year. In 1945, two years after winning the Conservatoire’s first prize for piano, he began studying composition with Henri Büsser, and harmony and counterpoint with the organist and composer Marcel Dupré. He appeared as a soloist with a number of French orchestras and also won the Conservatoire’s first prize for composition with a quintet for harp, flute and strings written in 1948. The same year he won the Conservatoire’s Prix de Rome, following in the footsteps of such distinguished predecessors as Berlioz, Bizet and Debussy.

He composed Trois Prières sans Paroles (Three Prayers Without Words) in 1963.

Petr Eben (1929-2007): Ókna: No 4, Golden Window (festivo) The ‘Golden Window’ depicts ceremonial candles and fruit.

Eben acknowledged Chagall’s Russian heritage by including an Orthodox chant in the first section.

Petr Eben (1929-2007): Ókna: No 2, Green Window In contrast to the sea imagery of ‘Blue Window’, the ‘Green Window’ depicts the donkey (almost human in expression) in the meadow, surrounded by leaves and flowers.

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Ashok Gupta studied at Cambridge, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He won the Accompanist’s Prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Competition and was awarded the Silver Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians. With the Mozarteum Orchestra he appeared as fortepiano soloist in Jonathan Dove’s An Airmail Letter from Mozart. He has worked as a répétiteur for Glyndebourne, ENO and Dutch National Opera. In 2016 he devised and performed a ‘Scott Joplin Cabaret’ for Cheltenham International Festival. Ashok is grateful to the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leonard Hancock Memorial Foundation for their support, and to his teachers Margaret Fingerhut, Charles Owen, Pascal Nemerovski and Helen Porter.

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

T U E S D AY 9 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 P M

ALESSANDRO FISHER, TENOR A S H O K G U P TA , P I A N O

Alessandro Fisher won First Prize at the 2016 Kathleen Ferrier Awards and is a BBC New Generation Artist 2018-20. He studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Roles include First Armed Man/Priest Die Zauberflöte and Bellecour in Offenbach’s Vert Vert for Garsington Opera; title-role in Rameau’s Dardanus and Bach B Minor Mass for English Touring Opera, and Banquo in Luke Styles’s Macbeth at Covent Garden. He appeared in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the National Theatre, BBC Radio 3’s Spirit of Schubert with Graham Johnson, and as Delmiro/Alindo in Cavalli’s Hipermestra at Glyndebourne (2017). He made his Salzburg Festival debut in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea (2018). Engagements include Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff for Grange Festival, and recitals for St John’s Smith Square, Leeds Lieder, Cheltenham, and Oxford Lieder Festivals.

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Robert Schumann (1810-56): Liederkreis (nine poems by Heinrich Heine), Op 24 1. Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage (At morn I rise and ask) 2. Es treibt mich hin (I’m driven this way and that) 3. Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen (Amid the trees I wandered) 4. Lieb’ Liebchen (My dearest) 5. Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden (Beautiful Cradle of my Sorrows) 6. Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann (Wait, wait, wild sailor) 7. Berg’ und Burgen schaun herunter (Mountains and Castles gaze down) 8. Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen (At first I almost despaired) 9. Mit Myrten und Rosen (With myrtle and roses) Heine was a considerable narrative poet as well as a lyricist of genius, but Schumann – a miniaturist in spite of himself – was always at his best in brief, and the Heine songs are no exception. The best are the short lyrics, of which he composed a round dozen in his first phase of settings of the poet.

Three of them are included in Myrten, while the rest make up the Liederkreis, Op. 24. The latter is designed for integral performance: it is arranged not only in key sequence but with some uniformity of subject. The linking idea is love, but especially the pain of separation. Taking a broad view, it can be argued that Op. 24 was of value to Schumann in bringing him to grips with the problems he was to face as a cyclic song composer: the relationship between piano and voice, symmetry of scale between songs and the sustaining of mood and character – and, along the way, producing two or three of his best early songs. The most striking single feature of the cycle is its economy of texture. A sparer and more neurotic language is used for situations where love or life is in question for any reason. The tiny opening number Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage is a case in point. The second song Es treibt mich hin to another poem about anxious separation (coupled with the prospect of reunion) employs similar devices. And in No 4, Lieb’ Liebchen, Schumann yet again uses a nervous staccato rhythm to impart a sense of emotional unrest, this time by following up Heine’s image of the breaking heart as a carpenter hammering together the lover’s coffin. Except for the chorale-like penultimate song, Anfangs wollt‘ ich fast verzagen – a piece which is either enigmatic or barren according to the singer’s temperament – the others are all longer and more self-contained, but some are startling failures. One of these, Warte, warte, wilder Schiffmann, is little more than a hectic piano solo with added voice. The weak final song, Mit Myrten und Rosen, also leans heavily on a pianistic idea, the piano being reduced to choral impotence as soon as the voice enters with the tune. The strophic Berg’ und Burgen, though again full of restless charm, represents an even more abject surrender to musical convenience. The finest of the cycle is Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen. This is a wonderfully penetrating setting depicting the poet wandering listlessly through that same psychological woodland which the composer would later revisit in his Eichendorff songs. Liederkreis represents the spirit of Schumann’s age.

Michael Head (1900–76): Over the rim of the moon (poems

by Francis Ledwidge) 1. The Ships of Arcady 2. Beloved 3. A Blackbird Singing 4. Nocturne Born in Eastbourne, Michael Head studied at the Royal Academy of Music, returning there as professor of piano in 1927. Although he worked in a variety of genres – a cantata, a few chamber works, including a trio for oboe, bassoon and piano, and a couple of one-act chamber operas – it is songs which dominate his output. An accomplished baritone, he often performed them (and other composers’ songs) playing the piano himself. Composed in 1918, setting words by the Irish poet Francis Ledwidge (1891-1917), this was his first published work. ‘The Ships of Arcady’ was published separately the following year, and the complete cycle appeared in 1920, taking its title from the fourth song.

Head dedicated the cycle to his first piano teacher, Jean Adair. It was first sung by Astra Desmond, one of the leading English contraltos of her day, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1919 (the name of the pianist does not appear to be have been recorded).

Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947): Venezia (6 chansons in Venetian dialect) 1. Sopra l’acqua indormenzada (Upon the sleeping waters) 2. La barcheta (The Little Boat) 3. L’avertimento (The Warning) 4. La Biondina in gondoleta (The Fair Maiden in a Gondola) 5. Che pecà! (What a shame!)

6. La primavera (The Springtime) Born in Venezuela to a Spanish mother and a German-born father, Reynaldo Hahn moved with his family to Paris when he was nearly four years old, by which time he was already showing signs of musical talent. He made his debut as a pianist at a Paris soirée aged six, and in 1885 he entered the Paris Conservatoire and composed some of his best-known songs while still a student there. A fine singer himself, he frequently accompanied himself in his own songs. He became friendly with Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, a prominent patron of new music in Paris between the 1890s and 1930s, and the six songs that make up Venezia were the result of a visit he and novelist Marcel Proust paid to her and her husband when they were on holiday in Venice in 1900.

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PETER DONOHOE, PIANO 94

After Peter Donohoe’s success as Silver Medal winner of the 7th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982, he built a world-wide career, encompassing a huge repertoire and over 40 years’ experience as a pianist. He is acclaimed for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique. Donohoe studied at Chetham’s School of Music and graduated in music at Leeds University, where he studied composition with Alexander Goehr, and the RNCM, studying piano with Derek Wyndham. He studied in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He has performed with the major British and European orchestras and in 2008 took part in an important Messiaen Festival in Spain to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Donohoe was an annual visitor to the BBC Proms for 17 years and appeared at major festivals in the UK, Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, working with the world’s greatest conductors. He is a keen chamber musician and with fellow-pianist Martin Roscoe has given performances of Gershwin and Rachmaninov. In 2001 he released a disc of music by Gerald Finzi, the first of a major series of recordings which aimed to raise the public’s awareness of the British piano concerto repertoire. Peter Donohoe has made many recordings and won awards: the Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt for his recording of the Liszt Sonata in B minor and the Gramophone Concerto award for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 2. His recordings of Messiaen with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and of Litolff received widespread acclaim. In June 2011 he returned to Moscow as a jury member for the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition. He is vice-president of the Birmingham Conservatoire and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates of Music from the Universities of Birmingham, Central England, Warwick, East Anglia, Leicester and The Open University. Peter Donohoe was appointed CBE for services to music in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List.

Alissa Margulis is appreciated for her expressive and very emotional performances. She regularly plays at the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Tchaikovsky Hall Moscow, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein, Sumida Triphony Hall Tokyo, the Sage Gateshead, the Tonhalle Zürich and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. She has won numerous prizes at international competitions and was awarded the ‘Pro Europa’ prize of the European Arts Foundation which was presented to her by Daniel Barenboim in Berlin.

Per Nyström is a Swedish cellist, co-founder and artistic advisor of Aurora Chamber Music. After studying with Guido Vecchi in Gothenburg, he studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and in London with William Pleeth. Per Nyström was co-founder of the Yggdrasil String Quartet (1990– 2001), prizewinners in major competitions in London and Melbourne. They recorded the complete quartets of their countryman Franz Berwald. He is principal cellist of Camerata Nordica and of several Nordic chamber and symphony orchestras. He plays a 1796 cello of Giuseppe and Antonio Gagliano on which he recently started to record all the Bach suites for solo cello. For his achievements as a cellist, in 2013 the Swedish King awarded him the medal ‘Litteris et Artibus’.

PETER DONOHOE, PIANO WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 3.30PM – 5PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Sonata in E flat major, K282 1. Adagio 2. Menuetto I & II 3. Allegro The most immediately striking thing about this sonata is that it begins with a slow movement. While it is true that for composers of the Baroque era this would have been nothing unusual, by the 1770s when this sonata was written, a quick opening movement would have been the norm. A sonata like this one might have been regarded as a touch old-fashioned, although its slow-minuet-fast layout was to serve Mozart again in the A major Turkish rondo sonata and indeed reappears with only slight modification in Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata.

Whereas Mozart’s later A major sonata starts with a set of variations, this one opens with what is almost a full-scale sonata movement, differing only in that its first theme is later hinted at but never recapitulated. The movement as a whole offers a fine example of Mozart’s intuitive grasp of the piano’s capacity for a singing legato style. The minuet, in B flat, has a trio in E flat which takes over its ‘sighing’ appoggiatura, while the finale is in a straightforward sonata form. The sonata, deemed by Köchel to have been written in 1777, is now known to date from the end of 1774, which explains the diversity between his and the revised numbering by Einstein.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): 4 Impromptus, D935 (Op. 142) 1. Allegro moderato 2. Allegro - Trio 3. Andante (Thema) - Variation 1 - 5 4. Allegro scherzando This is the second of Schubert’s two sets of Impromptus, written in December 1827, though they may have been sketched earlier.

The first of them has an insistent rhythmic drive, contrasted with poignant episodes in which Schubert contrives a dialogue between short phrases in the treble and bass registers over rippling figures in the middle of the texture. The gentle, songlike second piece, the best-known of the four, is followed by a set of five variations on a theme whose initial similarity to the B flat Entr’acte from Schubert’s incidental music for the play Rosamunde has tempted some writers into regarding it as the same tune. It isn’t – the resemblance extends no further than the first five notes. The set ends with a lively dance-like piece whose central section enters a mysterious region of quiet murmurings and unexpected pauses.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Sonata in C major, Hob 48 1. Andante con espressione 2. Rondo. Presto Haydn’s Sonata in C – No 48 in Anthony van Hoboken’s longestablished catalogue, No 58 in the more recent and more comprehensive listing by Haydn scholar HC Robbins Landon – was his contribution to A Musical Pot-pourri, a volume issued by the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf und Härtel in 1789. The meticulous markings in the score suggest that Haydn took particular care over this, his first German commission. The first of the two movements is in one of Haydn’s favourite forms, a set of variations on alternating major key and minor key versions of the same theme. The feeling of the movement unfolding as one great improvisation is enhanced by the many silences which

punctuate the music without disrupting its forward movement.

Listen, too, for the way Haydn delights in exploiting the very bottom of the keyboard. The second movement is a brilliantly energetic rondo, full of Haydn’s characteristic wit and sparkle.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Fünf Klavierstücke, Op. 23 1. Sehr langsam 2. Sehr rasch 3. Langsam 4. Schwungvoll 5. Walzer Schoenberg composed his Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, over a pivotal few years in his career. No 1 and No 2 were written in July 1920, when he also began No 4; the remainder dates from February 1923. It was during this period that he was working towards the technique of serial composition – a method of composing which he always insisted he had discovered, not invented – in which the role of each note is determined by its relationship not to a central key, like a planet orbiting a star, but to the ones before and after in the sequence, usually called a ‘row’. It was a way of bringing coherence to a language that kept all twelve notes of the chromatic scale – all the black and white notes of the keyboard – constantly in play.

Following the gently flowing first piece, the second moves in a series of upward rushes of energy, before subsiding to the depths. No 3 is the longest of the five. In his book on the composer, Malcolm Macdonald compared it to a nocturne.

The volatile and capricious fourth piece ends quietly. The final piece is headed ‘Waltz’, but the waltz rhythm is often elusive and, as Malcolm Macdonald suggested, there is some element of ‘affectionate parody’ in places.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Sonata in A major, D664 1. Allegro moderato 2. Andante 3. Allegro The shortest of the composer’s completed piano sonatas, D664 was published the year after Schubert’s death as his Op. 120. Reprinted in 1888 as part of a complete edition of his works, it is headed by the statement ‘composed in 1825.’

But it was probably written six years earlier, during the same 1819 summer holiday in Steyr, Upper Austria, that produced the ‘Trout’ Quintet. Schubert had gone there with the baritone Johann Michael Vogl (born in Steyr), who actively promoted his music by singing many of his songs in public. Eating regularly with local iron merchant Josef von Koller, they got to know his daughter Josefine. In a letter to his brother Ferdinand, Schubert wrote that she was ‘very pretty, plays the piano decently and is going to sing several of my songs ... she is eighteen years old, truly lovely and very talented.’ He went on to say that she asked him to write her a piano sonata, ‘raising her brow so attractively that I immediately sat down as soon as I was back in my room ... and noted down a few ideas.’ The work that resulted is mainly sunny in mood, but with Schubert’s characteristically ambiguous harmonies suggesting that faint wistful undercurrent that colours so much of his music even at its most cheerful. The opening movement is predominantly lyrical, but with a more strenuous development section at its centre. In the andante that follows the expressive ambiguity is at its most acute, as an ostensibly relaxed D major is undermined by subtle harmonic tensions. The swiftly-flowing last movement has a dancing grace and lightness, but the strenuous and poignant moments of the first two movements find echoes even here.

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PETER DONOHOE, PIANO, ALISSA MARGULIS, VIOLIN THURSDAY 11 JULY 3.30PM – 5PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Violin Sonata in G minor, L140 1. Allegro vivo 2. Intermède: Fantastique et léger 3. Finale: Très animé In 1915 Debussy began a set of six sonatas scored for different combinations of instruments. He lived to complete only the sonatas for cello and piano, for flute, viola and harp, and for violin and piano, his last work of any kind, dating from 1917. The fourth sonata was to have been for the intriguing combination of oboe, horn and harpsichord, while the last of the set was to have combined all the instruments used in the series. The Violin Sonata used to be dismissed as the uninspired product of a tired imagination. Debussy himself offered it to his publisher merely ‘as an example of what may be achieved by a sick man in wartime’. Today we can accept it on its own terms, showing Debussy on the threshold of a new direction and offering a tantalising glimpse of the kind of music he might have written during the 1920s.

César Franck (1822-90): Violin Sonata in A major 1. Allegretto ben moderato 2. Allegro 3. Ben moderato: Recitativo-Fantasia 4. Allegretto poco mosso

PETER DONOHOE, PIANO, ALISSA MARGULIS, VIOLIN, PER NYSTRÖM, CELLO MONDAY 15 JULY 3.30PM – 5.15PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943): Sonata in G minor for cello and piano, Op. 19 1. Lento – Allegro moderato 2. Allegro scherzando 3. Andante 4. Allegro mosso 27 March 1897, and what should have been the triumphant première of a young composer’s first symphony became, instead, a disaster, the chief architects of which were Glazunov, who conducted the work ineptly (and allegedly under the influence of alcohol!) and Cui, the least familiar of the group of Nationalist composers known as The Five, whose review described the piece as a ‘programme symphony on the seven plagues of Egypt, that would have thrilled the inhabitants of hell’. The despair into which Rachmaninov sank after this setback reduced him to virtual silence as a composer for some three years. Finally he sought the assistance of a psychiatrist, one Doctor Dahl, who managed to restore his self-confidence.

Inspired at last, Rachmaninov set to work on the piece that would make his name, the second piano concerto. Apart from the concerto, Rachmaninov had been working on two instrumental compositions at the same time, the second suite for two pianos and the cello sonata, and the success of the concerto at its first performance in May 1901 removed his remaining doubts and allowed the rapid completion of both chamber works. The cello sonata was first performed that December by the composer and Anatoly Brandukov, who had helped Rachmaninov with the cello part and who became the

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In life, César Franck was a simple and humble man, never seeking fame or financial rewards. For him, his art was his life and music had to be composed to the highest possible standard. Vincent d’Indy described Franck as ‘the highest minded and noblest musician that the nineteenth century has produced in France’. His first significant work, Rédemption, a large sacred work, came when he was 50 and all the music for which he is remembered today was composed within the last five years of his life. The Violin Sonata was written for Eugène Ysaÿe who introduced it in 1886. The first movement is in modified sonata form and there is no development. After a short piano introduction, a reflective first theme for the violin is heard. The contemplative mood is maintained in the second theme, which is first presented by the piano. As this material is extended, an agitated mood sets in, soon to dissolve in a peaceful conclusion. In contrast the second movement is turbulent. A fiery theme is first heard in the piano and this is followed by another vehement theme for violin. Separating these two thoughts is an idea reminiscent of a theme in the first movement. Franck described the third movement as a ‘recitative-fantasia’. A short exchange between piano and violin includes a thought from the first movement. These themes are then elaborated in a rhapsodic manner. The finale opens with a serene melody stated in canon by the two instruments. After a climax, the third movement theme is recalled by the piano. A restatement of the canon melody now brings back the material from the second and third movements, the latter subject being given passionately by the violin and it is the canonic melody that brings the sonata to its conclusion.

sonata’s first great interpreter. The published title of the sonata – for piano and cello – reflects the not unexpected dominance at times of the piano over the cello, but the surprising aspect of the sonata, for those who only know Rachmaninov as a composer for the keyboard, is how much the cello does contribute to the ensemble, especially in the beautiful slow movement, where its lyrical voice really comes into its own.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93): Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 1. Pezzo elegiaco (moderato assai – allegro giusto - adagio con duolo e ben sostenuto – moderato assai – allegro giusto) 2. Tema con variazioni: andante con moto – (2) più mosso – (3)(4)(5) allegro moderato – (6) tempo di valse – (7) allegro moderato – (8) fuga – (9) andante flebile ma non tanto – (10) tempo di mazurka – (11) moderato – variazione finale e coda (allegro risoluto e con fuoco – andante con moto – lugubre) Just after Christmas 1881, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, ‘Do you remember you once counselled me to write a trio, and I openly declared to you my antipathy for this combination of instruments? And now suddenly I have conceived the idea of testing myself in this sort of music’. The circumstance that brought about this change of heart was the death earlier that year of the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, an important figure in Tchaikovsky’s life (despite his condemnation of the composer’s first piano concerto). The trio bears a dedication ‘to the memory of a great artist’. Structurally the trio is unusual in that there are just two movements, each built on a generous scale. The first explores its material through a number of different sections, including a particularly beautiful slow section where the strings sing in dialogue with just simple support from the piano. The second is a set of variations on a simple E major theme that lends itself to both harmonic elaboration and structural modification. For example, the

four-time theme begins as early as variation (2) to take on the characteristics of a waltz; variation (6) is pure waltz, and also contains a quotation from his opera Eugene Onegin. Other variations include a fugue (perhaps a nod to Rubinstein’s academic work) and a mazurka. Finally, Tchaikovsky writes a self-contained concluding variation and coda, both sections of

which quote material from the trio’s first movement. The work ends with a brief funeral march, surely inspired by Chopin’s.

The trio became an elegy to its own creator in 1893, when it was played at the memorial concerts for the composer.

PETER DONOHOE, PIANO TUESDAY 16 JULY 3.30PM – 5.15PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

and caprice. The finale returns to the first movement’s grand manner, but ending with an enigmatic coda.

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915): Sonata No 2 in G sharp minor 1. Andante 2. Presto In 1842 Scriabin embarked on a career as a concert pianist and a year later was introduced to the St Petersburg patron and publisher, Belyayev, who then took control of Scriabin’s musical affairs until the former’s death in 1903, the firm remaining Scriabin’s publisher until 1908. In 1895 Belyayev sent his protégé on a series of European tours and it is from this time that the Second Sonata belongs, although it was not published until 1897. Apart from a few symphonic poems, Scriabin expressed himself most fully in his piano writing. In his early piano sonatas, the strenuous quality of the quick movements and the conception of the sonata as a dramatic conflict suggest continuity with the methods of Beethoven and Brahms. The ten sonatas cover the successive periods of his artistic development. The early music shows an affinity with Tchaikovsky in its lyricism, with Chopin in its languishing decorative elegance, and with Liszt in its exploitation of the bravura possibilities of the piano. These influences are particularly evident in the Second Sonata. The opening movement contains two lyrically themed sections which follow an opening characterised by echoing effects. The Presto second movement could not provide more of a contrast in its speed and intensity and use of alternating crescendos and decrescendos. From the pianist’s point of view, the music is technically very demanding although Scriabin would go on to devise even more fiendish pianistic problems.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93): Sonata in G, Op. 37 1. Moderato e risoluto 2. Andante non troppo quasi Moderato 3. Scherzo. Allegro giocoso 4. Finale. Allegro vivace Tchaikovsky’s Sonata in G, originally entitled ‘Grande Sonate’, was composed in the spring and summer of 1878. He first mentioned it in a letter to his brother, Anatoly, in March, when he described how much difficulty he was having making progress. He also began having ideas for his Violin Concerto, and soon put the Sonata aside in order to focus on it. He eventually completed the Sonata by the end of April.

It is large scale work, as is made clear by the declamatory opening theme, whose march-like rhythm (though there are, in fact, only three beats in the bar, not four) dominates the first movement. The second movement is, for the most part, gently lyrical, the scherzo that follows a mixture of forcefulness

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-81): Pictures at an Exhibition [1st Promenade] 1.The Gnome [2nd Promenade] 2.The Old Castle [3rd Promenade] 3.Tuileries 4. Cattle [4th Promenade] 5. Ballet of Unhatched Chicks 6.Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle [5th Promenade] 7. Limoges - the Market 8.Catacombs 9.The Hut on Hen’s Legs 10.The Great Gate of Kiev Mussorgsky’s piano suite was inspired by an exhibition of the artist Victor Hartmann’s work, organised in January 1874, the year after his death. Mussorgsky was moved by the exhibition of his dead friend’s career, and wanted to write his own tribute. His own titles for the sections are: Promenade – This returns several times as a link, and was intended to portray the viewer ‘roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now quickly ... at times thinking sadly of his departed friend’.

Gnomus – a mis-shapen dwarf, Hartmann’s design for a toy nutcracker for a Christmas tree.

Promenade – The Old Castle – Promenade - Tuileries – based on a watercolour of the Tuilerie gardens, showing nursemaids and children quarrelling. Bydło – Polish oxen, pulling what Mussorgsky called Le Télégue, a French word he coined from the Russian word for a cart, Telega. Promenade – Ballet of the unhatched chicks – a costume design for a ballet, showing children dressed as chicks, enclosed in eggs, as in suits of armour. Vityushka’s Jews – Mussorgsky’s own nickname for an untitled movement. Two of the drawings in the exhibition were of ‘a rich Jew wearing a fur hat’ and ‘a poor Jew’ who sits miserably, clutching his stick, his face downcast. The Market place at Limoges – this portrays women gossiping and haggling. Catacombae. Sepulchrum Romanum. Con mortuis in lingua mortua – a painting showing the interior of catacombs, including the figure of the painter himself. Baba Yaga’s Hut on Fowl’s Legs – a clock design made of bronze and enamel, ‘in 14th century Russian style’; The Bogatyr’s Gate – inspired by Hartmann’s design for stone gates for the city of Kiev.

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Supported by

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

T H U R S D AY 1 1 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

BETHAN LANGFORD, MEZZO SOPRANO K E VA L S H A H , P I A N O

Bethan Langford is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio. She made her debut as Dorabella for Bury Court Opera. At Scottish Opera this season her roles include Second Lady The Magic Flute, Glasha Katya Kabanová and Giovanna Rigoletto. Concert highlights have included Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil at St Martin-in-the-Fields. This season she launches a new vocal ensemble, Schubert & Co, specialising in the performance of part-song. Recent engagements include her Wigmore Hall debut and recitals for Oxford Lieder, Aldeburgh and Heidelberger Frühling Festivals. Bethan is a proud recipient of the Elizabeth Eagle-Bott Award from the RNIB for visually impaired musicians.

Keval Shah studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and the RAM, graduating with distinctions and, from the Academy, with the DipRAM in 2017. He studied with Michael Dussek, Audrey Hyland, and Malcolm Martineau. Keval performs extensively as an accompanist and chamber musician. His first recording, with bass-baritone Michael Mofidian, is due for release in 2019. Keval won the Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform in 2017, the pianist’s prize at the Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition, and the 2018 Vivian Langrish Memorial Trust Prize. This season sees the second year of his project to perform the complete songs of Hugo Wolf. Keval teaches at Cambridge University and at the RAM’s Junior Academy.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): An Chloe, K524, Das Lied der Trennung, K519 The two songs in this group date from the summer of 1787.

An Chloe (To Chloë), a charming love-song, has become one of the most popular of Mozart’s songs. Das Lied der Trennung (Song of Separation) is a lover’s expression of fear that his girl has abandoned him.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Arianna a Naxos Arianna a Naxos (Ariadne on Naxos) was composed by the end of 1789. Based on the story from Greek mythology, the anonymous text expresses Ariadne’s longing and despair when she realises that she has been abandoned on the island of Naxos by Theseus. Following the four-section outline of the conventional 18th-century Italian cantata, it comprises two recitative sections alternating with two arias.

Aaron Copland (1900-90): Five songs from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson 1: Nature, the gentlest mother 2: There came a wind like a bugle 4: The world feels dusty 11: Going to heaven!

12: The chariot Copland composed his Emily Dickinson settings between March 1949 and March 1950. Her poems made an instant appeal to him: ‘The more I read, the more her vulnerability and loneliness touched me. The poems seemed the work of a sensitive yet independent soul.’ Copland’s musical imagery illuminates her recurrent themes of nature, by turns benign and hostile: love, death, and questions of faith and doubt.

Juliana Hall (b 1958): Song from The Old Guarded Gate 4: The modern woman to her lover Juliana Hall has composed a number of instrumental pieces but the bulk of her work is for voice. Through the Guarded Gate, setting five poems by American poet and novelist Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978), was commissioned by the Seattle Art Song Society for performance in its 2018-19 season, devoted to issues of social justice. It was premièred in March 2019, as part of a ‘Woman’s Voices’ concert, by the composer and mezzosoprano Clara Osowski, to whom the work is dedicated.

George Crumb (b 1929): Two songs from Three Early Songs 2: Let it be forgotten 3: Wind elegy George Crumb’s early work is influenced by Berg, Webern and Bartók, but by the 1960s he showed an increasing interest in novel sonorities and playing techniques. He achieved popular successes in the early 1970s with works such as Black Angels, for amplified string quartet, and the Lorca song-cycle Ancient Voices of Children. His Three Early Songs were composed in 1947. The second and third, both elegiac in tone, set words by American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933).

Jonathan Dove (b 1959): I too beneath your moon (No 3 from Nights Not Spent Alone) Nights Not Spent Alone, a group of three songs setting words by the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Philharmonic Society as part of Radio 3’s New Generation Artists Scheme.

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Simon Lepper gave the first performance during the Cheltenham Festival in July 2015.

DINNER & MUSICAL THEATRE IN THE DOME T H U R S D AY 1 1 J U LY 7 P M – 9 P M UNIVERSITY OF DERBY, BUXTON

The new partnership between Buxton International Festival and the University of Derby bridges the gap between academia and the creative arts. The University’s famous hospitality degrees produce the next generation of master chefs, a match for Buxton’s well-deserved reputation for bringing on the careers of young musicians. The partnership will be marked with harmony and taste at an evening of fine dining and fine music in the University’s magnificent Devonshire Dome campus. The Dome was added by the Victorians to enclose the exercise yard when they turned the fifth Duke of Devonshire’s stables into a hospital. In one of the most dramatic architectural spaces in Britain, under the largest unsupported dome in Europe, singers will introduce their favourite arias and songs as the food arrives, served by the next generation of professionals studying at the University’s culinary arts school.

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The BBC Philharmonic is one of six BBC orchestras and is based in Media City, Salford Quays, where, in a purpose-built studio, it rehearses, gives concerts (with free admission) and records. It gives an annual series of concerts at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, and also gives regular concerts in Hanley, Leeds, Kendal, Hull, Sheffield, Blackburn, Carlisle, Nottingham and other venues across the north of England. Most of its concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3. It appears annually at the BBC Proms and has toured Europe, Asia, America, China and Japan. Since 2007 the orchestra has received support from Salford City Council.

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OCTAGON, PAVILION GARDENS

T H U R S D AY 1 1 J U LY 7 . 3 0 P M – 1 0 . 1 5 P M

BBC PHILHARMONIC JOSHUA WEILERSTEIN, CONDUCTOR JENNIFER PIKE, VIOLIN

The BBC Philharmonic visits Buxton for the first time, presenting a programme which celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the Festival. It is conducted by Joshua Weilerstein, Artistic Director of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. Macclesfield-born soloist Jennifer Pike will play Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending (which she performed at the service of commemoration for the 100th anniversary of the First World War at Westminster Abbey).

The orchestra began in 1922 as the 2ZY Orchestra, formed in Manchester for a radio station of the same name. This became the Northern Wireless Orchestra in 1926, and was re-named BBC Northern Orchestra in 1934. It adopted the name BBC Philharmonic in 1983. Its chief conductors have included Sir Charles Groves (1944-51); John Hopkins (1952-7); George Hurst (1958-68); Bryden Thomson (196873); Raymond Leppard (1973-80); Sir Edward Downes (1980-91); Yan Pascal Tortelier (1992-2002); Gianandrea Noseda (2002-11); Juanjo Mena (2011-18); and in September this year Omer Meir Wellber will take up the post of Chief Conductor. Mark Simpson, winner of the title Young Musician of the Year in 2006 as a clarinetist, has been the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association since 2015.

Joshua Weilerstein is the Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and recently extended his term until the end of the 2020-21 season. In the 2018-19 season he will make his operatic debut conducting Così fan tutte at the Opera de Lausanne. He hosts a classical music podcast, Sticky Notes, for music lovers and newcomers alike. During his time as Assistant Conductor with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he was involved in the orchestra’s Young People’s Concerts. In August 2018, he conducted a programme, The Sound of an Orchestra, for the BBC Proms, which was inspired by and re-worked Leonard Bernstein’s televised presentations in New York.

Jennifer Pike was awarded a postgraduate scholarship by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama aged 16, and in 2012 graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Oxford. She made her concerto debut with the Hallé Orchestra aged 11, and her international career was launched the following year when she won the BBC Young Musician and became the youngest major prizewinner in the Menuhin International Violin Competition. She was a BBC New Generation artist from 2008 to 2010 and won the International London Music Masters Award. Her critically-acclaimed discography includes the Sibelius, Rózsa, Schultz and Mendelssohn concertos, the Debussy, Ravel and Franck sonatas, the complete violin and piano works of Janáček and a Polish recital disc released in January 2019.

Patrick Hadley (1899-1973): Kinder Scout Although he was born and spent most of his working life in Cambridge, Hadley came to know and love the areas around Buxton and Whaley Bridge well, beginning with childhood holidays. He was particularly fond of the view from Mam Tor, over Edale, towards Kinder Scout. The Peak District is the setting for what many believe to be the finest of his large-scale choral and orchestral works, The Hills, composed in 1944, based on the story of his parents’ courtship and marriage.

It was preceded by this short orchestral work, composed in 1923, but which so far remains unpublished and unrecorded. It was given its first performance by the Buxton Spa Orchestra.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): The Lark Ascending, Romance for violin and orchestra The Lark Ascending was not quite finished at the outbreak of the First World War, and Vaughan Williams completed and revised it in 1920. Taking its cue from a poem by George Meredith (1828-1909), lines from which are quoted on the score, this apparently unassuming little work pre-echoes something of the deep contemplative stillness which came over a number of Vaughan Williams’s major works in the early 1920s, and which was, as the writer Michael Kennedy observed, his way of expressing his immediate reaction to the First World War, ‘not by anger nor upheaval’ – that would come later, particularly in the tense, acerbic Fourth Symphony of 1931-4 – ‘but by a profounder look into the recesses of the human spirit.’ The solo violin suggests both the bird’s song and its flight and, in the middle section, leads a dance in which the earthy suggestions of folk-song are caught up in its ecstatic flight. At the end the orchestra is silent as the solo part circles higher and higher, eventually passing out of earshot.

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907): Holberg Suite, Op. 40 1. Praeludium (allegro vivace) 2. Sarabande (andante) 3. Gavotte (allegretto) 4. Air (andante religioso) 5. Rigaudon (allegro con brio) ‘Suite in the old style’, to give it its full title, was commissioned for celebrations marking the bicentenary of the birth of the dramatist Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). Although he spent most of his working life in Copenhagen he was, like Grieg, born in Bergen, and the city planned to honour the anniversary on a lavish scale. Grieg wrote the work for piano, reflecting the techniques of early 18th-century keyboard music by composers such as Couperin, Rameau and JS Bach. After the bustling Prelude comes a Sarabande, a slow, dignified tripletime dance. At the centre of the Gavotte is a Musette, a dance tune whose rustic-sounding drone effects imitate the small bagpipes from which it takes its name. The Air, with its intense song-like melody, is followed by a Rigaudon, a brisk, lively dance with a slower middle section.

Ryan Wigglesworth (b 1979): A First Book of Inventions The two principal ideas behind my piece are: firstly, perpetuum mobile, or continuous movement, and secondly, the elaboration of a basic one- or two-part texture. Each of the seven ‘inventions’ that comprise the unbroken nine-minute span of the work are founded on a regular pulse, a pulse that sometimes forms stable ostinati that run for the entire

length of a section, or on other occasions provokes a highly varied and constantly shifting pattern of melodic events.

The seven sections can very briefly be described thus: 1) an active, miniature ‘theme and variations’; 2) the juxtaposition of various fragmentary two-part inventions; 3) a tremolo string ostinato with woodwind interjections, building towards the first climax; 4) an ostinato passing between horns and muted trumpets together with a dialogue for high woodwind and low strings; 5) a very slow canon for string harmonics and pizzicato double basses; 6) a fast one-part invention beginning with solo piccolo, and gradually leading to the second climax; 7) chorale. The work is scored for a modestly-sized orchestra of double woodwind, two horns, two trumpets and strings, and was written for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Symphony No 40 in G minor, K550 1. Molto allegro 2. Andante 3. Menuetto - Trio 4. Finale. Allegro assai The last three symphonies that Mozart wrote, in E flat (K543), G minor (K550), and C major (K551, ‘Jupiter’), belong to the summer of 1788. That Mozart could have produced three such mighty symphonies within the space of about six weeks offers the most eloquent testimony to the fact that there was no let-up in his prodigious creativity during his last years. The G minor symphony originally had no clarinets and Mozart added them afterwards, making slight changes in the oboe parts. This symphony lacks trumpets and timpani, while the two horns, one in B flat and the other in G, are treated quite individually. The first movement begins at once with its principal melody, a somewhat restless one in violins, which becomes increasingly agitated and dramatic as it is taken over by full orchestra. Lyrical repose soon sets in with the graceful and somewhat melancholy melody in B flat major, divided by strings and woodwind. After a return of the opening theme, the development section examines the first melody with the most remarkable harmonic and polyphonic invention, while exploring all the emotion of which it is capable. In the recapitulation, the poignancy of the second theme is intensified through transposition of the key of G minor. Melancholy is even more pronounced in the second movement, which begins with a tender melody using repeated notes, first heard in the strings, then echoed by the horns. A figure used to trim a restatement of this melody by the basses becomes part of the structure of the second theme, in which can be detected an echo of the tender opening subject. The development concerns itself mainly with the first theme, while the second one marks its initial return in the recapitulation. A military sounding minuet leads into a lyrical trio in which timbres of the various instruments are contrasted.

An ascending subject in the strings, to which the full orchestra replies, endows the finale with a nervous energy throughout the movement. The second theme, in B flat major, is first heard in violins and violas, then repeated by clarinet and bassoon.

The opening phrase of the first theme is given an elaborate polyphonic treatment in the development before new depths of feeling are explored in the recapitulation.

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Robert Schumann (1810-56): Myrthen, Op. 25 - No 9: Lied der Suleika (Suleika’s Song), Op. 25 Franz Schubert (1797-1827): Suleika 1, D720, Suleika 2, D717 Suleika 1, D720: Was bedeutet die Bewegung? (What does it mean, this stirring?)

Suleika 2, D717: Ach, um deine feuchten Schwingen (Ah, how I envy you your moist wings)

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

F R I D AY 1 2 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

S O R AYA M A F I , S O P R A N O & A D R I A N K E L LY, P I A N O EAST MEETS WEST

Soraya Mafi studied at the RNCM and the RCM. Awards include the Maggie Teyte Prize (2014), Susan Chilcott Award (2016), and 2nd Prize in the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier Awards. Soraya created Cheryl in Iain Burnside’s Journeying Boys (RCM, 2013). She sang Aminta in Paris, Johanna (Sweeney Todd) for Welsh National Opera, Constance (Dialogues des Carmélites) and First Niece (Peter Grimes) for Grange Park, and Suor Genoveva (Suor Angelica) for Opera North (2016-17). She has appeared in recital at Buxton Festival and at the Crush Room of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in concert with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Seattle Symphony Orchestra. In 2018 she made her debut at the Wigmore Hall with Graham Johnson.

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903): Goethe Lieder Als ich auf dem Euphrat schiffte (As I was sailing on the Euphrates) Hochbeglückt in deiner Liebe (Ecstatically happy in your love) This recital opens with a group of songs setting lyrics from Westöstlicher Divan (Western-Eastern Anthology), the final collection of poetry by the great German poet, dramatist, scientist and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). It is divided into separate books, including the ‘Suleika Book’, poems in praise of love. ‘Suleika’ was the Persian literary persona adopted by poet Marianne von Willemer, with whom Goethe formed a brief but intense relationship towards the end of his life. It culminated in three days spent together in Heidelberg in 1815, after which they never saw each other again, though they kept up a correspondence until Goethe’s death. The five poems set to music in the group of songs we hear today are by Marianne. Schumann’s Lied der Suleika forms part of his song cycle Myrthen (Myrtles), his wedding present to his wife, Clara. The two poems by Marianne that Schubert set are addressed to the east wind and west wind, respectively; they each include an additional verse by Goethe. The two Wolf songs come from his collection of 51 Goethe songs published in 1890.

Georges Bizet (1838-75): Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe, Op. 21 No 4 Bizet does not enjoy a particularly high reputation as a songwriter, the main criticism being that his songs are uneven in quality. In general they resemble Gounod’s lyrical efforts in the same genre with some turn of melody, harmony or rhythm giving a characteristic individuality, as in Chanson d’avril (?1866), whereby it is imbued with a charming freshness. An undoubted masterpiece is Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe (1866), the song of an Arab girl deserted by her white lover. The distilled passion of the singer is emphasised by the rhythmic accompanying figure and chromatic harmony which also lend an exotic background.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Four Songs, Op. 39: No 4: Les roses d’Ispahan - see below Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Mélodies persanes (Persian Songs) 6. Tournoiement (Whirling) The Persian fantasy continues with these French examples.

The last of Fauré’s Four Songs, Op. 39, of 1884, sets a poem by Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), comparing the scent of flowers with his lover’s perfume, and wishing she would return to him. Saint-Saëns’s Six Persian Songs, to words

by Armand Renaud (1836–1895), date from 1880.

Charles Stanford (1852-1924): An Irish Idyll in six miniaturesi, Op. 77 1. Corrymeela 2. The Fairy Lough Benjamin Britten (1913-76): Folk Song Arrangements, Vol. 4: Moore’s Irish melodies No 3: How sweet the answer No 9: The last rose of summer

E(rnest) J(ohn) Moeran (1894-1950): Songs from County Kerry No 6: The Tinker’s Daughter No 9: The Roving Dingle Boy Thomas Dunhill (1877-1946): The Wind Among the Reeds: No 3: The Cloths of Heaven Arnold Bax (1883-1953): Five Irish Songs: No 3: I heard a piper piping Michael Head (1900-76): A piper For the second half of the programme we turn our attention to Ireland. Three of the composers represented had connections of one kind or another with the country: Stanford was wholly Irish, born in Dublin, though he worked for most of his career in London and Cambridge; Moeran had less direct Irish connections, but visited frequently, and was influenced by Irish (as well as English) folk music. Bax had no known family links with Ireland but at the age of 17 became passionately attached to Irish culture after reading Yeats’s poetry. Stanford’s An Irish Idyll (1901), sets words by the Irish-Canadian poet Agnes Shakespeare Higginson (1864-1955), using her pseudonym Moira O’Neill. The fourth volume of Britten’s folk song arrangements (1957), comprises ten of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. Moeran produced three collections of folksong arrangements, including one Irish collection, Songs from County Kerry (1950). Dunhill’s The Wind Among the Reeds (1912), originally for tenor and orchestra, sets four poems by WB Yeats (1865-1939). The third, setting one of Yeats’s bestloved poems, is Dunhill’s best-known song. Bax’s solitary piper appears in the third of his Five Irish Songs (1921), to words by Seosamh MacCathmhaoil, the pseudonym of Joseph Campbell (1881-1944). Michael Head’s more gregarious player (1923) is described in words by Seumas O’Sullivan (1879-1958).

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Mayah Kadish, violin Gianluca Geremia, lute Anastasia Baraviera, cello Marco Crosetto, harpsichord

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

F R I D AY 1 2 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 P M

L A VA G H E Z Z A M O T H E R A N D C H I L D – M I C H A E L A N G E L O ’ S P I E TÀ

Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo soprano

La Vaghezza is an international ensemble specializing in the historically informed performance of music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The five musicians originate from three different continents and now live in the UK, Italy, Austria and France. La Vaghezza was formed in 2016 and that year they were awarded first prize in the Maurizio Pratola International Competition, performed in the Brugge and Utrecht early music festivals, and were chosen as an Emerging European Ensemble on the EEEmerging scheme, supported by partners across Europe. In 2017 they were awarded the EEEmerging ensemble audience prize and gave sold out performances in festivals throughout Italy. In 2018 they became the first group to be awarded all three prizes at the Göttingen Händel Competiton, which led to their live broadcast on NDR Radio, Germany. Highlights include performances in the Festival d’Ambronay, Cité de la Voix, Auditorium de Lyon and Fondazione Pietà dei Turchini in Naples.

The members of La Vaghezza are highly sought after instrumentalists, working closely with artists such as Alfredo Bernardini, Enrico Onofri, Jordi Savall, Rachel Podger, Amandine Bayer, and with ensembles such as Il Pomo d’Oro, Orquestra Barroca de Sevilla, Venice Baroque Orchestra, Modo Antiquo, Les Arts Florissants. The ensemble entered the European EEEmerging programme in 2017 and were given a second year of residencies in 2018. It has been chosen for a third year of support which will see the release of a CD. Lotte Betts-Dean received her BMus in 2012 from the Conservatorium of Music at Melbourne University, a Fellowship at the Australian National Academy of Music in 2014 and a Masters degree at the RAM in 2016. She is Associate Artist with Southbank Sinfonia and is one of the inaugural art song bursars with the Imogen Cooper Music Trust. UK highlights include recitals at festivals and concerts with Southbank Sinfonia. Australian highlights include Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Adelaide Festival, recitals and concerts in Melbourne, a world première in Tasmania, and tours with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Choir of London. Future engagements include a UK-wide tour of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, concerts in France, recitals at Wigmore Hall and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music.

Heinrich Biber (1644-1704): Sonata 1 in D minor, The Annunciation, from the Rosary Sonatas 1. Præludium 2. Variation – Aria. Allegro – Adagio 3. Finale Biber’s Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas comprise a sequence of 15 sonatas for violin and continuo, thought to date from around 1676. They depict the ‘mysteries’ (stages in the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary) which are the focus for meditation during the saying of the Rosary. A virtuosic Passacaglia for solo violiin is added as an appendix.

Tarquinio Merula (c.1594-1665): Hor ch’è tempo di dormire; Fuge et veni dilecte mi Composer, violinist and organist, Tarquinio Merula was born and died in Cremona. He was organist of Bergamo Cathedral from 1646 until his death. Influenced by Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli, he composed vocal music, both sacred and secular, keyboard and instrumental ensemble pieces.

William Byrd (1543-1623): Pavane and Galliard from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

Tarquino Merula (c.1594-1665): Fuge et veni dilecte mi This is a sparkling spiritual song from Merula’s opus XI, which is evocatively entitled ‘Pegasus’, the winged horse. It was originally written for two soprano voices, but in this version the violin and voice respond to each other, with the text based on the last verses of the Song of Solomon. The excitement of the voices is supported by the stable and joyous energy of the walking bass line.

Giovanni Paolo Cima (c. 1570 - fl 1622): Sonata à violino e violone, Concerti Ecclesiastici Cima was born and died in Milan, and was organist at the church of S Maria presso S Celso there from 1595 until his death. His collection Concerti Ecclesiatici (Ecclesiastical Concertos) was published in 1610. The term ‘concerto’, in this period, was applied to a variety of instrumental and vocal pieces. Consisting mostly of vocal works, including a Mass and two Magnificats, Cima’s collection ends with six instrumental pieces.

Ignazio Donati (c. 1575-1638): O glorioso Domina

Byrd composed over 100 keyboard pieces, many included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, the most important manuscript source of English keyboard music from the early 17th century, thought to have been compiled about 1609 to 1619. The pavan and galliard were two popular dances, often paired in instrumental music of the day, the galliard frequently being a variation of the tune for the pavan.

Donati was director of music at Milan Cathedral from 1631.

O Gloriosa Domina (O Glorious Lady) appeared in Flores Praestantissimorum, an anthology of sacred music for between one and four solo voices published in Milan in 1626 (a roughand-ready translation of the title might be ‘Flowers of the most excellent kind’). Donati indicates that it can be performed by either two solo voices, or a voice and an instrument à modo di ecco (in echo style).

Henry Purcell (1659-1695): The blessed Virgin’s expostulation (Tell me, some pitying Angel)

Orazio Michi ‘dell’Arpa’ (1594–1641): Ninna nanna alla napolitana

This is one of Purcell’s contributions to the second volume of Harmonia Sacra, a collection of devotional songs issued by the London publisher Henry Playford in 1693, following the first in 1688. The text, by Poet Laureate Nahum Tate, articulates Mary’s cry of despair when the 12-year-old Jesus goes missing.

It is generally regarded as the closest Purcell came to writing a solo-voice cantata in the Italian style.

Orazio Michi was born in Alife and moved to Rome aged 19. In Rome he worked for the Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto until 1623 and then for the cardinal Maurizio di Savoia. He wrote many vocal works in the form of Canzonette, Arie and Madrigali, many of which are preserved in manuscript form. This song is a very simple Lullaby in the Neapolitan style, in which we can hear the Virgin Mary lulling the baby Jesus to sleep.

Biagio Marini (1594-1663): Sonata La Variata, Op. 8, Sonata Terza, 1629 Born in Brescia, Marini was a violinist at St Mark’s, Venice, from 1615, and also worked in Brescia and Parma, before becoming one of the earliest Italian violin virtuosos to spend a significant amount of time in Germany. He then went on to work in Milan, and Vicenza. His Op. 8 collection of sonatas, sinfonias and other instrumental pieces was published in Venice in 1629.

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Ashley Fripp studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Ronan O’Hora and is studying with Eliso Virsaladze in Italy and at the Guildhall School. He performs as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist throughout Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and Australia. He was awarded the Gold Medal from the Guildhall School. In 2013 Ashley won the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ highest award, The Prince’s Prize. He has performed at festivals and broadcast for BBC and European television and radio. He has collaborated with the National Youth Orchestra and the Kammerorchester der Universität Regensburg (with whom, in 2012, he recorded Chopin’s Piano Concertos No 1 & No 2) and has worked with conductors including Semyon Bychkov, James Judd, and Vasily Petrenko.

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

S AT U R D AY 1 3 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

J O N AT H A N R A D F O R D , S A X O P H O N E A S H L E Y F R I P P, P I A N O - M E L O D Y M A K E R

Jonathan Radford studied at Chetham’s School of Music and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating in 2017 with a Masters degrees in both saxophone and chamber music. He won the 2018 Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition. He has commissioned new works for saxophone and has premièred works by Luis Naón and Betsy Jolas and collaborated with IRCAM in Paris. He is a co-founder of the Yendo Quartet which has taken part in chamber festivals in Europe and released their first CD. Jonathan is grateful for support from the Mills Williams Foundation, the Royal Over-Seas League, the Tunnell Trust, Making Music, the Hattori Foundation, the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, the Musicians’ Company and Help Musicians UK.

ROYAL OVER-SEAS LEAGUE The Royal Over-Seas League is a not-for-profit members’ organisation dedicated to championing international friendship and understanding. They help artists and musicians across the Commonwealth to connect, collaborate and create, while their members enjoy a luxury clubhouse with accommodation in St James’s, London. Through various competitions and scholarships, ROSL is devoted to the career development of talented young professional artists and musicians, offering performance and exhibition opportunities at its London headquarters, and bringing their work to the attention of the professional arts community, the media, and the general public.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Three Preludes, Rhapsody in Blue Gershwin originally wrote these miniature movements for piano, but they have been adapted for numerous instrumental combinations. A bluesy introduction leads into the first movement, the most ‘classical’ of the three, with only the baritone-bass line hinting at the jazzier elements to come.

The second prelude begins as a simple blues-tinged song, the tune passing around the higher instruments, and the lower voices providing a rocking accompaniment. The movement is hijacked halfway through, however, as the baritone saxophone interjects with a boisterous ragtime solo to lighten the mood before the return of the first theme. The final movement sees a continued ragtime influence, the tune dancing to the finish with the lightest hint of swing. The story of the genesis of Rhapsody in Blue has been told and re-told so many times that it is difficult to know who to trust. Apparently, in late 1923, Paul Whiteman had discussed with Gershwin the prospect of writing a ‘jazz’ work for his band. Whiteman’s press agent leaked this information to the New York Tribune together with a date for the première. Four days later Gershwin began work and completed it in three weeks in two-piano form.

More often than not nowadays it is the orchestral version that is heard, the instrumentation having been undertaken

by Ferde Grofé who later expanded his original setting to full symphonic proportions. In truth, several of the most prominent tunes in the Rhapsody are rather pedestrian as melody writing goes and in the hands of a lesser musical imagination than Gershwin’s such material would have fallen flat on its face. It is the way the composer handles these themes, however, that determines the quality of any large-scale work. As it turned out, the Rhapsody marked the turning point in Gershwin’s career; it made him world-famous and rich and at the same time set a new trend in modern music. It made ‘a lady out of jazz’.

Justin Ring (1876-1963) & Frederick W. Hager (1874-1958): Danse Hongroise (Hungarian Dance), arr. Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940) Justin Ring and Fredrick Hager were American instrumentalists and band leaders who worked prolifically in the recording industry in the early years of the 20th century. Hager (real name: Haga) also wrote a number of successful popular songs.

Domenico Savino (1882-1973)/Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940): Dans L’Orient (In the East) Domenico Savino was born in Taranto, Southern Italy, and studied composition, piano and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Naples. He later moved with his family to the USA, where he established a career as an orchestrator and bandleader. He is said to have over 2,500 individual compositions to his name.

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-75): Waltz No 2 from Jazz Suite No 2 Shostakovich wrote his first Suite for Jazz Orchestra in 1934. The second followed four years later, but the score subsequently went missing, and only turned up again in the 1990s. What is generally (and confusingly) known as his ‘Jazz Suite No 2’ is a different work altogether, comprising a compilation of eight numbers from some of his film and theatre scores.

Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940): Valse Llewellyn; Valse Vanité Born in Detroit of German parents, Wiedoeft moved to New York where he became a popular entertainer, doing much to establish the saxophone as a serious instrument. He became known as ‘the Kreisler of the saxophone’, in comparison with the violinist Fritz Kreisler. He composed several saxophone pieces; Valse Vanité became a particular favourite.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad (b 1980): Algernon for alto saxophone and piano (commissioned by Jonathan Radford and the Royal Over-Seas League).

Algernon is loosely inspired by both Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and The Voices Within, a popular science book

by Charles Fernyhough about ‘the history and science of how we talk to ourselves’. I was fascinated by Fernyhough’s description of the development of inner speech from infancy to young adulthood, from social dialogue with others, through private speech (talking to oneself), to inner speech and inner dialogic speech (where we are able to have complex discussions and debates with ourselves without uttering an audible word). The case studies and scientific research detailed in the book gave me many ideas for the melodic and motivic material of this five-minute work for alto saxophone and piano.

At the time of writing I had just re-read Keyes’s science-fiction classic in which Algernon, a laboratory mouse, undergoes surgery to dramatically increase his intelligence (before Charlie Gordon, the first human involved in the experiment, undergoes the same operation). The arc of the novel (where both man and mouse become geniuses before their heightened intelligence deteriorates) influences the structural and emotional shape of this piece. © CF-H 2019 Kurt Weill (1900-50): Two Songs 1. Fürchte dich nicht (Don’t be afraid) from Happy End 2. Zuhälterballade (Tango Ballad) from The Threepenny Opera The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), with book and lyrics by Berthold Brecht, first staged in Berlin in 1928 was the runaway theatrical success of late 1920s Germany. Happy End, Brecht and Weill’s 1929 follow-up, was much less successful. Its plot, strikingly similar to that of Frank Loesser’s 1950 musical Guys and Dolls, concerns a group of Chicago gangsters and the woman from the local Salvation Army centre who falls in love with their leader in her attempts to reform them. Fürchte dich nicht is one of four pastiche hymns Weill composed for the show. The Threepenny Opera is a re-working of the 1720s London hit, The Beggar’s Opera. In Zuhälterballade (literally ‘Pimp’s Ballad’), highwayman Macheath and Jenny, one of the two women he is involved with, recall happy days living in the brothel where Jenny worked.

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Robert Schumann (1810-56): Humoreske in B flat major, Op. 20

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

S U N D AY 1 4 J U LY 2 P M – 3 . 3 0 P M

CLARE HAMMOND, PIANO

Clare Hammond gained a BA at Cambridge University and then studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and City University London, completing a doctorate in 2012. In 2014 she undertook a Panufnik Centenary tour of Poland and co-curated the festival ‘Panufnik 100: a family celebration’ in London. In 2017-18 she performed Edwin Roxburgh’s Concerto for Piano and Winds and Panufnik’s Piano Concerto. This year she gave the première of Uncoiling the River by Kenneth Hesketh and recorded the complete keyboard works of Josef Mysliveček. Clare is grateful for the support of the Fidelio Charitable Trust, Help Musicians UK, Stradivari Trust, Ambache Charitable Trust, British Korean Society, Chandos Memorial Trust, Vernon Ellis Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute, RVW Trust, British Council, Arts Council England, John S Cohen Foundation, the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Hinrichsen Foundation.

Humoreske is the most substantial of three works – the others are Arabesque, Op. 18, and Blumenstück, Op. 19 – which Schumann composed in the winter of 1838-9, during a visit to Vienna. He had gone to explore the possibility of settling there with Clara Wieck, once they were finally able to marry, and in particular of transferring there the music journal which he had helped found in 1833 and had been editing since its early days. Although the trip turned out to be fruitless as far as his future career was concerned, he managed to complete the three new piano works, ‘hoping to elevate myself to the front rank of favourite composers of the women of Vienna.’ ‘Humoreske’ (or ‘humoresque’) was originally a literary term meaning a piece dealing with various human character traits. Schumann was the first to use the term in a musical context, to signify a short humorous or capricious piece. Humoreske comprises a sequence of miniatures, covering a wide range of moods, from introspective to playful. These coalesce into five larger movements, which are, nevertheless, intended to convey the impression of a large, single-movement work.

Supported by John S Cohen Foundation Hinrichsen Foundation

Hywel Davies: Elternszenen (Scenes of Parenthood). World première (commissioned by Clare Hammond with funds from The Hinrischen Foundation and RVW Trust) 1. Somewhere I have never travelled 2. Why not?

3. In the night 4. Invitation to the dance 5. After the storm 6. Twister™ 7. The Box 8. 5,500 Days 9. To Joy Discussing ideas for a new work, Clare and I talked about parenthood - a relatively new experience for her and one that is two decades old for me - and we decided to make the new work about parenthood and model it on Schumann’s Kinderszenen (Scenes of Childhood). As in Schumann’s work, the pieces that comprise Elternszenen are all of a single idea, and feature similar subjects: moods, situations, games etc.

While some of the titles are self-explanatory others are less so: ‘After the storm’ is the stillness after upset, when breathing becomes steady again; ‘Twister™’ is a game developed in the 1960s that, according to the manufacturer, ‘will tie you in knots’; ‘The Box’ indicates how packaging is often more stimulating than its contents – this short piece has eight very short sections (‘The boot of a giant’, ‘A hiding place’, ‘A butterfly’, ‘A lost dog’, ‘The lost dog, now found, runs off with the box’, ‘A dress’, ‘A submarine’, ‘A washing machine (on spin)’ and ‘A spaceship’). ‘5,500 Days’ is when your child is a distant presence somewhere else in the house. Hywel Davies Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Selection from Préludes: 1. Voiles (Book 1) 2. Feuilles mortes (Book 2) 3. Feux d’artifice (Book 2) 4. La Cathédrale engloutie (Book 1) 5. Les Collines d’Anacapri (Book 1) Debussy’s two books of Préludes are in many ways the culmination of his considerable output for piano and showcase the wide range of influences on his style - his admiration for Chopin, his interest in travel and exoticism, the dances of antiquity, legend, art, the natural world and his innate empathy for children. The titles are presented at the end of each piece, almost as an afterthought, and many are ambiguous. Voiles means ‘sails’ or ‘veils’. One account claims that Debussy alludes to the silk veils of dancer Loïe Fuller, while his widow said he referred to the sails of boats. Feuilles mortes (dead leaves), is an exquisitely subtle and melancholy depiction of wind rustling through leaves before they fall slowly to the ground. Feux d’artifice conjures up the Bastille Day celebrations with fireworks, and a brief quote from the Marseillaise. In La Cathédrale engloutie we witness the city of Ys, submerged under the sea, rising above the water each year according to Celtic myth. The ghostly bells of the Cathedral toll before the city sinks again.

Finally, Les Collines d’Anacapri is an exuberant piece that evokes the heat, light and vivid colour of the Mediterranean island.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943): Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, Op. 36 (1931 version) 1. Allegro agitato 2. Non allegro – Lento - L’istesso tempo 3. Allegro molto The number two has great significance in Rachmaninov’s music: his best work always bore that number – the Second Piano Concerto, Second Symphony and the Second Piano Sonata. A fecund period had begun with the success of the Second Piano Concerto (1900–01), and the Second Symphony (1906) staked his claim as a symphonist and immediately expunged the terrible memories of the first performance of his earlier symphony. The Second Piano Sonata, the original version of which was written in 1913, is in B flat minor, emulating Chopin’s masterpiece, a composer on whom Rachmaninov modelled himself – all his greatest piano works were consciously influenced by Chopin.

In 1931 he simplified this score for players less dextrous than himself but was later reconvinced of the merits of the original 1913 version after hearing a performance by Horowitz. In its original form, this sonata makes heavier technical demands on a performer and includes several extended passages of virtuosic writing. The first movement opens with a bold statement in the key of B flat minor and a descending sliver of melody which soon returns transformed into the major tonality. A transition is followed by a short cadenza and then by a second subject with a compound rhythm in the style of a siciliano. It is in the development of this movement that Rachmaninov made the principal changes of the second version. At this point the original version calls for considerable virtuosity before the second subject reappears and the movement closes with the descending melodic figure. The second movement is gentler in mood leading to the Lento in E minor which returns, after a romantic passage in G major, bringing a dynamic climax before reminiscences of the first movement return. The third movement opens with its thematic material emphasised by a descending rush of notes followed by emphatic chords. The second subject is typically romantic and lyrical with both elements being developed before a final recapitulation leads to an emphatic and positive B flat major chord with which the work closes.

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BUXTON OPERA HOUSE

S U N D AY 1 4 J U LY 7 . 3 0 P M – 9 . 3 0 P M

A L I S TA I R M C G O W A N , PIANO

After the success of his piano album and his tour in 2018, Alistair McGowan is back with the show that brings together all his talents. Alongside tracks from the album he will play some other short classic piano pieces, from Gershwin to Grieg, Mompou to Mendelssohn, and Satie to Schubert. Join Alistair as he talks a little about the history of each piece, the composer, and his own connection to the music. Expect a lot of beautiful music (with the odd mistake!), some interesting stories and a sprinkling of his trademark impressions.

Alistair McGowan is an impressionist, stand-up comedian, actor, writer and pianist. He has a degree in English from Leeds University and graduated in1989 from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

He devised and performed Sincerely Noël (a musical tribute to Noel Coward) and, in 2016, Erik Satie’sfaction, in which he portrayed Erik Satie and played several of his piano pieces. He has written plays for Radio 4 and fronted documentaries about Satie and John Field. He has appeared in the West End in Pygmalion, Cabaret, The Mikado and Little Shop of Horrors. Alistair McGowan presents the show that brings together all his talents. Alongside tracks from his piano album he will play some short classic piano pieces, from Gershwin to Grieg, Mompou to Mendelssohn, and Satie to Schubert. Join Alistair as he talks a little about the history of each piece, the composer, and his own connection to the music. Expect a lot of beautiful music (with the odd mistake!), some interesting stories and a sprinkling of his trademark impressions.

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Andrea Haines & Eleonore Cockerham, sopranos Katie Jeffries-Harris & Barnaby Smith, altos Blake Morgan & Sam Dressel, tenors Christopher Moore, baritone VOCES8 presents Sing Joyfully, a programme celebrating the joy and beauty of voices in harmony, featuring music from the Renaissance to Duke Ellington and from their composer-in-residence, Jonathan Dove. The group is joined by the Kinder Children’s Choir. VOCES8 performs internationally and they perform a versatile repertory both a cappella and in collaboration with leading orchestras, conductors and soloists. They give concerts in collaboration with the Academy of Ancient Music, Manchester Camerata, the Edvard Grieg Kor, Hugo Ticciati, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and with baroque violinist Rachel Podger. Highlights include concerts throughout the UK, Europe, the USA and Japan. They have premièred commissions from many composers including Roxanna Panufnik, and in 2019 will première a commission by Jonathan Dove, their Composer in Residence. VOCES8 is passionate about music education and their workshops and masterclasses reach up to 40,000 people a year. Dedicated to supporting young singers, the group each year awards eight choral scholarships linked to the annual Milton Abbey Summer School at which amateur singers of all ages are invited to work and perform with VOCES8. The ensemble is the Associate Ensemble for Cambridge University and delivers a Masters programme in choral studies. They also publish educational material including the VOCES8 Method, available in four languages, which adapt music to enhance development in numeracy, literacy and linguistics. VOCES8 is very grateful for support from Arts Council England, the Merchant Taylors’ Company, the Worshipful Company of Plaisterers, Holman Fenwick Willan and T.M.Lewin.

ST JOHN’S CHURCH

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BARNABY SMITH S U N D AY 1 4 J U LY 8 P M – 9 . 4 5 P M

V O C E S 8 , S I N G J O Y F U L LY

Jonathan Pacey, bass

William Byrd (1539–1623): Sing Joyfully

Kinder Children’s Choir

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47): Denn er hat einen Engeln befohlen über dir

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), arr. Ward Swingle (1927–2015): Bourée

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943): Bogoroditse Devo

Trad. arr. Joshua Pacey (b 1995): Danny Boy

Nat ‘King’ Cole (1919–65): Straighten Up and Fly Right Van Morrison (b 1945) arr. Jim Clements: Moondance Jonathan Dove (b1959) arr. Jim Clements: In Beauty May I Walk Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–94): Magnificat Primi Toni

INTERVAL

Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623): As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594): Dessus le marché d’Arras Antônio Carlos Jobim (1927–94), arr. Naomi Crellin: One Note Samba Luis Demetrio (1931–2007) and Pablo Beltrán Ruiz (1915–2008), arr. by Alexander L’Estrange: Sway Duke Ellington (1899–1974) arr. Ben Parry (b 1965): It Don’t Mean a Thing (arranged by Jim Clements)

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Savitri Grier read music at Oxford and completed her Artist Diploma at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has appeared at Wigmore Hall as a soloist and with the IMS Prussia Cove Ensemble and performed the Elgar Violin Concerto at St John’s Smith Square. During 2019 she will undertake a Beethoven Sonata cycle with pianist Richard Uttley. As a chamber musician she has collaborated with major ensembles. She plays a Matteo Goffriller violin on generous loan from the Aidan Woodcock Charitable Trust. She is grateful for support from Help Musicians UK, the Philharmonia Orchestra/ Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, Hattori Foundation and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Violin Sonata No 2 in G 1. Allegretto 2. Blues. Moderato.

3. Perpetuum mobile. Allegro

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T U E S D AY 1 6 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

S AV I T R I G R I E R , V I O L I N YUNDU WANG, PIANO

Yundu Wang is an American pianist based in London. She has performed throughout the UK, Europe, the USA, and Russia. She is a member of the Clara Trio. This past year she has worked on chamber music with renowned ensemble players. Her prizes in piano competitions include the Honors Competition at New England Conservatory, the Seiler Competition in Germany, the Julia Crane Competition in New York and Gavrilin International Piano Competition in Russia. Recently she was awarded the Glass Sellers’ Beethoven Prize at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she is completing her doctorate. Her studies are generously supported by the Guildhall School Trust and by YCAT.

The Violin Sonata was Ravel’s last piece of chamber music. He began it in 1923, but work proceeded slowly, with long interruptions, and he did not finish it until 1927. He consciously set out to exploit what he saw as the fundamental incompatibility of violin and piano tone. The opening of the first movement is typical, with its bright, uncluttered sound. After a while the piano begins hinting at a long lyrical tune which the violin takes over, and which dominates the rest of the movement. Ravel’s love of jazz comes to the fore in the second movement. There is a powerful emotional undercurrent to the strummed chords and brittle strutting rhythms: when the violin introduces the main theme Ravel marks it ‘nostalgico’. After a hesitant start to the finale, the violin settles into a pattern of racing figuration which never lets up, becoming more and more flamboyantly virtuosic as the movement proceeds.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Violin Sonata No 1 in A, Op. 13 1. Allegro molto 2. Andante 3. Allegro vivo 4. Allegro quasi presto

In 1872 Saint-Saëns introduced Fauré to the famous contralto Pauline Viardot, whose significance to Fauré became both musical and personal. She was much taken with this dark, engaging, intense youth and took a strong interest in his career. The Viardots wanted Fauré to establish himself firmly by writing a traditional opera. Instead, his first chamber work, the Violin Sonata of 1875, dedicated to Pauline’s violinist son Paul, was a true sign of the direction his talents would take. The Sonata represents a powerful shift in both the emotional temperature of Fauré’s music and its harmonic daring. In contrast to his early songs and instrumental pieces, its emotional world is positively explosive.

It is filled with a sense of élan that illuminates its character with a sweeping passionate intensity, unlike anything that he had composed before.

It includes a barcarolle-like second movement with a characteristic ‘heartbeat’ rhythm to which Fauré would return several times throughout his compositional life; there is a fleeting witty scherzo, and the first and last movements soar with elation.

The finale features an important melodic element that Fauré used many times, a simple rising scale characterised by syncopated rhythms. The work’s spontaneity and freshness has led to its growing popularity in violin recitals.

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D I A L O G U E S O F T H E S O U L – B A C H C A N TATA S F O R S O P R A N O A N D B A S S T U E S D AY 1 6 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 P M

THE ENGLISH CONCERT 114

Kristian Bezuidenhout, director Rachel Redmond, soprano Matthew Brook, bass The English Concert, directed by their acclaimed guest principal conductor Kristian Bezuidenhout, bring the richness of Bach’s music to the festival together with Matthew Brook, one of the greatest Bach singers today, and the young soprano Rachel Redmond, nominated in 2018 for the South Bank Sky Arts Opera Breakthrough award. The English Concert is noted for the world-renowned quality, ambition and variety of its live and recorded output; outstanding in the zeal of its players for performing together; and unwavering in its desire to connect with its audiences. Under the artistic direction of Harry Bicket and principal guest director Kristian Bezuidenhout, The English Concert has a reputation for combining urgency, passion and fire with precision, delicacy and beauty. Its artistic partners reflect and enhance their pursuit for new ways to bring music to life. Joyce DiDonato, Dame Sarah Connolly, Iestyn Davies, Alison Balsom, Trevor Pinnock, Dominic Dromgoole, Tom Morris and many more have brought their notable skills to individual projects and continue to help the orchestra shape the way it performs. One cornerstone of The English Concert’s annual cycle is its international Handel Opera tour. From an ongoing relationship with Carnegie Hall, their itinerary now regularly takes in the Theater an der Wien, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Elbphilharmonie and Barbican Hall, and continues to add new venues to its roster. The orchestra’s regular London series allows it to explore a radically different path, presenting programmes that challenge, inspire and fire both the orchestra and its home audience. This year sees the launch of The English Concert’s new partnership with Garsington Opera, beginning with performances of Monterverdi’s Vespers of 1610 this summer.

Kristian Bezuidenhout is equally at home on the fortepiano, harpsichord, and modern piano. Born in South Africa, he began his studies in Australia, completed them in New York, and now lives in London. Aged 21, he won first prize in the Bruges Fortepiano Competition. Kristian is Principal Guest Director with the English Concert. In 201819, he play-directs programmes with Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester and English Concert. As a soloist he performs with leading British, European and American orchestras and conductors. Recitals and chamber music take him to Oxford, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Vienna, Zurich, New York, Washington DC, Montreal and Vancouver.

Matthew Brook, bass-baritone, has worked extensively as a soloist with conductors such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Richard Hickox, Sir Charles Mackerras, Harry Christophers, Christophe Rousset, Paul McCreesh and Sir Mark Elder. Highlights include Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas with the Handel and Haydn Society and Ariodante with Staatstheater Stuttgart. Matthew has sung in Bach’s St John Passion and B minor Mass, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, and Herod / Father in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ. He toured in Bach cantatas with the Monteverdi Choir, the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, and Early Music Vancouver, and in Bach’s St Matthew Passion with the OAE, and with Gli Angeli Genève.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1759): Cantata 32 – Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen, BWV 32 Cantatas formed the most important musical element in the main Sunday and feast-day services in the Lutheran Church, and composing them formed an important part of Bach’s duties in his posts at Weimar (from 1708 to 1717) and Leipzig (from 1723). The three we hear today are all dialogues for soprano and bass soloists, representing the Christian soul and Jesus, intended for the period following Christmas Day. Liebster Jesu mein Verlangen (Beloved Jesus, my Desire), for the first Sunday of Epiphany, was first heard on 13 January 1726. The Soul’s longing to find Jesus is answered by his assurance that he can be found in the temple. They join in a duet as the Soul’s pain is assuaged.

On 6 April 1723 the Hamburg Admiralty, which directed the operations of the city’s port, marked the centenary of its foundation. The orchestral suite that Telemann composed for the commemorative banquet survives in two manuscript copies.

In one it is entitled Wasser-Ouvertur (Water Overture, or Suite), in the other ‘Hamburger Ebb’ und Fluht’ (Hamburg Ebb and Flood); both titles are commonly used today. The suite is in the French style popular in German instrumental music of the period. The overture comprises two sections, each of which is repeated: the first is slow and stately; the second is fast and bustling, ending with a further slow passage. The dances that follow have descriptive titles, many of them evoking Greek mythological figures with watery connections.

The opening lines of the individual movements can be translated as follows:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1759): Cantata 57 – Selig ist der Mann, BWV 57

1. Aria: Beloved Jesus, my desire, tell me, where can I find you? (Soprano) 2. Recitative: How is it that you were looking for me? (Bass) 3. Aria: Here, in my Father’s shrine, let a saddened spirit find me (Bass) 4. Recitative: Ah, holy and mighty God, then I will look for constant comfort and help with you (Soprano, Bass) 5. Aria: Now all torments vanish (Soprano, Bass) 6. Chorale: My God, open for me the gates of such grace and kindness

1. Aria: Blessed is the man who endures temptation (Bass) 2. Recitative: Ah! This sweet consolation refreshes my heart (Soprano) 3. Aria: I would wish for death if you, my Jesus, did not love me (Soprano) 4. Recitative: I stretch out my hand to you (Soprano, Bass) 5. Aria: Yes, I can strike the enemies who constantly accuse you before me (Bass) 6. Recitative: In my bosom lie rest and life (Bass, Soprano) 7. Aria: I swiftly end my earthly life (Soprano) 8. Chorale: Dispose yourself, beloved, according to my pleasure; and believe that I will always and forever remain your soul’s friend

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): Water Music, suite in C Major, TWV 55:C3 1. Ouverture 2. Sarabande. Thetis Asleep 3. Bourée. Thetis Awaking 4. Loure. Neptune in Love 5. Gavotte. The Naiads Playing 6. Harlequinade. Joking Triton 7. Storming Aeolus 8. Menuet. The Pleasant Zephyr 9. Gigue. Ebb and Flow 10. Canarie. The Merry Sailors

Rachel Redmond, soprano, made her stage débuts at the Opera Comique (Paris), The Théâtre du Capitole (Toulouse) and Brooklyn Academy of Music with Les Arts Florissants under William Christie. Concert performances with William Christie have included Angel Jephtha, Captif in Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, and Belinda Dido and Aeneas. She recently sang Second Woman Dido and Aeneas at Aix-en-Provence Festival and Susanna The Marriage of Figaro for English Touring Opera. Rachel is a soloist with many companies and festivals. Her engagements with the Dunedin Consort have included Bach St Matthew Passion and Magnificat and Monteverdi Madrigals. This performance at Buxton marks her début with The English Concert.

Selig ist der Mann (Blessed is the Man who Endures Temptation) was composed for the second day of Christmas, 1725. 26 December is also the feast-day of St Stephen, regarded as the first Christian martyr, which is what the text focuses on. The cantata opens in a fairly subdued frame of mind, but becomes more cheerful with the bass soloist’s second aria.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1759): Cantata 58 – Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, BWV 58 1. Aria with Chorale: Oh God, how much unhappiness I meet with now! / Just be patient, my heart! It is an evil time! (Soprano, Bass) 2. Recitative: Even if the evil world persecutes you, you still have God as your friend (Bass) 3. Aria: I am content in my suffering (Soprano) 4. Recitative: If the world cannot stop persecuting and hating me, the hand of God will show me another country (Soprano) 5. Aria with Chorale: I have a difficult journey ahead of me / Let your hearts be be comforted (Soprano, Bass) Cantata No 58, the second of two Bach cantatas to open with these words, was written for the first Sunday of the New Year, 5 January 1727, though only a version performed a few years later has survived. The libretto combines a contemplation of earthly suffering with allusions to Mary’s and Joseph’s escape to Egypt with the infant Jesus.

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Benjamin Frith, piano David Le Page, violin Robin Ireland, viola Richard Jenkinson, cello The Frith Piano Quartet was formed in 2000 by the pianist Benjamin Frith, violinist Robert Heard, violist Louise Williams and cellist Richard Jenkinson. The group have performed the complete piano quartets of Brahms, Dvořák, Fauré and Mozart but also take a keen interest in performing gems that are not so often heard in the concert hall by, for instance, Frank Bridge, Arthur Bliss and Richard Strauss. In 2018 Robert Heard and Louise Williams retired and the Quartet was reformed adding violinist David Le Page and violist Robin Ireland.

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

W E D N E S D AY 1 7 J U LY 1 2 P M – 1 P M

FRITH PIANO QUARTET

with John Tattersdill, double bass

Benjamin Frith, piano, was born in South Yorkshire in 1957 and from the age of ten studied with Fanny Waterman. His international career expanded after the award of a Gold Medal at the 1989 Arthur Rubinstein piano Master Competition in Israel.

David Le Page, violin, was born on Guernsey and began playing the violin at the age of seven. He entered the Yehudi Menuhin school aged 12 and has since forged a diverse career as a performer, composer, producer and arranger. He is leader of the Stratford-upon-Avon- based Orchestra of the Swan and is President of the European String Teachers Association (UK). He plays on a violin made in 1874 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837): Quintet in E flat major, Op. 87 1. Allegro e risoluto assai 2. Minuet and Trio: allegro con fuoco 3. Largo 4. Finale: allegro agitato Hummel was one of the many virtuoso pianist-composers whose music forms a link between the eighteenth-century classical style and the Romanticism of the early nineteenth century. As a child prodigy he was a pupil of Mozart, and later succeeded Haydn as Kapellmeister to the Austro-Hungarian Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, and also worked in Stuttgart and Weimar, as well as travelling widely as a performer. The Quintet was written in October 1802. Although its key is designated as E flat major, for much of the time the music is in the minor. The first movement is dominated by the terse unison phrase for the full ensemble with which it begins. The so-called Minuet is, in fact, a driving scherzo that blends something of Beethoven’s dynamism with an easygoing, dance-like charm we tend to associate with Schubert. The brief Largo is a brooding meditation that is really an extended upbeat to the fiery rondo finale. This follows without a break, and returns us to the turbulent mood of the first movement.

Robin Ireland, viola, is Head of Chamber Music and Senior Viola Tutor at the Birmingham Conservatoire and also teaches abroad. During 2011 he was chamber music coach at the Yehudi Menuhin School. In 2017 he worked with Ensemble 360, the Elias Quartet and the Danel Quartet, and gave performances of Bach’s C major Sonata for unaccompanied violin transcribed for viola. In 2018 he performed Walton’s Viola Concerto with the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Piano Quintet in A major, D667 (The Trout) 1. Allegro vivace 2. Andante 3. Scherzo: Presto 4. Andantino – Allegretto 5. Allegro giusto Schubert’s A major Quintet is one of the earliest significant works for piano and four string instruments. It is a particularly amiable work with its haunting melodies and consistently light spirit, sitting comfortably within the divertimento genre and making few demands on the listener. The presence of the double bass rather than a second cello, and the peculiarities of the piano writing, lend the Quintet a degree of individuality.

Relaxed throughout, its five movements alternating quick and slow, it is a cleverly conceived contest between the lyrical nature of the strings and the rhythmic and decorative potential of the piano. The work was commissioned by Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy amateur cellist. There are signs, though, of hasty composition: for example, in the first movement the recapitulation is a transposed repetition of the exposition with two sections omitted while the following slow movement consists of 60 bars of music heard twice.

There is a touch of nostalgia in this movement especially in the opening melody, first heard on the piano, then repeated by the violin. Two other wistful tunes quickly follow, the first in viola and cello and the second a rhythmic idea for the piano. The third movement scherzo and the finale are based on Austrian and Hungarian folk melodies. Between these two dance movements comes the Andante with its five variations on Schubert’s song Die Forelle (The Trout); unusually, variations three and four have a prominent part for the double bass. In no other large work did Schubert produce so many ingratiating tunes, all of them full of irrepressible gaiety; the quintet’s freshness and spontaneity betray the speed with which it was written.

Richard Jenkinson, cello, started to play at the age of five and studied with Florence Hooton until her sudden death in 1988. Whilst at the Guildhall he won all the cello and chamber music prizes.

In 1998 he was appointed principal cello with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, since when he has been playing with this Quartet and also in a string quartet. He plays a cello c. 1662

by G.B. Grancino of Milan.

John Tattersdill, double bass, was born in Harrogate. He graduated from the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1972. John joined the CBSO in 1973 and has been a member of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group since its formation in 1987. He has had a close relationship with the Maggini Quartet with whom he’s performed most of the chamber music repertoire requiring a double bass. More recently he’s been playing with the Frith Piano Quartet and Innovation Chamber Ensemble.

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Adrian Chandler, director & violin Violin 1: Joanne Green, Mayah Kadish, Oliver Cave Violin 2: Camilla Scarlett, Simon Kodurand, Ellen Bundy Viola: Jim O’Toole, Thomas Kirby Cello: Vladimir Waltham (solo & continuo), Carina Drury Double bass: Carina Cosgrave Theorbo: Lynda Sayce

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LA SERENISSIMA

I M A E S T R I I TA L I A N I W E D N E S D AY 1 7 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 . 1 5 P M

Harpsichord: Giulia Nuti La Serenissima, led from the violin by Adrian Chandler, is one of Europe’s most dynamic baroque groups. In this programme they focus on concerti and overtures by two great Italian composers, contemporaries whose careers couldn’t have been more different: Vivaldi was rarely out of the international limelight; Brescianello never found it. Brescianello’s output was relatively limited, whilst Vivaldi’s prolificacy was legendary, second only perhaps to that of Telemann. Yet despite their apparent differences, both composers produced concerti of the highest order, brimming with energy and virtuosity. Vivaldi’s powerful influence can be found in much of Brescianello’s music. Did Brescianello meet Vivaldi whilst working in Venice as a valet for the exiled Empress of Bavaria in the early 1710s?

Vivaldi’s place in the pantheon of great composers is not in question, but Brescianello’s concerti and suites make a compelling case for his admittance to this select group.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): Concerto for violin, strings & continuo in E minor, RV 281 1. Allegro 2. Largo 3. Allegro Of Vivaldi’s 350 or so concertos for solo instrument and strings, about two thirds are for his own instrument, the violin. Many of them were not published in his lifetime and are therefore hard to date with any accuracy. Like the following three concertos in today’s concert, the E minor Concerto, RV 281, comes from a manuscript in the National University Library, Turin.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): Concerto for strings & continuo in A, RV 158 1. Allegro molto 2. Andante molto 3. Allegro The Concerto in A, RV 158, is actually headed ‘concerto ripieno’ in the manuscript. The term ‘ripieno’ is normally applied to the main body of instruments in a baroque concerto, as distinct from the solo instrument(s).

Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello (c. 1690–1758): Overture con Una Chiacona for strings & continuo in D 1. Largo – Fuga 2. Aria: Allegro 3. Aria – Presto 4. Rondeau 5. Bourée (sic) 6. Aria – Adagio 7. Chiacona Reconstruction (and notes)

by Adrian Chandler Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello was probably born in Bologna but is first documented in Venice (1714) working as a valet for the exiled Electress Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska of Bavaria.

She took a keen interest in La Serenissima’s musical activities and was known to be an ardent supporter of Vivaldi who was her preferred choice of Kapellmeister when she returned to Munich in 1715; her husband vetoed the appointment.

Brescianello moved with his employer to the Bavarian capital where he was enlisted as a violinist in the Electoral Bavarian Hofkapelle. Following the death of Oberkapellmeister Johann Christoph Pez in Stuttgart, October 1716, Brescianello successfully applied for the post of Director musices at the court of Württemberg. Even though his initial brief was to take charge only of chamber music, Brescianello, perhaps with one eye on the post of Oberkapellmesiter, decided to dedicate his ‘opera pastorale’ Tisbe to the Duke in January 1718; he eventually acceded to his preferred position in 1721. The lone opera Tisbe opens with a French overture, a model to which

Brescianello returned several times particularly in his orchestral suites. This art form was almost exclusively the domain of the German composers (in particular Telemann and Fasch); Brescianello was about the only Italian composer to use this genre. Of the 6 suites, it is this Orchestral Suite in D major that is particularly eye-catching on account of its gargantuan Chiaccona that closes the work.

INTERVAL Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello (c.1690–1758): Concerto for violin, cello, strings & continuo in B flat 1. Allegro 2. Adagio 3. Allegro Although his use of harmony and counterpoint is still decidedly Germanic, Brescianello’s concertos are much more Italian, if not Vivaldian in their outlook. Most of Brescianello’s concertos were written for solo violin and strings, though he also composed the occasional double concerto too, such as this Concerto for violin and cello or bassoon. This virtuosic work has a particularly appealing slow movement that is modelled on the famous Folia, whose jaunty harmonic framework was used by composers Europe-wide.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): ‘Concerto Madrigalesco’ for strings and continuo in D minor, RV 129 1. Adagio – Allegro 2. Adagio 3. Allegro These two works are examples of what have come to be known as Vivaldi’s ‘ripieno’ concertos. In effect, these are like concertos in structure, but with no separately designated solo parts.

The heading ‘Concerto Madrigalesco’ on the manuscript of RV 129 indicates that it is written in a style closer to that of vocal music. Parts of the concerto share material with Vivaldi’s Kyrie in G minor for double choir, RV 587, and his Magnificat in G minor, RV 610. There is no tempo marking in the manuscript at the start of the last movement, but it is clearly meant to be quick.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): Concerto for violin, strings & continuo in A, RV 353 1. Allegro 2. Andante 3. Allegro This group of Vivaldi concertos ends with a virtuoso work for solo violin, written, no doubt, for either himself to play, or for one of his extraordinarily gifted pupils at the Ospedale della Pietà, the Venetian girls’ orphanage where he taught violin from 1703.

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

T H U R S D AY 1 8 J U LY 3 P M – 4 P M

RODERICK WILLIAMS, BARITONE IAIN BURNSIDE, PIANO

Roderick Williams is a British baritone and composer whose repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary music, in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital. He is a regular guest at most UK opera houses and has sung world premières of operas by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, and Michael van der Aa. Roderick has sung with all the BBC orchestras and other major British, European and American ensembles. His many UK festival appearances include the BBC Proms (at the Last Night in 2014). Opera engagements include Don Alfonso and Pollux for ENO, Toby Kramer in Van der Aa’s Sunken Garden in the Netherlands, Lyon and London, Van der Aa’s After Life at Melbourne State Theatre, Eugene Onegin for Garsington, Billy Budd for Opera North, and Papageno and Ulysses for the Royal Opera House. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera two years running.

Roderick Williams is an accomplished recital artist who can be heard at venues and festivals throughout Europe. He appears regularly on Radio 3 both as a performer and a presenter. In 2017-18 he prepared all three Schubert song-cycles for performance at the Wigmore Hall. His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams, Berkeley, and Britten operas and an extensive repertoire of English song with pianist Iain Burnside. Roderick is also a composer and has had works premièred at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Berlin Philharmonie and live on national radio. He was appointed OBE in 2016.

Iain Burnside is a pianist who appears in recital with the world’s leading singers. He is also a programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition. His recordings straddle an eclectic repertoire from Beethoven and Schubert to the cutting edge, as in the Gramophone award-winning NMC Songbook. Recent recordings include the complete Rachmaninov songs with seven outstanding Russian artists. Burnside’s passion for English Song is reflected in acclaimed CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams, many with baritone Roderick Williams.

Away from the piano, Burnside is active as a writer and broadcaster. As presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Voices, he won a Sony Radio Award. For Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Burnside devised a number of singular theatre pieces. A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was performed at the Barbican Centre and the Cheltenham Festival, and later broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Armistice Day. His Swansong, was premièred at the 2018 Kilkenny Festival and also played in Milton Court. Highlights include performances of the three Schubert song-cycles with Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall. A CD release of songs by Nikolai Medtner launched a major series of Russian Song at Wigmore Hall in 2018.

Iain Burnside is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Schwanengesang, D957 1. Liebesbotschaft (Love’s Message) 2. Kriegers Ahnung (Warrior’s Foreboding) 3. Frühlingssehnsucht (Spring Longing) 4. Ständchen (Serenade) 5. Aufenthalt (Resting Place) 6. In der Ferne (Far Away) 7. Abschied (Farewell) 8. Der Atlas (Atlas) 9. Ihr Bild (Her Picture) 10. Das Fischermädchen (The Fisher Maiden) 11. Die Stadt (The Town) 12. Am Meer (By the Sea) 13. Der Doppelgänger (The Apparition) 14. Die Taubenpost (Pigeon Post) Poems: Nos 1-7: Rellstab (1799-1860); Nos 8-13: Heine (17971856); Nos 14: Seidl (1804-75) The two poets Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860) and Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) belong exclusively to Schubert’s last year.

Each is responsible for a group of songs having that distinctive tone which marks them off as a separate entity. Schubert had intended to publish a collection of songs on Rellstab texts and he began, early in 1828, by setting two. Later in the year he did further work on Rellstab’s poems and completed seven more songs; these are as famous as the first two are obscure. They were published posthumously as the first seven of 14 songs known collectively as Schwanengesang, but it was certainly not Schubert’s intention to have these songs grouped together; it was, in fact, a doubtful venture on the part of his brother Ferdinand, and the publisher Tobias Haslinger.

Apart possibly from Frühlingssehnsucht and In der Ferne, the Rellstab songs of Schwanengesang are all well known and very popular. Liebesbotschaft is the song of a contented lover, who sends greetings to his sweetheart; he confides them to the brook, which is given expression by Schubert’s inexhaustible power of inventing piano images to represent flowing water.

Krieger’s Ahnung is the last of Schubert’s episodic songs; the soldier’s presentiment of his death in coming battle is all the more bitter because of his happy love. Ständchen is an entrancing serenade which has, sadly, been cheapened by excessive popularity. In Aufenthalt the storm and rocky landscape give Schubert the opportunity to depict them in the relentless drive of the piano chords and a boldly drawn voice part. The last of the Rellstab songs is Abschied. The ‘farewell’ is said by a student to everything he knows as he rides his pony and leaves the town for the last time. It is a captivating song, the trotting of the pony being heard in the staccato quavers of the piano.

The six poems by Heine were chosen by Schubert from the first part of a series of lyrics called Die Heimkehr (The Homecoming) - the title of each song was given by Schubert. It is doubtful if the order in which they appear in Schwanengesang is according to Schubert’s wish, for it differs substantially from the order in Die Heimkehr. Heine’s lyrics are autobiographical and the sequence, although not narrative, is coherent. The altered order in Schwanengesang destroys this coherence and gives us an unconnected group of songs in which Das Fischermädchen, for example, seems out of place. It should actually be the first song and as such would introduce us to the woman whom the poet loved and lost.

Das Fischermädchen establishes the world of Schubertian lyricism at its happiest and most endearing. The next two songs, Am Meer and Die Stadt, are settings of poems with the sea as a very important factor in the conveying of the heavily charged emotions. Just a casual glance shows that they were published in the wrong order, an arrangement which has obscured the fact that they actually form a pair of songs. It is doubtful whether Schubert could have depicted the sea more vividly if he had lived by it all his life. In Am Meer the calm diatonic harmony supports a melody of great beauty; the music is full of the lovers’ heartbreak. In Die Stadt the poet looks towards the distant shore from a rowing boat and a fitful wind disturbs the grey waters.

A ray from the sun breaks through revealing the town where he loved and lost. The last of the Heine songs is the celebrated Der Doppelgänger. The midnight emptiness of the streets and the vision of the spectre which mocks the lover’s agony in the past years, inspired Schubert to compose a song that is far and away his finest use of the blend of declamation and song. The closing phrase, subsiding almost to inaudibility as the silence and darkness of the streets reassert themselves, is the most affecting in Schubert, full of heartache and protest.

The poet gazes on the portrait of his lost love in Ihr Bild.

The extreme economy by which Schubert conveys the loss, the illusion of a smile on her lips, and the tears which cause that illusion, is pure genius. Der Atlas describes the burden of unsatisfied love borne by the poet. It is a trenchant and passionate outcry embracing wide-ranging harmonies called on to convey the poet’s heartbreak and wounded pride.

Schwanengesang closes with Johann Gabriel Seidl’s (1804-75) Die Taubenpost. There is no suggestion here of the depths which Schubert had plumbed in the Heine songs. This cheerful poem relates the confidences of a happy lover whose thoughts fly to his sweetheart as hers, he knows, fly to him; the carrier pigeon of the title who conveys the messages is ‘longing’.

Die Taubenpost is Schubert’s last song: within a month of its composition, he was dead.

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VICTORIA STRING QUARTET

TCHAIKOVSKY CYCLE THURSDAY 18 JULY, 12 PM - 1.15PM

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Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Quartet in B flat major, Op. 76 No 4 (‘Sunrise’) 1. Allegro con spirito 2. Adagio 3. Menuetto: Allegro 4. Finale: Allegro ma non troppo The six quartets of Op. 76, and the two of Op. 77, are the rich final harvest of Haydn’s long experience with the genre. Op. 76 was composed between 1796 and 1797, commissioned by Count Joseph Erdödy, a member of an aristocratic Viennese family with keen musical interests, but whose precise relationship to Haydn is unclear.

Op. 76 No 4 takes its 19th-century English nick-name from the opening theme which soars through an octave and a half on the first violin over a sustained chord on the lower instruments.

Benedict Holland studied violin at the RAM and the RNCM . He was a founder member of the Matisse Piano Quartet and is a member of the Pleyel Ensemble. Ben is a champion of contemporary composers and their music, and plays in the ensemble Psappha. He has been Leader of Sinfonia ViVa since 2001 and its Artistic Advisor since 2006, appearing as both director and soloist. He has played concertos by Weill, Arnold, Vaughan Williams, Vivaldi and Mozart. Ben is a keen teacher, with classes at the RNCM (professor in violin since 2016) and Chetham’s School of Music.

He also undertakes consultative classes in contemporary techniques for the Birmingham Conservatoire and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Ben’s violin is a rare Rogeri of 1710.

The second movement, a particularly slow one for Haydn, is a profoundly still meditation. The Minuet is vigorous with a touch of peasant earthiness, which comes into its own in the central trio section, where 18th-century elegance is abandoned for something more mysterious. The genial last movement begins at a fairly steady tempo which continues through most of the movement, until Haydn springs one of his surprises in the lengthy coda, where the music gets faster, then faster still, as it races towards its exuberant conclusion.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93): Quartet No 1 in D major, Op. 11 1. Moderato e simplice 2. Andante cantabile 3. Scherzo. Allegro non tanto e con fuoco 4. Allegro giusto With this composition, written in 1871, hardly less than with the Romeo and Juliet overture which preceded it, Tchaikovsky’s maturity is

Catherine Yates studied at the RNCM, Yale University and the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies. A keen chamber musician, she became a member of the Sorrel Quartet in 1989, performing and broadcasting at home and abroad and recording the complete quartets of Shostakovich, the major quartet works of Britten and a much lauded disc of Elgar. In July 2007 Catherine was appointed Principal 2nd Violin with the Hallé and she held this post for six years prior to her appointment in 2013 as Deputy Head of Strings at the RNCM. She combines her work in education with a busy freelance career as guest principal with many orchestras and she continues to enjoy performing as a chamber musician on both violin and viola.

fully established. Although the medium was new to him, it is nonetheless brilliantly exploited and his mastery of the technique of writing for strings is demonstrated beyond doubt.

Moreover, the style is distinctly his own. An example of this is the second subject of the first movement being differentiated from the first not only in character but, more importantly, in speed; and the recapitulation of the first subject is derived from previous material. The beautiful Andante cantabile slow movement, which is said to have moved Tolstoy to tears when he heard it, is based on a folk-song reputedly sung by a carpenter outside Tchaikovsky’s window at Kamenka. This is a movement of charming simplicity not unworthy of another

composer, who was later to be influenced to some extent by Tchaikovsky’s quartets – Dvořák. The Scherzo, suggestive of Borodin in its sprightliness, has an oriental quality and uses flexible alternation of two and three beats in a bar, while the Trio is contained in a tight rhythmic structure. A dramatic first theme opens the Finale; this is treated in imitation later in the movement. A second theme follows in B flat, Russian in mood but in a slow tempo and also heard in imitation before the coda tests the sonority of all four instruments to their limits.

As a whole the, Quartet reveals a fine understanding of the medium and succeeds in combining a fondness for classicism without losing the composer’s individuality and character.

FRIDAY 19 JULY 12PM – 1.15PM

2. Scherzo. Allegro giusto 3. Andante ma non tanto 4. Finale. Allegro con moto

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Quartettsatz in C minor, D703 1. Allegro assai 2. Andante Of the various string quartet projects left unfinished by Schubert, the Quartettsatz, written in December 1820, is the only one to have entered the regular repertoire. This outcome is amply merited by the hushed intensity of the music, which dashes past at a tremendous pace while hardly ever rising above a pianissimo dynamic. Cast in a modified sonata form, the movement anticipates some of Schubert’s last works in expanding the traditional number of principal subjects from two to three. Incompletion of the work is a tragedy comparable to the abandonment of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. The Quartettsatz is at once intense, eventful, and above all compact. Schubert enters a new emotional world, glimpsing many facets of anguish in a few pages of concentrated and tightly-knit music. The agitated first theme gives way to more consolatory ideas, but the initial momentum is never lost, and the pithy return of the volatile opening at the end of the movement sets the seal on a compact, circular unity. The intensity of the music was sustained in an Andante in A flat which was to have been the second movement of this C minor Quartet but, for reasons unknown, Schubert broke off after about 40 bars. The loss is ours.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93): Quartet No 2 in F major, Op. 22 1. Adagio - moderato assai

Susie Mészáros is a member of the Chilingirian Quartet.

At 17 she was a string finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year. After studying at the Yehudi Menuhin School she became Principal Viola with the Camerata Salzburg. Susie was leader of the Fitzwilliam Quartet, Prometheus Ensemble and concert master of Kent Opera. She has appeared as soloist with the BBC Symphony, BBC Concert and BBC Welsh orchestras. Susie teaches violin, viola and chamber music at the RNCM and the RCM. She has been guest principal with the Philharmonia, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and regularly sits on juries for international quartet competitions. She plays on a viola by Jacob Fendt.

Composed between late December 1873 and the middle of January 1874, Tchaikovsky’s Second String Quartet is on a more ambitious scale than his First. Unusually, he seemed wholly pleased with the work. After a performance in St Petersburg in the autumn, he wrote to his brother Modest, ‘None of my pieces has ever flowed out of me so easily and simply. I wrote it almost in one sitting.’ Two years later he wrote to another of his brothers, Anatoly, ‘If I’ve written anything in my life that flowed spontaneously from the very depths of my soul, then it was the first movement of this quartet.’ The searching slow introduction leads, via an extravagant flourish for the first violin, to the main part of the first movement. Apparently easy-going at first, it sees inner tensions quickly coming to the surface, though the mood lightens from time to time later, and the ending is unclouded.

The second movement is based on a pattern of two twobeat bars followed by one of three beats, giving its rhythmic character an amiably lop-sided feel. The waltz-like central trio section is more regular in this respect. The lyrical third movement is the emotional heart of the work. It builds to an expansively passionate central climax before the poignant ending. An energetic unison figure for all four instruments abruptly shatters the atmosphere at the start of the finale. A central episode sees the second violin turn it into the theme of a vigorous fugue, and the quartet ends in a torrent of high spirits.

Victoria Simonsen’s musical life incorporates solo, chamber music and orchestral concerts as well as teaching at the RNCM. She was born in New Zealand, and is based in London. She studied at the RNCM with Karine Georgian and Ralph Kirshbaum, and in 2006 won the school’s highest award, the Gold Medal. She was a Chamber Music fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and studied with Julius Berger in Germany. After playing with the Barbirolli Quartet, she joined the Rautio Piano Trio in 2015. Victoria has played chamber music at the BBC Proms, Cheltenham, Harrogate, Ryedale, IMS Prussia Cove, Kronberg Germany, Banff Canada, Singapore and Chamber Music NZ and has broadcast on radio and TV in the UK, Germany and NZ. She was Principal Cellist with Opera North (2005-07), and was then a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra, London, for 10 years. Victoria often appears as Guest Principal with UK major orchestras. She plays a Grancino cello made in Milan, 1687.

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SATURDAY 20 JULY 12PM – 1.15PM Hugo Wolf (1860-1903): Italian Serenade, in G major The composition of the Serenade in G for string quartet (later called by Wolf an Italian Serenade) took only two days to complete in May 1887. There is no authoritative literary source but it was written at a time when Wolf was making song settings of Eichendorff texts. Thematically it is related to the first of them, Der Soldat I, about love for a lady who lives in a castle. The same theme is contained in the Eichendorff novella Leben eines Tangenichts. The story has for its hero a young musician, a violinist, who leaves his country home and grumbling father to seek his fortune. Wolf could hardly have found a more autobiographical and sympathetic figure. Central to the plot is an Italian Serenade played by a small orchestra which Wolf later arranged in his work. The Quartet version reveals string- writing of very relaxed and assured qualities.

Its texture has a transparent and delicate expression and its rather diffuse episodic rondo structure suggests an unspecified programme gently parodying romantic love. Wolf once described the kind of opera he would like to write and many of his ideas are paralleled in the Italian Serenade.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93): Quartet No 3 in E flat minor, Op. 30 1. Andante sostenuto 2. Allegretto vivo e scherzando 3. Andante funebre e doloroso, ma non moto 4. Finale: Allegro non troppo e risoluto Although this is the last of Tchaikovsky’s mature string quartets it is still a relatively early work, composed in January and February 1876. The andante introduction establishes a pensive mood, leading to the main allegro section, which is serious but full of vitality. Tchaikovsky originally placed the scherzo after the slow movement. He was right to change his mind; although the scherzo is relatively brief, it offers a necessary breathing space before the intense, solemn ritual of the third movement, to which the finale’s vigorous, dancing energy, acts as a counterbalance.

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Jeffrey Skidmore, conductor Sopranos: Elizabeth Adams, Louise Prickett, Katie Trethewey, Suzzie Vango Altos: Harriet Hougham Slade, Martha McLorinan Tenors: Paul Bentley-Angell, James Robinson

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

SUMMER MUSIC BY CANDLELIGHT T H U R S D AY 1 8 J U LY 8 . 3 0 P M – 9 . 4 5 P M

E X C AT H E D R A C O N S O R T

Basses: Simon Gallear, Lawrence White Ex Cathedra was founded in 1969 by Jeffrey Skidmore and is a leading UK choir and Early Music ensemble with a repertoire from the 12th to the 21st centuries and a thriving education programme.

They are resident in Birmingham, and also present concerts across the Midlands and in London and they appear at festivals and concert series throughout the UK and abroad. Performances have included Stockhausen’s World Parliament at the BBC Proms and the world première of A Shakespeare Masque

by Carol Ann Duffy, composed by Sally Beamish. Ex Cathedra has made a number of award-winning recordings, their most recent release being Celestial Bird, choral music by Roxanna Panufnik. Nurturing talent is at the heart of the group’s work, and its Academy of Vocal Music provides choral training for young people aged 4-18. Its choral Scholarships provide a year-long scheme helping recent graduates establish their professional career, and Student Scholarships give opportunities for singers studying at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. During 2019, Sarah Latto is working with Ex Cathedra as their first Associate Conductor.

Jeffrey Skidmore is a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and Artistic Director of the Early Music programme at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He is one of the UK’s leading choral directors and educators, his work rooted in Ex Cathedra, the group he founded in Birmingham in 1959. Jeffrey’s driving passion has reinvigorated the choral repertoire and made it accessible to many people. He and Ex Cathedra present exciting, innovative and attractive programming, thoroughly researched and prepared. They are committed to vocal education, from the children’s programme Singing Playgrounds, to the nurturing of professional singers at the start of their careers. Jeffrey is a pioneer in research and performance of choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries. He is also a champion of contemporary choral music and has commissioned more than a dozen new works. With Ex Cathedra and its associated Consort and Baroque Orchestra, Jeffrey has appeared in concert halls and festivals worldwide. He has made a number of highly-acclaimed recordings of music ranging from Renaissance polyphony to Latin American and French Baroque. For his services to choral music, Jeffrey was appointed OBE in 2015.

Benjamin Rogers (1614-1698): Hymnus Eucharisticus (Tower Hymn) 6th century plainchant: Iam lucis orto sidere James MacMillan (b 1959): O Radiant Dawn (2008) Stevie Wishart (b 1969): Voicing the Dawn (2019), world première 13th century English song: Sumer is icumen in Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), arr. Jeffrey Skidmore: Cuckoo!

(1936) Reading: Charlotte Mew (1869-1928): In the fields Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Six chansons: La biche, Un cygne, Puisque tout passe, Printemps, En hiver, Verger Reading: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945): Powers of Good (Von guten Mächten) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Three Shakespeare Songs (1951): 1. Full fathom five 2. The cloud clapp’d towers 3. Over hill over dale Reading: William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

John Joubert (1927-2019): Three Portraits (1983) 1. To Mistress Isabell Pennell 2. To Mistress Margery Wentworth 3. To Mistress Margaret Hussey Reading: Billy Collins (b 1941): Another reason I don’t keep a gun in the house arr. Jeffrey Skidmore: Mostly Mozart!

Reading: Amy Lowell (1874-1925): Summer George Gershwin (1898-1937), arr. Jeffrey Skidmore: Summertime (1934) Bruce Welch (b 1941) & Brian Bennett (b 1940), arr. Jeffrey Skidmore: Summer Holiday (1963) Charles Trenet (1913-2001), arr. Jeffrey Skidmore: La mer (1943) Geoff Haynes: anyone lived in pretty how town (2018) Liz Johnson (b 1964): For Hester (1990) Reading: Vikram Seth (b 1952): Summer Requiem (The evening sun retreats along the lawn) (2015) Eric Whitacre (b 1970): Sleep (2002) 7th century plainchant: Te lucis ante terminum Alec Roth (b 1948): Night Prayer (2016) Hymnus Eucharisticus, was traditionally sung at sunrise on May Morning from the Magdalen College Tower. It is still often performed as a Grace at special meals in the college.

Iam lucis orto sidere is the only hymn prescribed for use at Prime in the Divine Office, said in daylight at approximately 6:00 am.

‘O Radiant Dawn’, one of James MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motets, is a response to the Advent text.

‘Voicing the Dawn’, composed by Stevie Wishart (b 1969), makes use of a field recording of birdsong made in France.

Sumer is icumen in is the earliest known polyphony, probably composed in 1215. This ingenious work has a canonic ground bass and a melody which can be sung as a round in 12 parts.

‘Cuckoo!’ by Benjamin Britten takes up the distinctive birdcall, and is from a set of songs written in 1936 for a boys’ choir.

Sarah Latto, inaugural Associate Conductor, has chosen a Paul Hindemith work, ‘Six Chansons’. Written after his emigration to the USA following the banning of his work by the Nazi regime, the piece portrays a sense of yearning for an easier time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran priest imprisoned by the Nazis in 1944, wrote his final poem, ‘Power of Good’, to his fiancée in December 1943. He was executed the following spring.

‘Three Shakespeare Songs’ by Vaughan Williams was first performed on 23 June 1951. They set two texts from The Tempest and one from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and have all the hallmarks of the composer’s mature style.

‘Three Portraits of 1983’, the first of many pieces John Joubert wrote for Ex Cathedra, set texts by the Tudor poet John Skelton.

‘Another reason I don’t keep a gun in the house’, is a humerous poem by Billy Collins, while his ‘Mostly Mozart!’ is more ‘didactic’. It is a medley of well-known tunes arranged in a sonata structure.

New England poet Amy Lowell published Summer in A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass in 1912 and it establishes the ‘glorious, deep-toned summer as the very crown of the changing year’. It introduces a group of popular songs, several arranged for choir.

‘Summertime’ from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) is one of the most famous songs of all time and conjures up the perfect summer.

‘Summer Holiday’ was written by Bruce Welsh and Brian Bennet who were members of the Shadows. It featured in the popular Cliff Richard film in 1963.

The singer song-writer Charles Trenet wrote the words for the chanson classique La Mer in 1929 on a train journey from Montpellier to Perpignan - the music came to him some years later in 1943.

Members of Ex Cathedra first sang ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’ in 2018 at Dartington. It sets ee cummings’s witty poem about the humdrum nature of daily life and ritual and cleverly captures the essential qualities of the text.

In ‘For Hester’, Liz Johnson sets Philip Larkin’s ‘Cut grass lies frail’ with its biblical references to the end of life and the lovely comparison of white blossom in summer to winter snow.

Vikram Seth is well known to Ex Cathedra through Alec Roth’s many creative collaborations. Summer Requiem is his most recent collection of poems (2015) and ‘The evening sun retreats along the lawn’ is the last four stanzas of the eponymous poem.

Eric Whitacre is a composer who took the choral world by storm in the early part of the new millennium. ‘Sleep’ (2002) remains a favourite.

The concert ends with the ancient Latin hymn Te lucis ante terminum which dates back to the 7th century. It is a prayer for the end of the day and is the hymn sung at Compline. ‘Night Prayer’ is Alec Roth’s atmospheric setting of this wonderful English melody. ©Jeffrey Skidmore, 2019 127

Tim Lole was a répétiteur at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He was Chorus Master for RAI in Rome, in Martina Franca and Palermo and Staff Conductor at Scottish Opera (1991-5). In 1992 he won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition. He has conducted for Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera House Garden Venture, English Touring Opera, Birmingham Opera Company and in Batignano.

As pianist and accompanist he has appeared at the Covent Garden Festival, Buxton Festival, and with leading singers. In 2012 he conducted 300 performers in a première by Gavin Bryars as part of the London 2012 Festival. Tim was Music Director for James And The Giant Peach at Buxton Festival (2013). He teaches at Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham High School.

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ST JOHN’S CHURCH

F R I D AY 1 9 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 4 . 3 0 P M

G A R RY M A G E E , B A R I T O N E TIM LOLE, PIANO

Garry Magee is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio and was a First Prize winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1995. Roles include Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni, Rossini’s Figaro, Pelléas, Wozzeck, Almaviva, Don Alfonso and Jean in the world première of Boesmans’s Julie. In concert Garry has sung in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Elgar’s The Apostles, and Rachmaninov’s Spring Cantata. He has recorded roles in Faust, Flight, and the title-role in Don Giovanni. This year he has appeared in concert at the Vienna Musikverein with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Songs of Travel, No 1: The Vagabond Songs of Travel sets words from Robert Louis Stevenson’s collection Songs of Travel and Other Verses, published in 1896. Vaughan Williams’s protagonist sets out on a journey prepared to face whatever life throws at him, and the piano unmistakeably evokes trudging footsteps.

John Ireland (1879-1962): Sea Fever, When lights go rolling round the sky, The Soldier, April – piano solo Sea Fever (1913) remains Ireland’s best-known song, notwithstanding the long search for a publisher; thereafter it was a huge popular success. The song sets one of the Salt-Water Ballads which led to John Masefield’s recognition as a poet. Apparently Masefield disliked the setting but was probably glad of the royalties it earned. The words are a passionate expression of excitement at the sight and sound of the sea. The song is marked lento and the many dirge-like performances heard by Masefield raised his hackles somewhat. It was first published as a song for tenor but later the composer preferred it sung by a baritone, where it now sits as a staple of the baritone repertoire.

A fine pianist himself, Ireland wrote a large quantity of solo piano music throughout much of his career.

April is the first of two pieces from 1925.

George Butterworth (1885-1916): Bredon Hill and Other Songs.: No 4: On the idle hill of summer George Butterworth (1885-1916): Six Songs from ‘A Shropshire Lad’. No 5: The lads in their hundreds Butterworth wrote his settings of poems by AE Housman between 1909 and 1911, and they were published in the two volumes named above in 1912 and 1911, respectively. While the influence of folk-music gives the songs an artless simplicity which reflects Housman’s, he also shows an ability, matched by few other composers, to get under the skin of the poems.

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937): In Flanders; The fields are full; I will go with my father a-ploughing Gurney believed army service might help his disturbed and confused thoughts. He served in France, continuing to write poetry, but also, remarkably, to compose songs – five at least are known to have been composed in the trenches.

In Flanders, a setting of words by a good friend since their schooldays, F W Harvey, was composed at Crucifix Corner, Thiepval, on 11 January 1917.

Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960): A Song of Shadows, Op. 15 No 3; Silver. Op. 30 No 2

PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

A GOOD REED?

F R I D AY 1 9 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 5 . 0 0 P M

Gibbs studied composition with, among others, Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music. As a song composer he was particularly drawn to texts by Walter de la Mare, who

became a personal friend. A Song of Shadows is the last of three de la Mare settings published as his Op. 15 in 1917.

Silver, to one of the poet’s best-known poems, is the second of a pair dating from 1920.

Michael Head (1900-76): Sweet Chance that led my Steps Abroad; A Green Cornfield In 1921 Head published a set of six songs to words by WH Davies, with the title Songs of the Countryside. In 1985 a new collection of ten of his songs was published, with the same title. ‘Sweet Chance That Led My Steps Abroad’ was the only one of the original six to be retained. ‘A Green Cornfield’, setting a poem by Christina Rosetti, composed in 1922 as an individual song, is one of the others included in the later collection.

Gerald Finzi (1901-56): Earth and Air and Rain, Op. 15 No 9: In a Churchyard No 10: Proud Songsters No 6: Rollicum Rorum Of all English poets, it was Thomas Hardy with whom Finzi identified most strongly. He particularly identified with Hardy’s recurring themes of passing time, youth and age, and human striving put into perspective by a more cosmic viewpoint.

The ten songs that make up Earth and Air and Rain were composed at various times between 1928 and 1935.

Glyn Foley, with Alison Brierley, Philip Brookes and Oliver Galletta, bassoons A Good Reed? enjoyed an annual concert at Buxton Festival until 2012, and garnered what they think might be the largest audience in the world for a bassoon quartet. The indefatigable exponents of bassoonery are back, aiming to convince us their life’s work has been worthwhile. Glyn Foley, this Festival’s former Chief Executive, leads a quartet whose collective experience is vast – if you’ve seen a bassoonist at the back of any orchestra, it might well have been one of them! They have variously served in the Band of the Welsh Guards (as a cellist), played the Northumbrian small pipes, accompanied to droplets of orange juice in a Mr Juicy TV advertisement in Hong Kong, and represented the North of England at volleyball. Their entertaining programme ranges from Mozart in the style of Bach, via evocative Sibelius and Gershwin to a new set of variations by Graham Sheen - and they never take themselves too seriously. The quartet aims to help you decide if Mozart was correct when he likened the bassoon to the ‘voice of the sea God’, or if Haydn was closer to the mark when remarking, on first hearing a bassoon, ‘Thank God it doth not smell’.

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Orchestra Violin I Nicholas Ward

Viola Richard Muncey

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

NORTHERN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA S AT U R D AY 2 0 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 4 . 3 0 P M

C A R N I VA L O F T H E A N I M A L S

Violin II Simon Gilks

Cello William Hewer

Clarinet Elizabeth Jordan

Bass James Manson

Percussion John Melbourne Joy Powdrill

Flute/Piccola Conrad Marshall

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921): The Carnival of the Animals 1. Introduction et marche royale du lion (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion) 2. Poules et coqs (Hens and Cockerels) 3. Hémiones (animaux véloces) (Wild Asses ((Swift Animals)) 4. Tortues (Tortoises) 5. L’Éléphant (The Elephant) 6. Kangourous (Kangaroos) 7. Aquarium 8. Personages à longues oreilles (People with Long Ears) 9. Le Coucou au fond des bois (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods) 10. Volière (Aviary) 11. Pianistes (Pianists) 12. Fossiles (Fossils) 13. Le cygne (The Swan) 14. Finale Saint-Saëns’s ‘Zoological Fantasy’ was the result of a private joke whilst the composer was on holiday. The score was dashed off in a few days but was not well received. Saint-Saëns cared deeply about his reputation and when the critics accused him of composing la mauvaise musique bien écrit (‘bad music well written’) he forbade

Piano Benjamin Powell Gemma Beeson performance of Le carnaval. The only movement to escape this embargo was Le cygne (The Swan) which has endured continuing popularity. Overall, and ironically, this extravaganza became his most popular work. The whole piece is made as true to nature as possible. The opening Royal March has an exotic tinge; this is followed by extremely realistic Hens and Cocks. Uncharacteristically fleet-footed Donkeys contrast with lumbering Tortoises who perform a can-can at a ludicrously slow tempo. A quotation from Berlioz appears in the passage for the Elephant. Capricious Kangaroos are followed by an evocative scene of an Aquarium. Critics, portrayed as People with Long Ears, are pictured as braying donkeys, and Pianists, an unlikely inclusion in a zoological catalogue, are heard practising scales while themes of undoubted antiquity represent Fossils.

The Finale summarises the foregoing material after the poignant death of The Swan, the most popular and appealing movement of the Fantasy.

B U X T O N I N T E R N AT I O N A L F E S T I VA L’ S I N A U G U R A L O P E R A G O L F D AY 12 SEPTEMBER 2019 P R E S T B U RY G O L F C L U B

12:00 Registration 13:00 Shotgun start 19:30 Concert, Dinner & prize giving £500 PER 4 BALL

Enjoy a round of golf at the prestigious Prestbury Golf Club, packed lunch, prize giving dinner & concert featuring opera stars of the future.

G A M E F O R M AT: 4 Ball Alliance, 2 scores to count Additional competitions include: Nearest the pin & Beat the Pro Sponsored Holes available @ £100 each To book your fourball and for sponsorship opportunities contact Lucy Marsden at Lucy.Marsden@buxtonfestival.co.uk BIF is a registered charity 276957

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The Brodsky Quartet is based in the UK. Since their formation in 1972 they have performed over 3,000 concerts and released more than 60 recordings. Their energy and craftsmanship have attracted awards and accolades worldwide, while their educational work provides a vehicle to pass on experience and stay in touch with the next generation. Throughout their career the Brodsky Quartet, as well as performing in the UK, have toured major festivals and venues throughout Australasia, North and South America, Asia, South Africa and Europe. They are regularly broadcast worldwide on television and radio. They have undertaken numerous performances of complete cycles of quartets by Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Webern and Bartók. It is, however, the complete Shostakovich cycle that has become synonymous with their name: their 2012 London performance of the cycle resulted in their taking the title of Artistic Associate at London’s Kings Place and, in October 2016, they released their second recording of the cycle live from the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam. The Brodsky Quartet have always had a busy recording career and their awards include the Diapason D’Or and the CHOC du Monde de la Musique. They have received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for their outstanding contribution to innovation in programming. The quartet took their name from the great Russian violinist Adolf Brodsky, the dedicatee of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.

Gina McCormack plays a 1749 Alessandro Gagliano violin; Ian Belton’s violin is by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, c1615; Paul Cassidy plays on La Delfina viola, c1720, courtesy of Sra. Delfina Entrecanales; and Jacqueline Thomas’s cello is by Thomas Perry of Dublin, 1785.

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PAVILION ARTS CENTRE

S U N D AY 2 1 J U LY 2 P M – 3 . 3 0 P M

BRODSKY QUARTET

Gina McCormack & Ian Belton, violins Paul Cassidy, viola Jacqueline Thomas, cello with Laura van der Heijden, cello

Laura van der Heijden this year completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge. She won the 2012 BBC Young Musician Competition and has been making a name for herself as a very special emerging talent. Her debut album 1948 was released in 2018 and won the Edison Klassiek Award and the BBC Classical Music Magazine Newcomer Award. Recent and future highlights include recitals at Zurich Tonhalle and Wigmore Hall, a UK tour with IMS Prussia Cove, orchestral debuts with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Japan, the Hallé Orchestra, the Prague Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Laura plays a late 17th-century cello by Francesco Rugeri of Cremona, kindly on loan from a private collection.

Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805): String Quintet in C, Op. 30 No 6 (in seven movements) 1. [no heading] 2. Minuetto. Allegretto 3. Largo assai – allegro 4. Allegro vivo 5. Maestoso Boccherini was both the unrivalled cello virtuoso and one of the most prolific chamber music composers of the later 18th century. He wrote over 100 string quintets, most of them including two cello parts (one of them written for himself) rather than the more usual two violas. Op. 30 No 6 is subtitled La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid (Night-Music in the Streets of Madrid). It opens by imitating the sound of church bells and then a distant drum-roll in the night watch’s barracks.

These are followed by the Minuet of the Blind Beggars, then a meditative slow movement (to begin with) headed The Rosary, and The Street Singers, ending with a march as the night watch returns to its quarters.

Alexander Borodin (1833-87): String Quartet No 2 in D 1. Allegro moderato 2. Scherzo. Allegro 3. Notturno: Andante 4. Finale: Andante - Vivace Borodin’s Second String Quartet, of 1881, was composed in what, for him, was the unusually short time of two months.

Dedicated to his wife, Ekaterina, the work is an evocation of their first meeting and early courtship in Heidelberg 20 years earlier. Many of the themes have a sinuously seductive quality, but Borodin varies the mood with more vigorous material, such as the march which forms the second theme of the first movement. At the heart of the second movement is a swaying waltz which is one of Borodin’s best-known melodies. The principal theme of the Nocturne is another. Beginning in the treble register of the cello (Borodin’s own instrument), it is answered by the violin two octaves higher. When it returns at the end of the movement, cello and violin twine round one another in close canon – a technical device put to wonderfully expressive use. The finale begins hesitantly, before the cello leads the other instruments in a brisk dance. The hesitant idea returns briefly at two later points, but is swept aside by the dance, which brings to a lively conclusion what is, justifiably, the most popular of all 19th century Russian chamber works.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): String Quintet in C, D956, Op. posth. 163 1. Allegro ma non troppo 2. Adagio 3. Scherzo 4. Allegretto Schubert’s Quintet is universal music. It aims to include everything: the vigour and confidence of the Scherzo and the lingering valediction of the Trio, the poetic vision of the Adagio and the good humour of the Finale – it is all here. The scoring of the work, for two violins, viola and two cellos follows a pattern established by Boccherini. Schubert may have used this combination for reasons of modesty, to avoid a direct comparison with Mozart who preferred two violas in his quintets, but more likely it was for the richer sonorities offered by the cellos. The Quintet opens in a mood of melancholy. Chords of increasing tension are followed by dramatic arpeggio figures until a strongly accented loud section serves as a transition to the second subject. This is a melody that reaches into the depths of tragedy, entrusted initially to the first cello and shadowed by the second. There is new but no less solemn material in the coda that concludes the exposition, material unfolding with increasing emotion in the development that follows. The recapitulation begins with the movement’s opening subject. This is followed by the elegiac strains of the second theme. A final reminder of this latter brings the movement to a poignant conclusion. The second movement is a tragic song for second violin, viola and first cello over throbbing pizzicati in the second cello, and with the first violin providing a commentary before an outburst of grief precedes the development and the mood of intangible sadness that suffuses the whole. An energetic Scherzo contrasts with a sombre Trio, strange music - almost funereal - with the instruments used in their darkest registers.

The Allegretto finale begins with a spirited theme in a popular dance style. The form is a sonata-rondo that summarises and balances the whole work. The range of contrasting moods successfully encompassed by Schubert in the Quintet as a whole is quite remarkable and ultimately deeply satisfying. It is generally recognised as one of the finest chamber works of the 19th century. Arguably, it is Schubert’s greatest work and yet little is known about its origins because neither sketches nor fair copies have survived. Completed just weeks before his death, but not published until 1853, the whole work sounds like a reluctant leave-taking. It is the final expression of his poetic vision, a Romantic longing for a world beyond this one.

It represents a crowning achievement.

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LIZZIE BALL SONGBOOK WITH STRINGS S U N D AY 7 J U LY 3 . 3 0 P M – 4 . 3 0 P M PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Lizzie Ball, violin, vocals, creative producer James Pearson, piano, arranger Miloš Milivojević, accordion and the Classical Kicks Ensemble With long-time collaborators James Pearson and Miloš Milivojević, Lizzie Ball explores a meticulously curated programme of iconic songs, performed in stripped down, lushly orchestrated arrangements with the strings of the Classical Kicks Ensemble. A programme to sweep you into the world of legends of songwriting, ranging from historic icons to contemporary stars, including Gershwin, Cole Porter, Brian Wilson, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Noel Gallagher, Emily Sande and more.

Lizzie Ball is a violinist, vocalist and producer. She read music at Cambridge, the RCM and Guildhall School of Music. In 2012 she founded Classical Kicks Productions Ltd, resident at Ronnie Scott’s for four years. They have a twice-yearly festival in Derbyshire and a children’s show, combining electronic music with the CK Ensemble. Lizzie toured internationally for several years with violinist Nigel Kennedy as soloist and Concertmaster of his Orchestra of Life. She is Ambassador for the charity PRISMA (founded by Morgan Szymanski), which provides arts workshops to under-developed areas of Mexico.

She co-created Corrido: A Ballad for the Brave, an audio-visual odyssey telling the story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54) which premièred at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

James Pearson is a pianist, composer and arranger. He is Artistic Director at Ronnie Scott’s where his trio are the house band. James has played concertos with the Philharmonia, BBC Concert Orchestra, and many others. The Big Smoke shows footage of London accompanied by a score composed by James. His work is performed by the Brodsky String Quartet, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Big Band. James has cooperated with Cleo Laine, Maria Ewing, Marian Montgomery, Petula Clark, Kevin Spacey, John Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Johnny Griffin, Joseph Horowitz, Richard Rodney Bennett, Ray Davies, Paul McCartney and many others.

Miloš Milivojević, a Serbian-born classical accordionist, began his musical education in Kragujevac, moving to the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in 2002. In 2004 he performed before HRH The Princess Royal at the University of London Senate House, and in 2007 became the first accordionist to win the RAM Club Prize. Miloš has appeared as soloist and chamber musician at major concert halls and festivals worldwide. He is a member of the London Tango Quintet, Kosmos Ensemble, AccordDuo and the Balkan group Paprika. He performs with violinists David Juritz and Harriet Mackenzie and guitarist Craig Ogden. An Associate of the RAM, in 2016 he was soloist and Music Director of Donizetti’s Elixir of Love for Opera North.

Classical Kicks Ensemble Una Palliser, violin, is an Irish-born, London-based violinist, violist, singer and multi-instrumentalist, who as well as being classically trained, is recognised for her proficiency in rock, jazz, Balkan and Irish folk music. She is best known for her collaborations and as a guest soloist with high profile artists including Shakira, A.R.Rahman, Leona Lewis, Terrafolk and Otis Taylor. She sings the Irish folk song Mo Ghile Mear on the Specsavers ‘Collie Wobble’ advertisement, as well as singing on the BBC series My Mother and Other Strangers and the theme tune for BBC’s Kat and Alfie: Redwater.

Meghan Cassidy, viola, continues her studies with Tatjana Masurenko (Leipzig), Nabuko Imai (Hamburg) and Hartmut Rohde at IMS Prussia Cove. She appears as Guest Principal Viola with several orchestras. As a sought-after chamber musician, she has performed at Priya Mitchell’s Oxford Chamber Music Festival, Jack Liebeck’s Festival in Switzerland, Hugo Ticciati’s Chamber Music Festival in Verona, Jamie Walton’s North Yorkshire Moors Chamber Music Festival and the Monte Piano Trio’s Chamber Music Festival in Sylt. Meghan has collaborated with the Monte Piano Trio, Fidelio Piano Trio and with the Solstice Quartet. She has performed at the Wigmore Hall, QEH, and on BBC Radio 3.

Gabriella Swallow is a London-based cellist who studied at the RCM and was awarded the coveted Tagore Gold Medal. In 2006 she made her South Bank debut with the London Sinfonietta as soloist in the world première of About Water by Mark-Anthony Turnage. In the same year she performed Paul Max Edlin’s Cello Concerto with the South Bank Sinfonia. In 2013 she made her Wigmore Hall debut with the soprano Ruby Hughes, performed at La Jolla SummerFest in San Diego, Aldeburgh Festival with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Cambridge Jazz Festival as a member of the Gwilym Simcock Quintet.

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KABANTU TUESDAY 9 JULY 9PM – 10.30PM PAVILION CAFÉ Katie Foster, violin Abel Selaocoe, cello Ali McMath, double bass Ben Sayah, guitar Delia Stevens, percussion Reinventing global sounds, throwing away the rule-book – Kabantu is a quintet from Manchester who unravel new marriages of music from around the globe to celebrate the space where different cultures collaborate. ‘Kabantu’ means ‘of the people’ – stemming from the South African philosophy of Ubuntu: ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. This is autonomous music bridging countries and cultures, an egalitarian creative process to defy genre and embrace sheer joy in music from all over the globe. One of the triumphs of last year’s Spiegeltent season, this year Kabantu bring their music to the Pavilion Café.

Katie Foster began learning the violin aged seven and in 2004 won a place at St Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh. In 2011 she entered the RNCM and graduated in 2015. Katie is interested in folk and jazz as well as the classical repertoire. A semi-finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, she has given recitals in Wigmore Hall and taken part in orchestral tours to Italy, Ireland, Holland, Poland, Germany and China. Katie has been Principal Violin of the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, Edinburgh Incidental Orchestra and Camerata Scotland, and worked with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Manchester Camerata.

Abel Selaocoe, cello, collaborates with beatboxers, folk and world musicians as well as giving classical concerto performances and recitals. He won an RNCM Gold Medal and the Concerto Prize. Abel has worked with orchestras throughout South Africa, performing a wide range of the concerto repertoire. In 2017 he premièred Adam Gorb’s Cello concerto with the National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain. He made his Wigmore Hall debut with Colin Matthews, working on his String Quartets.

Alastair McMath was a pupil at Chetham’s School of Music, then studied double bass with Jiří Hudec at the RNCM and graduated with honours. He has been a member of the National Children’s Orchestra, Hallé Youth, National Youth Orchestra and Chetham’s and RNCM Orchestras and Big Bands, touring and playing under Semyon Bychkov and Sir Mark Elder. Alistair has played with the Chilingirian String Quartet at the Lake District International Summer Music Festival and also plays with a 1920s Jazz Band. He has accompanied ballet and opera, and played with function bands and jazz ensembles.

Ben Sayah was born in France and moved to the UK aged 5 where he sang in his primary school choir. At secondary school he started playing guitar. Ben committed his life to music at the age of that music. He completed his classical guitar grades with distinction and studied music at Salford University, where his main interests were jazz and improvisation, ensemble playing, composition and arranging, and he formed the progressive rock band Scarlet Castles. While busking a Tommy Emmanuel song in Manchester he was spotted by Kabantu percussionist Delia Stevens.

Delia Stevens began playing percussion aged 10, then studied at the RNCM, graduating with First Class Honours and winning the Gold Medal. She twice reached the category finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year. Highlights include a Proms world première, concertos with the Beethoven Academy Orchestra in the Krakow Proms, and her Wigmore Hall debut. Co-founder of the Aurora Percussion Duo, Delia has played in the National Youth Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Hallé, and is an extra for the BBC Philharmonic. Through Live Music Now she delivers interactive concerts to special needs audiences and the elderly, and has had a year’s residency on the Oncology Unit in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

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JASON SINGH & FRIENDS WEDNESDAY10 JULY 9PM – 10.30PM PAVILION CAFÉ with Yazz Ahmed, trumpet and flugelhorn, Sarathy Korwar, drums, Arun Ghosh, clarinet One of the highlights of BIF’s 2018 Spiegeltent season, award-winning sound artist and beatboxer Jason Singh brings to the Pavilion Café a stellar line-up of electronic and acoustic collaborators including Yazz Ahmed (trumpet and flugelhorn), Sarathy Korwar (drums) and Arun Ghosh (clarinet), to explore the realms of spiritual jazz, minimal electronica and virtuosic live performance.

Jason Singh is a composer, sound artist, producer, facilitator and performer. He works across a wide range of art forms and his output includes live beatbox film scores, large-scale ambisonic sound installations, sound designs for gallery/museum exhibitions, and collaborative experiments with sound, ceramics, textiles and museum objects. He vocally recreates birdsong and his work has featured on BBCTV shows Imagine, Springwatch and CountryFile. Singh is deeply committed to music and art education. He has mentored and toured with musicians from India, and has facilitated national and international workshops exploring the voice, body and technology. He works with mainstream youth and young people with special educational needs.

Yazz Ahmed is a British-Bahraini trumpet and flugelhorn player. She has toured the world with artrock band These New Puritans. Her suite inspired by courageous and influential women, Polyhymnia, was premièred at the Purcell Room by an all-female ensemble at the WOW! Festival in 2015. In 2016 Yazz explored writing music for her newly developed quarter-tone flugelhorn. Her second album, La Saboteuse, was released in 2017. Yazz’s Saturn was composed for the Ligeti Quartet’s The Planets 2018, created especially for planetariums.

Born in the US, Sarathy Korwar grew up in India and began playing tabla aged 10. Aged 17 he began a degree course in Environmental Science, but instead moved to London and trained as a classical tabla player, and graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies. In 2014 Sarathy was accepted and mentored by the Steve Reid Foundation. Sarathy recently released his third album, More Arriving through Leaf, a reflection of his experience of being Indian and British, and incorporates Mumbai and New Delhi’s rap scenes with his own Indian classical and jazz-inflected instrumentation.

Arun Ghosh is a British-Asian clarinettist, composer, and music educator. In 2008 he was selected for Edition IV of the Jerwood/ PRS Foundation ‘Take Five’ initiative for emerging jazz musicians and the following year was invited to perform at the jazzahead!

Festival in Germany. Ghosh was one of the BT Celebrity Storytellers for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. He was selected for the 2nd edition of Take Five Europe, touring with them in 2013. Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year 2014 in the APPJA/ Parliamentary Jazz UK Awards, he was selected to be a Musician in Residence 2014 in Wuhan, China, in association with PRS for Music Foundation and the British Council.

THE BIG

Save the date for our autumn edition of glorious opera, gorgeous music and great authors.

Experience Poulenc’s La Voix humaine, an intimate 50-minute tour de force for solo soprano by a composer going through his own heartbreak.

Join the experts to discuss Ruskin’s legacy celebrating 200 years of his ideas and influences.

WEEKEND

18 - 20 OCT 2019 More to be announced on our website.

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Laugh with national treasure Pam Ayres, once known as an accessible and much loved poet, but now a pithy social commentator.

Hear Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian journalist who broke the Windrush scandal speaking to Colin Grant author of Homecoming.

Round off the weekend with lunch at the Old Hall Hotel accompanied by a 50’s inspired jazz ensemble.

CHRIS INGHAM QUARTET GETZ – A MUSICAL PORTRAIT TUESDAY 16 JULY 9PM – 10.30PM PAVILION CAFÉ From the late 1940s to the early 1990s, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz (1927-91) was one of the great instrumental artists in jazz. Jazz went through many phases, but Getz was remarkably consistent, producing album after album of poetic, swinging music.

While his accompaniments were elaborately varied, Getz’s playing was unmistakable, characterised by his singing luminescent tone, his unmatched elegance, passion and lyricism and an almost supernatural melodic creativity. Yet there’s a sense of Getz being underrated, perhaps even taken for granted. He had the temerity to achieve commercial success, reaching way beyond the jazz connoisseurship, an achievement which never seems to sit well with jazz posterity. Secondly, despite his dipping in and out of in-the-air jazz styles, his genius was very much of the invention-within-the-melodic-tradition variety, a much less musically flamboyant route than some options available to him. His very consistency probably worked against him posterity-wise. In the end, as brilliant as it was, it was always just Getz being Getz ... However, for a man who could have toured lucrative Greatest Hits shows for most of his career, his choices in the material he tackled and the musicians with whom he associated show an intrepid attitude. Stan thrived on challenge and was dedicated to keeping his music fresh and vital, rarely taking the easy option. The result is a musical legacy among the richest in jazz.

Chris Ingham, piano, formed the quartet in 2013 and has led over 130 performances of their Hoagy Carmichael and Dudley Moore projects. He is also musical director of the film song repertory quintet Jazz At The Movies; a record producer (Ruthie Henshall, Joanna Eden); author (Rough Guide to The Beatles and Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra); and TV composer (Wartime Crime, How The Beatles Changed The World).

Mark Crook, tenor saxophone/clarinet, is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. He is the featured woodwind specialist in the John Wilson and Back To Basie orchestras and as star clarinettist has performed salutes to Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman with the Solid Senders Orchestra with Strings. As leader of his own group featuring guitarist Colin Oxley, Mark has produced three acclaimed CDs. Arnie Somogyi, double bass, is one of the UK’s leading jazz bass players. He studied at the Guildhall and has played with top jazz musicians including Steve Grossman, James Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, Annie Ross, Claire Martin, Art Farmer, Joey Calderazzo, Bud Shank and Eddie Henderson. He has featured on over 30 albums and has presented two BBC Radio 4 ‘roadmovie-for-radio’ documentaries about Eastern Europe.

George Double, drums, is a respected published drum educator, notably for Trinity College, London. As a busy freelancer he has toured with vocal legend Jack Jones and played with Marc Almond, Ruthie Henshall and Kym Mazelle as well as on the West End shows Wicked, Guys and Dolls, Avenue Q, Sinatra and Anything Goes. He drums with John Etheridge’s Blue Spirits and Jazz At The Movies.

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N AT I O N A L Y O U T H J A Z Z O R C H E S T R A W E D N E S D AY 1 7 J U LY 7 . 3 0 P M – 9 P M OCTAGON, PAVILION GARDENS Under the direction of Mark Armstrong, NYJO returns to Buxton, this time with their full 24-piece orchestra, including two vocalists.

Their programme, The Great American Songbook, features iconic numbers from composers including George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, each a masterclass of melody, lyric-writing, harmony, arrangement and performance, songs which maintain their appeal even 80 years on. The band will present a selection of original arrangements made famous by artists such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as new arrangements made for them, such as I’ve Got You Under My Skin, That Old Black Magic and It’s De-lovely. These are interwoven with swinging jazz arrangements of Love for Sale, September in the Rain and many others.

Mark Armstrong, NYJO Artistic and Music Director, is a Jazz Professor at the Royal College of Music, and a moderator, trainer and examiner for the ABRSM. His tenure at NYJO dates from 2011 and together they have recorded two critically acclaimed studio albums, appeared at the BBC Proms, and performed at the London Jazz Festival. Mark has written extensively for big bands and is a former winner of the BBC Big Band Competition arranging prize. He has composed and arranged for small jazz ensembles and full orchestras, and many of his works have been recorded by NYJO. Mark regularly performs with Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra and is busy as a freelance in London.

THE JULIAN BLISS SEPTET C E L E B R AT I N G G E R S H W I N T H U R S D AY 1 8 J U LY 7 . 3 0 P M BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Julian Bliss, clarinet, Martin Shaw, trumpet Anthony Kerr, vibraphone Neal Thornton, piano Colin Oxley, guitar Tim Thornton, bass David Ingamells, kit George Gershwin, born in 1898, was a musician who in the early 20th century mastered the art of combining jazz and classical music to create his famous signature sound. Often in collaboration with his older brother and lyricist Ira, Gershwin wrote some of the most famous tunes of the 20th century.

His parents had bought a piano for Ira, but it was George who showed more interest. He left school at 15 to work as a “song plugger” in Tin Pan Alley and honed his skills as an arranger and composer, quickly gaining a reputation as a brilliant musician. George was at first best known for his catchy tunes and songs and the brothers became hugely influential in the early development of the American musical idiom. From the mid-1920s George began composing the larger-scale works for classical-style ensembles which audiences around the world are familiar with today.

Julian Bliss is one of the world’s finest clarinettists, a concerto soloist, chamber musician, and jazz artist. He has inspired a generation of young players as creator of his Conn-Selmer range of affordable clarinets. Julian studied at the University of Indiana and in Germany with Sabine Meyer. He has recorded Mozart’s and Nielsen’s concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, chamber discs for clarinet and string quartet, Mozart and Weber quintets with the Carducci Quartet and concertos with the Northern Chamber, BBC Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras. In 2010 he formed the Julian Bliss Septet which today is renowned for bringing the sound of swing, Latin, American and jazz music to audiences across the world. The septet transports listeners back to the heady days of classic swing and jazz with dazzling shows of virtuosity. The band has played at Ronnie Scott’s, Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Bermuda Jazz Festival and undertaken two US tours. Their varied programme showcases the stories and instantlyrecognizable sounds of Tin Pan Alley through music by Gershwin and his contemporaries, with original and surprising arrangements including music from Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue and popular favourites such as I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You and Lady Be Good.

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BELLA HARDY T H U R S D AY 1 8 J U LY 9 P M – 1 0 . 3 0 P M PAVILION CAFÉ Award winning songwriter and traditional music luminary Bella Hardy hails from Edale. A self-taught ‘fiddle singer’, she began performing at Cambridge and Sidmouth Festivals from the age of 13. In 2015 Bella relocated to Nashville where she became immersed in Music City’s culture of collaborative song-writing. She has blurred musical boundaries from her mastery of traditional music to the electric guitar and drums in the humanist hymns and feminist battle cries of Hey Sammy (2017). Two musicfinding trips to Yunnan Province in Southwest China resulted in radical changes of life and perspective which flow through Hey Sammy, delivered in Bella’s unmistakable soaring and swooping voice. In Autumn 2019 she will release her Postcards & Pocketbooks: The Best of Bella Hardy. Bella will be joined by BBC Folk Award winning guitarist Sam Carter, who is equally happy to perform intimate solo shows on acoustic guitar, on electric with a full band, or to collaborate with other artists. Recent collaborations have included a project which saw Sam searching the archives of Parliament for inspiration for songs about the pursuit and development of democracy.

DOMINIC ALLDIS TRIO S AT U R D AY 2 0 J U LY 9 P M – 1 0 . 3 0 P M PAVILION CAFÉ The Dominic Alldis Trio explores the meeting point of two worlds: classical music and jazz.

Taking inspiration from the legendary Jacques Loussier and the Bill Evans Trios, and the Dave Brubeck and Modern Jazz Quartets, the trio improvises on famous themes from classical music and opera as well as traditional folk songs, bringing a fresh perspective and contemporary feel. Engagements have included concerts at the London Jazz Festival, Festival Hall, Elgar Room (Albert Hall), Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Athenaeum Club, Chelsea Arts Club, Clapham Omnibus, Menuhin Hall, Cranleigh School, Amersham Festival, Oundle Festival, and St James’s Piccadilly.

Dominic Alldis, piano, is a Steinway Artist, arranger, and professor at the Royal Academy of Music. His performing career has taken him from solo concerts at the Purcell Room in London’s South Bank Centre, through chamber concerts at the Wigmore Hall to appearances at major jazz venues including the Pizza Express Jazz Club and Ronnie Scott’s. As an experienced jazz and classical performer, many of his projects explore the meeting points of these two musical worlds.

Andrew Cleyndert, double bass, has toured with bands led by many of the major figures of British and American jazz, including Bobby Wellins, Don Weller, Red Rodney, Bud Shank, Gene Harris and Annie Ross. In the early 1990s he become a member of the Ronnie Scott Quartet and was bassist in the groups of British jazz legend Stan Tracey (1926-2013). Andrew and Dominic have been performing together in numerous ensembles since 1985.

Martin France, drums, has played with many of the world’s finest jazz musicians in over 40 countries. A turning point in his early career was his role within the 1980s big band Loose Tubes, where he began a longstanding partnership with many of its members, in particular jazz composer and pianist Django Bates. Martin has performed and recorded with Elvis Costello, David Gilmour, John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland and Lee Konitz.

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Always a popular part of the BIF calendar, Buxton Musical Society and the Buxton Madrigal Singers, under the direction of Michael Williams MBE, present three special services in the wonderful setting of St John’s Church.

F E S T I VA L M A S S E S

Founded in 1944, the Buxton Musical Society draws on the rich cultural life of the Buxton area to form a group of singers and players who regularly perform orchestral and choral works. Under the direction of Michael Williams MBE, the Society performs five or six concerts per year at St John’s Church. It is lucky enough to attract performers from many prestigious musical ensembles including, amongst others, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Ex Cathedra, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé, CBSO Chorus, and Hallé Choir. This year, the Society celebrates its 75th season and makes its 39th contribution of a Festival Mass to the Buxton International Festival. The Society offers its warmest congratulations to the Festival on 40 years of outstanding contribution to the cultural life of the Buxton area and looks forward to a continuing fruitful artistic partnership.

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Buxton Madrigal Singers are a chamber choir whose members are drawn mainly from the Buxton Musical Society and the Choir of St John’s Church. For many years the group has made annual visits to Durham Cathedral to perform a weekend of services under the direction of Michael Williams MBE. There, in rather tragic circumstances, it provided the choral forces for the Commemorative Service following the death of Princess Diana in 1997 when around 7,500 people attended. The Singers have enjoyed annually contributing two of the Festival Masses to the Buxton International Festival, many being broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Morning Worship. They congratulate the Festival on achieving 40 years of innovation and development and send best wishes for its continued success.

Michael Williams was born in Buxton, read Law at Worcester College, Oxford, and returned home to qualify as a solicitor and he has practised in the area ever since. He first conducted the Buxton Musical Society in 1967 and has since conducted a wide repertoire of choral and orchestral music including all Elgar’s major choral works, Verdi’s Requiem, the Bach Passions, Handel oratorios and many works from the classical period, Mozart and Haydn in particular. He has played the organ in church regularly since his school days and has been organist and choirmaster at St John’s Church since 1985. He has directed festival masses with orchestra from the church during the Buxton Festival which have been broadcast by the BBC since 1996. In recognition of his role in helping the restoration of the Opera House and in supporting the Opera Festival he was appointed MBE in 1997.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) Missa Brevis in D, K194 SUN 7 JULY 11AM – 12.15PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Eleri Gwilym (soprano), Anna Jeffers (mezzo), William Searle (tenor), Luke Scott (baritone) Buxton Madrigal Singers & Buxton Musical Society Orchestra with soloists from the Festival Company The D major Mass K194 was composed during Mozart’s Salzburg period (1773–77) and under the regency of Archbishop Colloredo. The latter expected a mass to last no longer than 45 minutes, a restriction that prompted Mozart to comment sarcastically that it imposed ‘an entirely new method of composition’. This may account for the conciseness of the mass: there are few instrumental interludes or text repetitions. Overall, the work is unassuming and purely functional with much choral declamation but no final fugues for Gloria or Credo, nor are there any preludes. There is a simple string accompaniment which curiously does not include a viola part.

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) Creation Mass SUN 14 JULY 11AM–12.30PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Georgina Stalbow (soprano), Imogen Garner (mezzo), Joseph Doody (tenor), Phil Wilcox (bass-baritone) Buxton Musical Society Chorus & Orchestra with Soloists from the Festival Company As in all Haydn’s masses, the ethos of the Schőpfungsmesse (Creation Mass) is one of faith and devotion. It is a fully scored work, its orchestral effects and sophisticated tonal procedures stressing the symphonic element and resulting overall in a simplification of the vocal texture. Composed when Haydn was almost 70, it was written for Princess Esterházy’s birthday. The name relates to its ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’, the melody for which is drawn from duet No 32 (Der taugende Morgen) of The Creation and the cheerful relaxed mood of the mass is expressive of the satisfying and rewarding period which saw the composition of The Creation.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) Missa Brevis SUN 21 JULY 11AM–12.15PM ST JOHN’S CHURCH Buxton Musical Society & Buxton Madrigal Singers Palestrina was a prolific composer of church music including no fewer than 94 Masses. He held a succession of posts in Rome, and after the death of his wife and children through illness, toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. However he abandoned this idea in favour of marriage to an extremely wealthy widow of a fur merchant whose business made him so rich that he spent the last 13 years of his life publishing his own music. The Missa Brevis is mainly in four parts but includes a second setting of the Agnus Dei in five parts, with divided sopranos singing in canon.

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What sort of book festival are we? I like to think we are an important part of a well-loved and respected festival of opera and music with a book series heavy on constitutional politics, social history and the environment. We are a festival with a defined sense of place and yet with an international outlook. This is representative of the literary talent, personal history and national contribution of our book festival founder, Lord Hattersley. When Roy started the book festival in 2000, which now makes up a part of the BIF triptych, the UK enjoyed far, far fewer book festivals than it does today.

It is right that in BIF’s 40th year we celebrate the vision Roy had at the turn of our century of linking opera and music with books as a multi -disciplinary celebration of the Arts, with a home in the Peak District but with a view to Europe and beyond. Book Festivals may now be an accepted part of our national literary conversation yet they still only appeal to a tiny percentage of our population. I believe we must be appealing yet erudite; accessible but thoughtful; opinion forming but also an entertaining distraction from busy lives. All festivals need to grow their audiences. We can do that by being friendly and inclusive while ensuring the literary quality of our speakers and the robustness of our debates.

Our festival themes for 2019 cover landscape and Englishness; our National Parks, their past and future; Modernism in art, music and literature; political enfranchisement; cultural change; music from the point of view of composers, conductors, and listeners; the role of women in history and society; constitutional government; the role of science in our future; and utopias/ dystopias. Three of our events feature the deep personal experience of their speakers - Sir Max Hastings, Robin Hanbury-Tenison and Sir Venki Ramakrishnan.

Curiously, many of our swirling themes are touched on successfully in one book, The Lark Ascending by Richard King. Richard’s book is subtitled The Music of the British Landscape but could equally be titled “our landscape and culture in the last century”. Covering music’s development amidst the social and political changes of the 20th century, The Lark Ascending takes in Vaughan Williams and the legacy of the Great War which links to Jenny Waldman’s astonishing directorship of the 14 -18 Now Art Project. It references the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, also ably covered by Mark Cocker in his book Our Place. It discusses the impact of the National Parks and Countryside Act now reaching its 70th anniversary and to be reviewed for us in an event with Julian Glover and Tristram

Hunt. Richard King’s book also looks at the legacy for British Jazz of the Musician’s Union prohibition of American musicians performing in Britain in the 1950s. This led to British jazz innovators heading to the source of the music they venerated. Many of our programme’s jazz musicians owe a debt to that generation. The Lark Ascending looks at the uncomfortable ideals of folk song societies such as The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, which is an important plot twist in Melissa Harrison’s All Among the Barley and takes in New Age Travellers and the rave culture which feature in Tim Pears’s magnificent five-decade state of the nation novel In A Land of Plenty. There is even a discussion of the role of the English Country House and its renaissance in English cultural imagination after the screening in the 1980s of the ITV dramatisation of Brideshead Revisited, a subject to be covered for us by Sir David Cannadine.

Of course, I’m not suggesting for one moment that Buxton International Festival 2019 can be distilled into one book. The Lark Ascending is just one book I have enjoyed and wish to champion amongst many. But a single book can initiate ideas and passions and a personal experiment with musical genres in unexpected and exciting ways.

Even before one of our 2019 speakers has taken to the stage across our multiple venues, I am pressed on my vision for 2020. Expect more on environmental issues, more events addressing the ‘State of the Nation’ and more on cultural change. Expect authors who are both scholarly and commercially successful. Expect interviewers with a deep understanding of their subject’s work.

Expect generosity in terms of literary outreach.

It’s an exciting challenge to put together a book festival in a publishing environment hard-pressed to keep up with world events while substantially re-evaluating how we view ourselves and others.

Let the doors open and enjoy a very special literary and musical journey with us.

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You are sitting snugly in your seat in the Pavilion Arts Centre. The auditorium is dark except for a beam of glossy light that picks out the author on the stage ahead. They might be working their way through a reading, or undergoing some sort of gentle interrogation by an interviewer about their motive, characters, or the peculiar way that Brexit has disturbed their writing process. Whatever the case, the dynamic is as transfixing and timeless as ever. It is just people listening to a story and, as Philip Pullman once put it: “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

BY PETER MOORE

O N L I T E R A R Y F E S T I VA L S

So rapid and complete has been the march of the literary festival across the United Kingdom – more than 350 now take place each year – that we’ve come to think of them as a perennial feature of our cultural life. But really the literary festival is not so old at all.

Cheltenham claims to have launched the first one in 1949, meaning that they’re a more recent invention than the microwave oven, and that they would be as unfamiliar to Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus and James Joyce, as they would to Cicero and Jane Austen (what a line-up that would be).

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I’m an historian and it’s my instinct to try and put things in their context. Most of all I am at home in 18th-century Britain when much of our modern culture – and, as it happens, the town of Buxton – was taking shape. What a festival they could have held then: Samuel Johnson in conversation with Lord Chesterfield; Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaking on intoxicants and the writer’s life; Fanny Burney, perhaps, reading a letter or two from Evelina; or Voltaire stopping in on his British book tour.

It’s good fun to imagine a fantasy event like this but when I was jotting these down I was reminded that the Georgians did attempt something of a proto-literary festival in 1769. The driving force behind it was the Midlander, theatrical pioneer and preeminent actor David Garrick. Throughout his career Garrick was a committed populariser of William Shakespeare’s plays. By the time he was 50 he had played 19 different roles, none more memorably than King Lear, who he evoked with frightful immediacy. After watching Garrick’s performance of Lear’s storm scene, Sir Joshua Reynolds claimed it took him three days to fully recover.

In 1769 the town fathers in Stratford came up with a ruse. Knowing of Garrick’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare, they thought he – Garrick was susceptible to flattery – might be charmed into contributing funds for their new town hall if they promised to display his portrait alongside Shakespeare’s once it was finished. They got much more than they bargained for. His imagination fired with possibilities, Garrick set out in a coach for Stratford to instigate plans for what would later become known as “The Great Shakespeare Jubilee”.

Garrick’s ‘schemes’ for this festival were soon underway. To excite the masses with a dramatic spectacle befitting Shakespeare, he wanted a grand fireworks display. He found the perfect site for this.

It was a large meadow that bordered the River Avon. Riverboats and pleasure craft were sourced for the well-to-do. Trees that interfered with their view were cut down. A great wooden Rotunda – modelled on the one at Ranelagh in London – was built to house the hundreds of expected visitors. A huge Shakespearian pub sign was bought to hang outside the White Lion. To distinguish the Jubilee-goers from the regular folk, Garrick decided that they should wear ‘gay ribbons’.

The two absolute highlights of the Jubilee were to be a procession of Shakespeare’s characters through Stratford’s streets and a masquerade ball that was to take place in the Rotunda. Full of ‘verve and charm’, Garrick worked at his plans all summer. By September, Stratford was slung with flags and bunting. The inns were crammed with cooks and hairdressers. Then, just as Garrick’s Jubilee got underway, it started to rain. The fields flooded. The fireworks fizzled out. The procession was cancelled. There was a general dash for the stage coaches but, as one visitor mournfully put it, “We were like a crowd in a theatre. It was impossible we could go all at a time.”

It’s a commentary on the British character that the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee is still considered a qualified success. Despite the weather, people soldiered on through many of the events.

Garrick’s Ode to Shakespeare was enthusiastically received as was some original music by the composer Thomas Arne. In a historic sense too, as the author Christian Deelman argues in a lively book on the subject, the Jubilee was significant, marking “the point at which Shakespeare stopped being regarded as an increasingly popular and admirable dramatist and became a god.”

Looking back on 1769’s Jubilee from my perch in 2019, it’s easy to laugh at Garrick’s hubris. But at the same time it’s important to acknowledge that he was on to something. The hundreds of literary festivals right across Britain this year are really manifestations of the dream that he had a quarter of a millennium ago: of a community transformed for a short space of time in veneration of story-telling and literature.

A festival-goer to Buxton in 2019, casting their eyes about, might reflect that what Garrick began imperfectly at one end of the Midlands is, exactly 250 years later, being carried off with far more expertise at the other. Much as I am entertained by the notion of fireworks exploding over the Devonshire Dome or a grand procession of Sally Rooney’s characters around the Pavilion Gardens, what one Georgian newspaper called the “superfluous Species of Amusements” have been pruned right back. What you’ll get instead is what a literary festival should be at its essence: the best stories, the best writers, and venues filled with local character.

And whatever weather Buxton conjures up for you in July – you won’t have to get wet to enjoy them.

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MARK COCKER & FRIENDS WITH JEAN MCNEIL & TESSA BOASE SATURDAY 6 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Mark Cocker is one of Britain’s foremost natural history writers whose books include Our Place: Can We Save British Nature Before It’s Too Late? and Claxton: Further Field Notes From A Small Planet. BIF has invited Mark to ‘guest edit’ this event, and he has chosen two authors whose work he admires: Jean McNeil, author of The Ice Diaries, and Tessa Boase, author of Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather, join Mark for an informal and lively debate about diversity in our countryside, climate change and the writer’s art.

MARK WIGGLESWORTH INTERVIEWED BY GERRY NORTHAM THE SILENT MUSICIAN: WHY CONDUCTING MATTERS SATURDAY 6 JULY 2PM – 3PM PALACE HOTEL Mark Wigglesworth has worked with over a hundred orchestras, collaborating with many of the world’s finest orchestral musicians, soloists, singers and directors, in many of the most spectacular venues worldwide. In his first book, The Silent Musician, Mark explores questions such as ‘Do you really make any difference to the performance?’ Exploring the conductor’s relationship with both musicians and music, and the public and personal responsibilities they face, Mark Wigglesworth will discuss the features of his art: precision, charisma, intuition, diplomacy and passion.

LUCY WORSLEY QUEEN VICTORIA – DAUGHTER, WIFE, MOTHER AND WIDOW SUNDAY 7 JULY 7.30PM – 9.30PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Queen Victoria: a little old lady, spherical in shape, dressed in black, perpetually grumpy. Right? Historian Lucy Worsley wants to make us think again. Meet a complex, contradictory woman, who had a traumatic childhood, who loved dancing, who suffered calamity and bereavement before coming out the other side as an eccentric, powerful and really rather magnificent old lady. Lucy’s illustrated talk takes us into the life, the palaces, and the rich colourful age of this woman who ruled a quarter of the globe.

SARAH WARD & FRIENDS WITH ELLY GRIFFITHS & WILLIAM SHAW SUNDAY 7 JULY 10AM – 11AM PALACE HOTEL Sarah Ward is a Derbyshire-based crime writer whose detective, DC Connie Childs, solves crimes within the Peak National Park. Why are the best crime novels reliant on a defined sense of place almost as if ‘place’ is a character in itself? Sarah Ward ‘guests edits’ this event and has invited fellow crime writers Elly Griffiths (Norfolk) and William Shaw (Dungeness) to discuss landscape, crime and developing their fictional characters.

Presented in association with Clive Conway Productions.

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AMANDA FOREMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL WILLIAMS GEORGIANA – DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE SUNDAY 7 JULY 12PM – 1PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Amanda Foreman’s dazzling debut biography burst onto the literary scene in 1998, winning the Whitbread Prize.

Made into a film – The Duchess – with Keira Knightley, the book has continued to genuinely earn the title ‘best seller’.

Amanda Foreman joins us from New York to discuss the life of Georgiana in a companion piece to our specially commissioned opera of the same name. Join Georgiana librettist Michael Williams for a lively and erudite discussion on this enigmatic and captivating Derbyshire and British icon.

GILLIAN MOORE THE RITE OF SPRING MONDAY 8 JULY 10AM – 11AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE On 29 May 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, a new ballet by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, received its première. When the curtain rose on a cast of frenziedly stamping dancers, a near-riot ensued, ensuring the evening would enter the folklore of modernism. Artistic Director of the Southbank, Gillian Moore, explores the cultural climate that created The Rite, tells the story of the music and ballet and considers its influence on classical composers, film scores, jazz, and others as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and The Pet Shop Boys.

ALAN POWERS IN CONVERSATION WITH DR TANYA HARROD BAUHAUS GOES WEST: MODERN ART AND DESIGN IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA MONDAY 8 JULY 2PM – 3PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Alan is a prolific writer, curator and former Chairman of the Twentieth Century Society. Following the closure of the Bauhaus in Germany in 1933, many of its teachers and students found new opportunities in Britain and the United States. Yet, over time, Bauhaus became a shorthand for Modernism’s failure. A century after its founding, Alan offers a re-evaluation of the school’s values and legacy. This event is part of a day looking at ‘modernism’ across music, books and art.

ROBERT SKIDELSKY MONEY AND GOVERNMENT: A CHALLENGE TO MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS TUESDAY 9 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Lord Skidelsky, FBA, is the pre-eminent biographer of John Maynard Keynes. Against the backdrop of punishing austerity agendas and the threat of financial collapse, Skidelsky contests the dominant view that money and government should play only a minor role in economic life and argues for a new way forward. By showing that much of economics is far from being the hard science it claims to be, the next generation of economists should be emboldened to break free and embrace Keynes’s ‘big idea’.

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DIARMAID MACCULLOCH IN CONVERSATION WITH MARK GREENGRASS THOMAS CROMWELL TUESDAY 9 JULY 2PM – 3PM PALACE HOTEL Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous – or notorious – figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey’s fall, Henry VIII promoted Cromwell to a series of ever-greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King. Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, FBA, is an award-winning writer and broadcaster and Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His book, Thomas Cromwell, published in 2018, has garnered glittering reviews.

THE REVD FERGUS BUTLER-GALLIE INTERVIEWED BY THE REVD LIZ ENGLUND A FIELD GUIDE TO THE ENGLISH CLERGY TUESDAY 9 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL Subtitled A Compendium of Diverse Eccentrics, Pirates, Prelates and Adventurers; All Anglican, Some Even Practising, this tells us that we are in for a hoot with this afternoon event.

‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’ has guided the Anglican Church to exercise a certain tolerance towards some of its more wayward clergymen. This mischievous and highly entertaining book has been glowingly reviewed and it has deservedly become a best seller. The Rev is a practising curate in the Church of England, who once accidentally appeared on Only Connect …

BIF PODCAST WITH DIARMAID MACCULLOCH & PETER MOORE WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 9AM – 10AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE If we could travel back through time, where would we go?

What would we do? Who would we like to watch? What would we like to find out? Join the historian Peter Moore, host of History Today’s new Travels Through Time podcast, in this special live recording as he poses these tantalising questions to Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch of the University of Oxford.

IAN KERSHAW IN CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW PARRIS ROLLER-COASTER: EUROPE 1950–2017 WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE It’s 40 years since Buxton Festival began - in a year which also saw Margaret Thatcher elected as Prime Minister and new Derbyshire MP Matthew Parris enter the House of Commons.

We join one of Britain’s most distinguished historians, Sir Ian Kershaw FBA, author of Roller Coaster: Europe 19502017, and political writer, broadcaster, and former politician Matthew Parris. Two of our most erudite commentators debate what it means to be European. How has history changed Britain? And what happens next.

MAX FISCHER WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 2PM – 3PM DEVONSHIRE DOME Max Fischer is a Michelin-starred chef who has cooked for Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher and President Nixon. His career took him to some of the most prestigious kitchens in Europe before he settled in Derbyshire where he and his wife Susan created a country house restaurant within rooms at their home, Baslow Hall. They earned their first Michelin Star there in 1994, and have retained it ever since.

ROBIN HANBURY-TENISON THE GREAT EXPLORERS WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL Robin Hanbury-Tenison, OBE, is a well-known author, film maker, conservationist and campaigner – an explorer with a conscience. But what inspires explorers to push back the boundaries of the world? Why do they risk their lives in unforgiving conditions far from home? How do they survive at the limits of human endurance? Who are the great pioneers of land, sea and space? And where next? Robin will explore these questions through the writings of 40 fellow travellers such as Vasco da Gama, Francis Garnier, Gertrude Bell and Yuri Gagarin.

MAX ADAMS INTERVIEWED BY SARAH WARD UNQUIET WOMEN: FROM THE DUSK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE DAWN OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT THURSDAY11 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PALACE HOTEL Wynflaed (d 950-960 AD) was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who owned male slaves and badger-skin gowns; Egeria, a Gaulish nun who toured the Holy Land; Gudrid, an Icelandic explorer and the first woman to give birth to a European child on American soil; Mary Astell, a philosopher who out-thought John Locke. Archaeologist, woodsman and biographer Max Adams, will bring to life the forgotten experiences of some of the most extraordinary women in history to overturn the idea that the women of this period were either queens, nuns or invisible.

DORIAN LYNSKEY INTERVIEWED BY LES HURST OF THE ORWELL SOCIETY THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH: THE BIOGRAPHY OF ORWELL’S 1984 THURSDAY 11 JULY 2PM – 3PM PALACE HOTEL 1984 isn’t just a novel; it’s a key to understanding the modern world. Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5 – Orwell’s final masterpiece gains potency and influence with every year. Dorian Lynskey is a writer, author and columnist. His new book examines 1984 and its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; Orwell’s personal experiences in wartime Britain; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited.

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AN AUDIENCE WITH KATE HUMBLE THURSDAY11 JULY 7.30PM – 9.30PM BUXTON OPERA HOUSE Join Kate for a fascinating talk about her latest book, Thinking on my Feet, as well as her life working with wildlife, the farflung places to which this has taken her, and the inspiring people she has met on her travels. There’s also a unique chance to go ‘behind the camera’ as Kate describes how the programmes are made along with some lovely anecdotes about the filming. The second series of Kate’s popular BBC programme Back to the Land, attracted great audiences and was the latest in a long line of programmes Kate has presented for the BBC including Springwatch and Autumnwatch, Wild Shepherdess, Yellowstone: Wildest Winter to Blazing Summer, Curious Creatures and Extreme Wives.

RICHARD KING INTERVIEWED BY DORIAN LYNSKEY THE LARK ASCENDING THURSDAY 11 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL Richard King is has spent over twenty years at the heart of the independent music industry. The Lark Ascending is a lyrical exploration of how Britain’s history and identity has been shaped by the mysterious relationship between music and nature. From Ralph Vaughan Williams to Brian Eno, the sinking of the Titanic to Greenham Common, Richard dissects the mythical concept of Englishness underlying the bucolic fantasy of an English Holy Land, and celebrates the countryside as a living, working, and occasionally rancorous environment.

Presented in association with Clive Conway Productions

PETER HENNESSY INTERVIEWED BY FELICITY GOODEY FRIDAY 12 JULY 10AM – 11AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Lord Hennessy, FBA, is Britain’s finest constitutional historian.

A regular presenter on BBC Radio Four, he co-founded the Institute of Contemporary British History and was made an independent cross bench peer in 2010. At a time of great political upheaval for the UK, Lord Hennessy has found himself more than ever in demand for his sane judgement on constitutional precedent, fall-out, fallacy and our future. Join him in conversation with Chairman of the BIF Board, Felicity Goodey, for discussion of his significant career and tempered contribution.

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SALIHA MAHMOOD AHMED KHAZANA: A TREASURE TROVE OF MODERN MUGHAL RECIPES FRIDAY 12 JULY 2PM–3PM DEVONSHIRE DOME After taking the Masterchef crown in 2017 with her Indian fusion food which quickly won over the judges, Saliha has produced Khazana, her debut cook book. Steeped in the rich culinary heritage of the region and inspired by her own travels in modern day India and Pakistan, Saliha will make and discuss her Indo-Persian fusion food – a contemporary take on the food of the Mughal Empire – and discuss the stories from the Mughal Empire that inspire the recipes.

TRISTRAM HUNT & JULIAN GLOVER OUR NATIONAL PARKS FRIDAY 12 JULY 4PM – 5PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE It’s 70 years since campaigners won the battle to create our National Parks. New laws sought to protect places such as the Peak District and encourage access to the hills for all. But is there a new battle ahead to preserve beauty, stop the decline of nature and give farming and local people a secure future?

Historian Dr Tristram Hunt joins journalist Julian Glover, who is chairman of the Government’s review into our protected landscapes, to discuss what has been achieved – and what more needs to be done.

MAX HASTINGS VIETNAM: AN EPIC TRAGEDY, 1945–1975 SATURDAY 13 JULY 2PM – 3PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Sir Max Hastings has vivid memories of the Vietnam campaign, first of reporting from the US in 1967–68, where he encountered many of the war’s decision-makers, then of successive assignments in Indochina for newspapers and the BBC: he rode a helicopter out of the US Saigon embassy compound during the 1975 final evacuation. Max is the author of 26 books which alongside his journalism have won numerous prizes. He describes his book on Vietnam as ‘the one that has perhaps struck the deepest chord in my own experience and emotions’.

JACQUELINE RIDING INTERVIEWED BY VICTORIA DAWSON PETERLOO: THE STORY OF THE MANCHESTER MASSACRE SATURDAY 13 JULY 10AM – 11AM PALACE HOTEL Manchester, August 1819: 60,000 people had gathered in the cause of parliamentary reform. To those defending the status quo, the vote was not a universal right but a privilege of wealth and land-ownership. To radical reformers the fundamental overhaul of a corrupt system was long overdue.

What happened next has arguably been lost to British history. Jacqueline Riding is an author, museums consultant and historical advisor on feature films including Mike Leigh’s Peterloo. Join Jacqueline just a month ahead of this important bicentenary of British Democracy.

VENKI RAMAKRISHNAN INTERVIEWED BY IAN MUIR-COCHRANE GENE MACHINE: THE RACE TO DECIPHER THE SECRETS OF THE RIBOSOME SATURDAY 13 JULY 4PM – 5PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Everyone knows the term DNA. Mention the ribosome on the other hand, and one will usually be met with blank faces, even from scientists. And yet without ribosomes nothing lives.

Offering a fascinating insight into what it is like to work at the cutting edge of modern science, Nobel Prize winner Sir Venki Ramakrishnan will tell the story of his quest to determine the structure of the ribosome, and so resolve an ancient mystery at the heart of life itself.

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TOM SERVICE THOMAS ADÈS: FULL OF NOISES SUNDAY 14 JULY 10AM – 11AM PALACE HOTEL Thomas Adès is feted from Los Angeles to London as the musician who has done more than any other living composer to connect contemporary music with wider audiences. Yet this celebrated composer, conductor and pianist is notoriously secretive about his creative process. Tom Service is a writer who has enjoyed the closest relationship with Adès and, in a series of provocative and challenging interviews, has got to the heart of Adès’s music and influences. Tom Service presents Radio 3’s flagship Music Matters and writes on music for The Guardian.

JENNY WALDMAN INTERVIEWED BY LUCY DUSGATE 14–18 NOW: FIVE YEARS OF EXTRAORDINARY ART EXPERIENCES MONDAY 15 JULY 10AM – 11AM PALACE HOTEL Spread over five years, 14–18 NOW was one of the largest public art commissions ever, and led to the creation of over 325 artworks which have been seen by more than 30 million people.

It featured artists including Gillian Wearing, Rachel Whiteread, Jeremy Deller, Peter Jackson and Danny Boyle. Jenny Waldman was Director of the 14–18 NOW arts programme and was previously the Creative Producer of the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

SOPHIE THÉRÈSE AMBLER SONG OF SIMON DE MONTFORT: ENGLAND’S FIRST REVOLUTIONARY AND THE DEATH OF CHIVALRY MONDAY 15 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL Heir to a great warrior, devoted husband and father, fearless crusader knight and charismatic leader, in 1258 Simon de Montfort, frustrated by the King’s refusal to take the advice of his nobles and the increasing injustice meted out to his subjects, marched on Henry III’s hall at Westminster and seized the reins of power. Dr Sophie Thérèse Ambler is a historian of medieval Europe and the Crusades at Lancaster University who has appeared on the BBC and Channel 4.

SIMON WINDER LOTHARINGIA: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF EUROPE’S WESTERN BORDERLANDS TUESDAY 16 JULY 10AM – 11AM PALACE HOTEL Simon Winder is the author of the best-selling books Germania and Danubia. In AD843 the three surviving grandsons of the great emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun.

After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited France, another Germany, and the third received the piece in between, Lotharingia. Simon joins us to discuss his hilarious and informative personal exploration of this other place.

ANNA PASTERNAK ‘UNTITLED’ – WALLIS SIMPSON, DUCHESS OF WINDSOR TUESDAY 16 JULY 3.30PM – 4.30PM PALACE HOTEL Described as ‘the first positive biography of Wallis’, Anna Pasternak looks deep into the life and legacy of one of the most misjudged women in British royal history, seeking to understand an unusual and complex woman, and the untenable situation she became embroiled in. Anna Pasternak’s great-grandfather was Leonid Pasternak, the impressionist painter, and her great uncle was the novelist Boris Pasternak, who won the Nobel Prize. Author of a number of best-selling books, Anna has had unprecedented access to Wallis’s inner circle and may have finally given Wallis Simpson her authentic voice.

CHRISTOPHER SOMERVILLE INTERVIEWED BY SARAH WARD SHIPS OF HEAVEN WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Christopher Somerville is the “walking correspondent” for The Times. With over 36 books to his name he is one of Britain’s most respected travel writers. Setting out to explore Britain’s great cathedrals, Christopher uncovered stories of the monarchs and bishops who ordered the building of these massive but unstable structures, the masons whose genius brought them into being, and the peasant labourers who erected (and died on) the scaffolding. We learn of the towns that grew up in their shadows, the impact of the Black Death, the Reformation and more.

JOHN WRIGHT THE FORAGER’S CALENDAR WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2PM – 3PM DEVONSHIRE DOME John Wright is Britain’s best-loved forager and a regular on River Cottage. From dandelions in spring to sloe berries in autumn, via wild garlic, samphire, chanterelles and even grasshoppers, our countryside is full of edible delights in any season. John discusses where to find them, how to identify them, and how to store, use and cook them. We’ll learn the stories behind the Latin names, the best way to tap a birch tree, and how to fry an ant, make rosehip syrup, and cook a hop omelette.

ANNA BEER PATRIOT OR TRAITOR: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH THURSDAY18 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Raleigh was an adventurer, a poet and a writer. His heroism, social quick-wittedness and charm enabled him to become one of the most successful in the Tudor court. So how could a man once considered Queen Elizabeth’s favourite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Dr Anna Beer seeks to uncover the truth about this problematic national hero, who in his own lifetime polarised opinion and whose legacy remains profoundly controversial to this day.

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MARTIN MOORE INTERVIEWED BY IAN MUIR-COCHRANE DEMOCRACY HACKED THURSDAY18 JULY 2PM – 3PM PALACE HOTEL Dr Martin Moore is director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Policy Institute at King’s College London. He was previously founding director of the Media Standards Trust (2006–15) where he directed the Election Unspun project and wrote extensively on the news media and public policy. Martin discusses active measures, data mining, psyops, mercenaries, microtargeting, the alt-right, plutocrats, the collapse of local news, Silicon Valley, Trump, trolling, surveillance – and us.

NICK ROBINSON INTERVIEWED BY FELICITY GOODEY FRIDAY 19 JULY 10.30AM – 11.30AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE The Insider. Have Britain’s politicians lost the plot or is the nation signalling the end of politics as we know it? No one is closer to the daily doings of the Westminster machine than the BBC’s Nick Robinson. He’s questioned and chronicled every twist and turn of the past three years, one of the most momentous periods in British History. What does he make of the present state of the body politic and can this veteran insider tell us where it all went wrong? BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme presenter and former BBC political correspondent Nick Robinson unlocks his store of inside knowledge in conversation with former BBC colleague Felicity Goodey.

NICK ROBINSON AND THE RT HON MICHAEL GOVE MP FRIDAY 19 JULY 12PM - 1PM PALACE HOTEL ‘In the thick of it’ – what happens when the tables are turned on Nick Robinson, one of the foremost political interviewers of our day? Michael Gove is one of the central figures of the Brexit debate. Interviewed countless times over the past two years, this is a unique opportunity to witness a major role reversal when the minister interviews the professional interviewer. Putting politics aside, we join in the fun as Gove puts Robinson on the spot. Michael Gove is Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and MP for Surrey Heath. After Oxford University, Michael began a career in journalism, culminating in his role as a columnist at The Times newspaper. Before taking on his current role, Michael served as Secretary of State for Education, Chief Whip, and Lord Chancellor & Secretary of State for Justice.

MELISSA HARRISON & TIM PEARS INTERVIEWED BY VICTORIA DAWSON ALL AMONG THE BARLEY & THE WEST COUNTRY TRILOGY FRIDAY 19 JULY 2PM – 3PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Melissa Harrison and Tim Pears are two of our finest novelists.

Melissa Harrison is a nature writer, critic and columnist. Her novel All Among the Barley received universal critical acclaim.

Tim Pears has written nine award-winning novels and The Redeemed is the final part of his West Country Trilogy. Both authors write dazzlingly about rural England on either side of the devastating First World War. This event celebrates landscape and Englishness, and the idea of the rural idyll.

DAVID CANNADINE IN CONVERSATION WITH DR CHRISTOPHER RIDGWAY THE COUNTRY HOUSE: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE FRIDAY 19 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL From Brideshead to Downton Abbey, the country house is a subject of fantasy and curiosity, a rich resource to explore the history of great architecture, decoration and the lives of landowners and staff. Looking at houses such as Chatsworth, Knole, Blenheim and Chartwell, Sir David Cannadine, acclaimed historian and President of the British Academy, offers a particular insight into the last 40 years of the country house in conversation with Dr Christopher Ridgway, curator of Castle Howard since 1984.

MELVYN BRAGG LOVE WITHOUT END: A STORY OF HELOISE AND ABELARD SATURDAY 20 JULY 10AM – 11AM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE Lord Bragg is one of our best-known and most respected broadcasters. Love Without End is his new novel about one of the most remarkable love stories in history – the passionate and enduring romance between two of the greatest scholars of the 12th century – and its resonance in the 21st century.

Heloise is reputed to be the cleverest woman in France and arrives in Paris bent on entering into its masculine world of learning. Thwarted, she is astonished when the brilliant radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, consents to be her tutor.

JANE GLOVER INTERVIEWED BY IWAN DAVIES HANDEL IN LONDON SATURDAY 20 JULY 2PM – 3PM PALACE HOTEL In 1712 a young German composer followed his princely master to London. He remained there for the rest of his life.

That master became King George II and the composer was George Frideric Handel. Jane Glover has conducted Handel’s work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world. She draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel’s story – a story of 18th-century courts and cabals, theatrical rivalries and some of the most remarkable music ever written.

JOHN LANCHESTER THE WALL SATURDAY 20 JULY 4PM – 5PM PALACE HOTEL John Lanchester is an award-winning novelist of Fragrant Harbour, The Debt to Pleasure, and Capital and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker. The Wall is a mystery story, a love story, a war story, and a story about a voyage. This dark, thrilling and hypnotic new dystopian novel is about why the young are right to hate the old. And about a broken world we will recognise as our own – and about what might be found when all is lost.

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In this new age of uncertainty, we are continuously bombarded with nightmarish visions of how our future might unfold. From collapsing economies to repressive regimes, these dark reflections of society often blur the line between reality and imagination. But is the future really that bleak, or can utopian thinking offer a better way forward? Perspectives brings together Britain’s foremost thinkers and commentators to explore hopes and fears in a changing world.

All events run from 9am - 10am in the Pavilion Arts Centre.

PERSPECTIVES

UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA – IMAGINING FUTURES

ORGANISED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE BRITISH ACADEMY

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The British Academy is the voice of the humanities and social sciences. The Academy is an independent fellowship of world-leading scholars and researchers; a funding body for research, nationally and internationally; and a forum for debate and engagement. For more information, please visit www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk Follow the British Academy on Twitter @BritishAcademy_

IS DIGITALISATION KILLING CLASSICAL MUSIC? WITH MARK WIGGLESWORTH AND ADRIAN KELLY SATURDAY 6 JULY Can classical music survive the digital age? The availability of live-streamed and on-demand opera and classical concerts has exploded in recent years. Yet while streamed events succeed in reaching larger audiences, are we losing the magic of the live performance? In this age of digital connectivity, is there a danger that the true quality of connection which occurs between performers and audiences might eventually be lost? Or should we embrace the power that digitalisation gives us to make classical music available to the broadest possible audience? Conductor Mark Wigglesworth has worked with over 100 orchestras, collaborating with many of the world’s finest orchestral musicians, soloists, singers and directors. He has written articles for major newspapers, presented a six-part television series for the BBC entitled Everything to Play For, and recorded a highly acclaimed cycle of Shostakovich symphonies. In 2017 he won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

THE FUTURE OF THE ECONOMY WITH ROBERT SKIDELSKY & DAME FRANCES CAIRNCROSS TUESDAY 9 JULY The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 unleashed the worst global downturn since the Great Depression of 1929. With the effects still reverberating, and the threat of a new financial crisis on the horizon, is it fair to say that the lessons from Lehman have not been learned? If so, what must governments, policymakers and economists do to avoid future catastrophes? In this Perspectives, we ask eminent economists Lord Skidelsky and Dame Frances Cairncross to consider past mistakes and future challenges.

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. He was appointed a life peer in 1991, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.

Frances Cairncross is the former Rector of Exeter College, University of Oxford. Prior to her decade at Oxford, she was a journalist, spending 13 years on The Guardian as an economic columnist and 20 years at The Economist magazine as a senior editor. She chairs the executive committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and in 2001-07 she chaired the Economic and Social Research Council. She was appointed a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2015.

PERSPECTIVES – BREXIT BRITAIN: WHAT NEXT? WITH PETER HENNESSY, VERNON BOGDANOR & ISABEL HARDMAN THURSDAY11 JULY While 2019 is due to mark the end of the formal Brexit negotiation period and the UK’s departure from the European Union, much uncertainty remains about Britain’s future and its relationship with Europe. With many fearing that the UK will be significantly worse off after Brexit, we ask leading experts Vernon Bogdanor and Peter Hennessy with Isabel Hardman, Assistant Editor of The Spectator, to examine the current situation and the likely future impact of Brexit on financial stability, foreign policy and security.

Peter Hennessy, one of Britain’s best-known historians, is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes), the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State: Preparing for The Worst 1945-2010. He was made an independent crossbench life peer in 2010.

Vernon Bogdanor was, until 2010, Professor of Government at University of Oxford. He is now a Research Professor at King’s College, London, Gresham Professor of Law, a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. He is a regular contributor to radio, television and print media on constitutional issues.

Isabel Hardman is a journalist and broadcaster. She is Assistant Editor of The Spectator and presents Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4. In 2015, she was named “Journalist of the Year” at the Political Studies Association’s annual awards. She frequently appears on television and radio, including Have I Got News For You, The News Quiz, Sunday Politics, and with Andrew Marr, Robert Peston, and more.

ARE GENDER STEREOTYPES DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN? WITH GINA RIPPON AND DR RUBY OATES WEDNESDAY 17 JULY Pink or blue? Barbie or Lego? Nurse or firefighter? Children are bombarded with gender stereotypes on a daily basis. But what impact do these messages have on our thoughts, decisions and behaviour? And how will they shape our future – from what we choose to study, through to our career choices and salary expectations? In this Perspectives, leading neuroscientist Gina Rippon joins early childhood expert Ruby Oates of the University of Derby to discuss whether gender stereotypes are damaging or if the current push for gender neutral parenting has gone too far.

Gina Rippon is an international researcher in the field of cognitive neuroscience based at the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham. She is a regular contributor to events such as the British Science Festival, New Scientist Live and the Sceptics in the Pub series. In 2015 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association for her contribution to the public communication of science.

Ruby Oates is Associate Professor of Childhood in the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation in the Institute of Education at the University of Derby. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Her current research involves evaluating children’s and young people’s views on outdoor play spaces. She is a published author with two recent textbook publications on early childhood studies.

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SCIENCE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH KATE DEVLIN & TRUDY BARBER THURSDAY18 JULY Should we fear robot relationships? Companion robots that are increasingly human-like in appearance and actions are a growing focus of the robotics industry. From sophisticated machines we can chat to, through to lifelike sex robots, these creations have the potential to change how humans socialise, date, or even fall in love. But do we really want – or need – artificial companionship? This Perspectives, featuring writer and computer scientist Kate Devlin, delves into the pros and cons of human-robot relationships.

Kate Devlin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. Her research is in the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). She writes and presents extensively across science media. She was probably the first person to say ‘sex robots’ in the House of Lords – in an official capacity, at least.

G E O R G I A N D I S C O V E RY

Trudy Barber created the UK’s first immersive VR Sex environment during her Fine Art Degree at Central Saint Martins, London, in 1992. She went on to complete her PhD from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 2005 on Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology: exposing the impact of arousal on technologies of cyberspace. She joined the Creative and Cultural Industries Faculty at Portsmouth University in 2006. Trudy lectures and writes on various aspects of Digital Culture, including emergent technology, cybersexualities, VR, robots, deviant leisure, love and attachment, art practice and the digital future. She has published, lectured and broadcast world-wide on her interests for over 25 years.

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THE FUTURE OF OUR POLITICAL PARTIES WITH NICK ROBINSON & MARTIN MOORE FRIDAY 19 JULY The shock referendum results of 2016 marked the start of one of the most turbulent periods in modern-day British politics.

From David Cameron’s resignation to the ongoing Brexit saga, it is clear that the last three years have irrevocably reshaped the UK’s political landscape. But what must the main parties do to adapt and survive in such a difficult climate? Academic and author Martin Moore joins journalist and broadcaster Nick Robinson to discuss the future of our political parties.

Nick Robinson is one of Britain’s best known political journalists. He presents the Today programme on Radio 4 and is the BBC’s former political editor. Throughout his career he has worked on several BBC news and political programmes.

He was Political Editor of ITV News 2002 to 2005 before returning to the BBC as its political editor from 2005 to 2015.

During this time he covered two general election campaigns, the formation of the first coalition in 75 years and the referendum on Scottish Independence.

Martin Moore is director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, and a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London.

He was previously founding director of the Media Standards Trust (2006-2015) where he won a Knight News Challenge award and a Prospect Think Tank award. He writes extensively on the news media and on public policy.

As we fast approach the much anticipated opening of the Crescent, BIF and The Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust are delighted to present a trio of events exploring the Georgian period: MILL SONGS & GEORGIAN CHAMBER MUSIC SUNDAY 7 JULY 6PM – 7PM PUMP ROOM For this fusion of books and music, join Philip Parkin of the Arkwright Society for a combination of song and extracts from literature which reflect the lives of Georgian and Victorian mill workers.

DR PETER COLLINGE GENTEEL HANDS AND REBEL QUEENS IN GEORGIAN BUSINESS WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 6PM – 7PM PUMP ROOM Georgian women are too often dismissed as Austen-like heroines in search of marriage and a good fortune, or as downtrodden mill workers. Through For the second half of this event, the stories of two successful Conrad Marshall (flute) and Georgian businesswomen – Ellen Lauren Scott (harp) present a Morewood, a colliery owner and recital of music with a Georgian ironstone extractor, and Barbara theme, to include works by Ford, a maltster with close family Mozart and Spohr. connections to Buxton’s hotels and inns – and their business interests, financial dealings, court appearances, role-reversals, and private affairs, Dr Peter Collinge reveals a different perspective.

DR GILLIAN WILLIAMSON THE GEORGIAN LANDLADY THURSDAY11 JULY 6PM – 7PM PUMP ROOM The English comic postcard tradition of the fearsome seaside landlady has its roots well before the 20th century. Lodging was a widespread practice in Georgian towns and cities, and lodgers spanning the social spectrum formed an important part of the seasonally-shifting population and economy of university and resort towns such as Buxton.

Social and cultural historian Dr Gillian Williamson uses diaries, court cases and other records to look at the role and reputation of the landlady in the 18th century.

DR RUTH LARSEN DUCHESSES, RADICALS AND RIOTERS: WOMEN AND POLITICS IN GEORGIAN ENGLAND FRIDAY 12 JULY 2PM – 3PM PAVILION ARTS CENTRE To celebrate the partnership between BIF and the University of Derby, we ‘spotlight’ an important piece of research from a Derby academic. Focussing primarily on the political life of Georgiana, fifth Duchess of Devonshire, Ruth’s talk will explore the different ways in which women contributed to political debate in the age of enlightenment. From writing political tracts, to hosting salons, to taking part in food riots, to canvassing for votes in elections, women’s voices were heard and were part of the political conversations of the 18th century.

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HH Munro or ‘Saki’ was arguably Britain’s greatest Edwardian short story writer. For the Duration of the War was written while Munro served on the Western Front where he died by sniper fire in 1917. Although “few people under 40” still read Saki, his cold eye and caustic wit still informs how we culturally imagine the English upper classes and the artistic country house. In For the Duration of the War Saki writes: “Beryl, Mrs Gaspilton….would like to be the centre of a literary, slightly political salon, where discerning satellites might have recognised the breadth of her outlook on human affairs and the undoubted smallness of her feet”.

In 1921 Aldous Huxley published his first novel, Chrome Yellow, a caustic and wicked parody of the Bloomsbury Group and particularly of the salon hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell. And yet Ottoline Morrell did nurture the talents of Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, DH Lawrence and TS Eliot at her home, Garsington Manor, as well as artists such as Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler. Ottoline Morrell never forgave Huxley, and the image of the Edwardian society hostess is still remembered as parodic and precious.

BY VICTORIA DAWSON

L I T E R A RY S A L O N S

This is in direct contrast to the American expatriate salons of Paris in the same period which now enjoy mythical literary status and value. Writers such as Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald returned from the same European war front and embraced modernism in their work and forged powerful new identities in the City of Light.

Women were once again at the centre of this artistic community, finding a freedom of lifestyle that was unavailable to them at home. “Paris was the twentieth century. It was the place to be”, said Gertrude Stein. Gertrude and her partner and publisher Alice B Toklas were collectors of talent from Picasso to Hemingway and were famous as salon hostesses even in their own lifetime, lining their walls with an impressive collection of modern art and nurturing the talent of America’s greatest writers of the 20th century. It wasn’t just men of the “lost generation” that were nurtured by the salon ideal. However, if few people now read Saki, I fear that even fewer people now read the poetry of Hilda Doolittle, ‘HD’, the novels of Djuna Barnes or the short stories of Kay Boyle. More people probably have heard of Sylvia Beach and her archetypal salon bookshop, Shakespeare & Co.

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Our 21st-century salons this year will neither parody their host nor, thankfully, make up for a lack of freedom of lifestyle amongst their protagonists. We will nurture emerging and established musical talent; great books and fine writers; new ideas and cultural energy, all in a domestic but beautiful and artistic setting. We owe a great debt to our salon hostess and host. Pat and Philip Holland have been consistent and generous supporters of Buxton International Festival over many years, regularly holding Friends’ recitals and fundraising activities. We offer them our sincere thanks.

We are delighted and grateful that KURO is joining us in our anniversary year as our drinks sponsor.

KURO is an award-winning, Japanese-inspired gin range consisting of a premium London Dry Gin and two new expressions: Cherry Blossom Gin and Soft Peach Gin. Distilled on a 300l copper still in the UK, KURO has gone from strength to strength since launching in 2017 with luxury retail listings that include the likes of Harvey Nichols and Harrods.

ALAN POWERS ON ENID MARX TUESDAY 9 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM Enid Marx (1902–98) was a leading artist and designer who played an important role in British cultural life in the mid-20th century. Associated with Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden in the ‘outbreak of talent’ at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s, she excelled as a creator of handblocked fabrics before branching into industrial woven patterns for London Underground and the wartime Utility Furniture Scheme. Alan Powers is the acknowledged expert on both Ravilious and Twentieth Century Architecture and Design.

PETER MOORE – SAMUEL JOHNSON AND THE ART OF HAPPINESS WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM For Samuel Johnson happiness was ‘the only thing of real value in existence’.

Yet for the great writer, critic and lexicographer this most simple of aspirations proved frustratingly difficult to obtain. In his Literary Salon session the historian Peter Moore looks back to the life and career of one of the towering figures in English literature, asking why happiness was so prized by Enlightenment thinkers of the mid-18th century and how Johnson attempted to find it.

ADRIAN KELLY & MICHAEL WILLIAMS – PRIMA LA MUSICA, DOPO LE PAROLE? FRIDAY 12 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM The great question at the centre of Richard Strauss’s last opera, Capriccio, asks us to consider which is of greater importance – the words or the music.

Without words there would be no reason for a song; without music, lyrics would die an unsung death. Unwrap this conundrum with Adrian Kelly, conductor of Eugene Onegin and Michael Williams, lyricist of Georgiana, as they discuss, debate, and divulge a little about the process of creating operas and music theatre.

TOM SERVICE – MUSIC AS ALCHEMY SATURDAY 13 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM The mute choreography of great conductors has fascinated and frustrated musicians and music-lovers for centuries.

Tom Service looks inside the rehearsal rooms of some of the most inspirational orchestral partnerships in the world. He looks at how orchestras can be inspired to the heights of expressive possibility by their maestros, or flabbergasted that he/she who doesn’t make a sound should be elevated to demi-god-like status by the public. Expect gossip and intrigue, human and musical stories.

ANNA BEER – SOUNDS AND SWEET AIRS: FORGOTTEN WOMEN OF CLASSICAL MUSIC WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM Since the birth of classical music, women who dared compose have faced a bitter struggle to be heard. In spite of this, female composers continued to create, inspire and challenge. Yet even today so much of their work languishes unheard.

Anna Beer will reveal the highs and lows experienced by eight composers across the centuries, from Renaissance Florence to 20th-century London, restoring to their rightful place exceptional women whom history has forgotten.

NAOKO ABE – CHERRY INGRAM: THE ENGLISHMAN WHO SAVED THE BLOSSOMS FOR JAPAN FRIDAY 19 JULY 7.30PM – 9PM Naoko Abe is a Japanese journalist living in London. She was the first political writer to cover the Prime Minister’s office, the foreign ministry and the defence ministry for one of Japan’s largest newspapers. Cherry Ingram is a portrait of an unknown Englishman and amateur botanist who’s legacy can be seen all around us. A story of Britain and Japan in the 20th century and how a delicate blossom was threatened by a war-like ideology.

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Photo credit Out There Photograph

BY SARAH WARD

WILD PLACES: LANDSCAPE AS I N S P I R AT I O N I N C R I M E F I C T I O N 162

‘It must be a wild place.’

‘Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men – .’

The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I’m surprised that more nature writers haven’t turned their hand to crime fiction. Every walker knows that there’s danger to be found in the most bucolic of settings. In the Peak District we wrestle with the sudden onset of foul weather forcing us to take shelter in unnerving out-of-the-way places, and stumble across awe-inspiring constructions which remind us of Derbyshire’s contribution to the country’s industrial heritage.

I’m always dismayed by the commonly-held assumption which equates rural crime fiction with ‘cosy’ narratives. I partly blame the popularity of Midsomer Murders, the television series set in a fictional English county where an alarming number of rural murders are solved with questionable ease and leave no apparent legacy for the community. The great Agatha Christie also played a part, with Miss Marple’s assertion that life spent in a village had furnished her with infinite negative examples of human nature. This, and Christie’s use of the country house in many of her novels, provoked Edmund Wilson’s mocking assessment of the lack of realism contained in English thrillers in his 1945 series of New Yorker essays, one of which was entitled Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

The perceived cosiness of the countryside isn’t true of literature from elsewhere in the world. In the United States, writers such as Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and Lee Child have exposed the underbelly of the rural idyll in genuinely frightening thrillers. Similarly, Iceland, with its remarkably low murder rate, has produced writers such as Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir whose books portray brutal crimes to a backdrop of stunning lava fields and snowy landscapes.

The illusion of British rural crime fiction as something soft-boiled is just that, an illusion.

Take The Hound of the Baskervilles and the terrifying fate of killer Jack Stapleton on the Dartmoor marshland or Bram Stoker’s use of the Derbyshire and Staffordshire caves as the source of home-bred evil in Lair of the White Worm. Even country houses can be terrifying places as shown in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Agatha Christie’s Golden Age contemporaries were also emerging from the country estate and setting stories rooted in the landscape. Harriet Vane in Dorothy L Sayers’s Have His Carcass, finds a body during a hiking holiday on the south coast and the series detective of ECR Lorac’s books, Robert MacDonald, is an avid walker whose investigations take him around the English landscape. It’s no coincidence that publication of these novels coincided with the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932 and the democratisation of the countryside.

In the greatest crime stories, landscape and plot are perfectly integrated, a fact acknowledged by PD James who argued that emphasis on setting could add credibility to a narrative depicting dramatic and horrific events. Descriptions of landscape can both emphasise terror and provide a release from it, as she showed in Devices and Desires, set in East Anglia, where an isolated headland community slowly unravels in the shadow of a nuclear power plant.

A rural setting does have its drawbacks for plotting, however. Readers don’t like coincidences in crime novels, especially when the outcome is positive for the protagonist or investigation. Coincidences do, however, happen in real life and a police contact of mine confirmed that occasionally a case is solved by lucky happenstance. In rural thrillers, what might appear to be a coincidence is more a reflection on the narrow pool of suspects available in a small community and the fact that little stays secret for long.

Crime readers are now spoilt for choice in relation to landscape-based contemporary crime novels. Ann Cleeves’s Shetland books, Peter Robinson’s police procedurals set in Yorkshire, Peter May’s Lewis trilogy and, of course, the novels of Derbyshire crime writers including Stephen Booth, Roz Watkins, Steven Dunne, Sophie Draper and myself.

tunnels of the Monsal Trail, the drowned village of Ashopton under Ladybower Reservoir and the historic canals snaking through the Peak District, have all provided inspiration for my own books.

Two writers who have successfully used the landscape in their crime novels and will be appearing at the festival are Elly Griffiths and William Shaw. Griffiths sets her books on the Norfolk coast, depicting communities living on the edge of land and sea. The occupation of her protagonist, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, means we see the landscape give up its secrets during an investigation. Whether it be the colour of the grass or odd indentations on a piece of ground, the answers to a crime are often contained within the landscape.

William Shaw draws on nature for his series set on the south coast near Dungeness. One of the detectives is an ardent bird-watcher which allows him to get to know and integrate into the community while passing on his passion to the wayward daughter of a newly arrived colleague. The landscape in Shaw’s books is something to be scrutinised and investigated, although the crimes often reflect contemporary social issues.

I’ve lost track of the number of times people say they’ve visited a place because they read about it in a crime novel. It’s a reflection of the evolution of the genre that readers now not only devour books for the plot or recurring characters but for the evocative setting. For me, the mark of a perfect crime novel is when authors not only ably depict the landscapes in which their thrillers are set, but they also persuade the reader that the story could not have taken place anywhere else.

What makes a Peak District location so attractive for crime writers? Partly its proximity to the urban conurbations of Sheffield, Manchester, Huddersfield, Stoke-on-Trent and Derby. Contrast works well in crime fiction and there’s a huge difference between the national park in the summer which experiences an influx of tourists attending wells dressings and other festivals, and the often desolate winter. The unique landscape also has a role, making Derbyshire an attractive setting with natural features such as the extensive cave network utilised by many crime writers. We also benefit from the legacy of the Industrial Revolution: the long, eerie

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Lucy Dusgate produces the digital art programme for The Lowry, and is a freelance Creative Producer of cultural events and exhibitions. From 2012 until early 2019 she was Producer of the public realm cultural programme Quays Culture at Salford Quays/ MediaCityUK. Her experience includes new commissions and presentations across galleries, theatres, cinema and public spaces in the buildings and outdoor locations – from the intimate to the monumental and collaborating with international artists and partners. She is experienced in working across performance, dance, digital art, music and visual art for venues, festivals, corporate partners and the public sector. She grew up in Whaley Bride and now lives in Manchester.

Liz England trained in Birmingham Diocese and moved to Lichfield Diocese for her curacy. She is now trying her third diocese in Derby as Rector-in-charge of Buxton Team Parish. Previously, she ran her own consultancy business in Birmingham supporting Children Centres. Liz loves to paint and visit the cinema in her spare time. Liz does not shy away from bonkers pursuits especially when trying to tell people about the gospel and the church, and once danced at the Royal Albert Hall dressed as a penguin!

Mark Greengrass is the author of Christendom Destroyed (1517-1648), volume 5 of the remarkable Penguin History of Europe series directed by David Cannadine, devoted to the period of the Protestant Reformation. Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield, he is a historian of early-modern Europe. His current project is about what happened in France after the famous Massacre of St Bartholomew (1572), and how it explains the momentous event as we know it.

Tanya Harrod is the author of The Crafts in Britain in the Twentieth Century (1999). She contributes to The Burlington Magazine, The Guardian, Crafts, The Spectator, the Literary Review and The Times Literary Supplement. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, the Critics’ Circle and the Art Workers’ Guild. With Glenn Adamson and Edward S. Cooke she edits The Journal of Modern Craft. Her The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, modern pots, colonialism and the counterculture won the 2012 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Her most recent books are The Real Thing: essays on making in the modern world (2015), Leonard Rosoman (2016) and Craft, Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art (2018).

Les Hurst is a Committee member of the Orwell Society. Derbyshire bibliophiles may recognise him from Scarthin Books of Cromford, where he is a staff member. His first article on George Orwell was published in 1985, he has continued to write and speak about Orwell ever since, including talks at Scarthin Books’ Cafe Philosophique, and contributing corrections to the Complete Works of George Orwell. Keen to consider Orwell in context, he reads not only the works of George Orwell but the books, articles and pamphlets that Orwell was reading.

OUR INTERVIEWERS

Dorian Lynskey writes about music, film, books and politics for publications including the Guardian, the Observer, the New Statesman, Q, GQ, Billboard and Empire. His new book The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 is the follow-up to 2011’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs. He hosts the Remainiacs podcast.

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Ian Muir-Cochrane, after graduating with a degree in Biological Science, worked in the City of London, Spain and as an editor at a number of publishing houses. For 25 years he was a journalist at the BBC. In 2018 he graduated with a Masters Degree in Health Data Science from the University of Manchester.

Gerry Northam became a news reporter in 1970 for BBC radio in Stoke-On-Trent and joined BBC national current affairs in 1979. He made more than 150 documentaries for File on 4 (Radio 4), Brass Tacks and Public Eye (BBC2) and Panorama on BBC1. He exposed errors and cover-ups in the investigation of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing; mismanagement and private profiteering in public services; the secret militarisation of British police under Margaret Thatcher; and the rampage of CIA-supported death squads in Central America. Gerry won Pye and Sony radio awards and three Royal Television Society awards.

Matthew Parris worked for the Foreign Office and Margaret Thatcher before serving as an MP. He now writes as a columnist for The Times and The Spectator, and last year won the ‘Commentators’ Commentator Award at the Editorial Intelligence Awards. He is the author of many books, including his autobiography Chance Witness and the best-sellers The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase and Scorn. This autumn he publishes Fracture - a study of some of the subjects of his Great Lives BBC radio series.

Christopher Ridgway has been Curator of Castle Howard since 1985, He lectures on historic houses and heritage issues and teaches at the Universities of York, Leeds, Maynooth, and Cambridge. He holds many heritage trusteeships and appointments. As Chairman of the Yorkshire Country House Partnership he has overseen four collaborative exhibition projects in the region in recent years and has organised five seminars relating to policies, issues and research in the field of the country house. Since 2008 he has been co-organiser of the annual historic house conference at Maynooth University. His many publications include Castle Howard and Brideshead, Fact, Fiction and In-Between (2011).

Sarah Ward is the author of four DC Childs novels, In Bitter Chill, A Deadly Thaw, A Patient Fury and The Shrouded Path set in the Derbyshire Peak District where she lives. She has a new Gothic historical thriller, The Quickening, coming out in February 2020 under the name Rhiannon Ward. On her website, she reviews the best of current crime fiction published around the world and she is a judge for the Petrona Award for translated Scandinavian crime novels.

3 - 2 2 J U LY 2 0 2 0 La donna del lago by Gioachino Rossini Libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola (based on The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott).

A Buxton International Festival Production.

Ciboulette by Reynaldo Hahn Libretto by Robert de Flers and Francis de Croisset.

A Buxton International Festival Production.

Acis and Galatea by George Frideric Handel English text by John Gay. A co-production with the Early Opera Company.

Violet Composer Tom Coult, Writer Alice Birch.

A Music Theatre Wales guest production Our Future A new commission by Buxton International Festival of an Opera Oratorio about climate change.

Composed by Kate Whitley

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Grants from trusts and foundations play a vital role in enabling us to continue our work and to expand into new areas: supporting new operas, professional development for young artists, and work in outreach and the local community. A significant amount of this work simply would not happen without the continuing generosity and commitment of trusts and foundations. We are deeply grateful to the many trusts and foundations supporting our work. These include

L G Harris Trust

THE BINGHAM TRUST HALL BANK TRUST ANDRE BERNHEIM CHARITABLE TRUST DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL ACTION GRANTS N SMITH CHARITABLE SETTLEMENT

ASHBY FOUNDATION THE SAINER CHARITY THE KIRBY LAING FOUNDATION THE STONEHOUSE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

This year we’ve expanded our Outreach Programme to spread the joy of music, culture and creativity to more people across Derbyshire.

We’ve focused on giving students chance to learn the practicalities of opera, teaching them skills that they can apply later in life, and giving them experiences they’ll never forget. Our programme is bringing music to our community, ensuring that no matter your age or background, you can be part of something wonderful. Here are highlights of the 2019 BIF Programme:

The Orphans of Koombu as part of the Festival, giving our school groups the chance to act and sing in an opera on the stage of Buxton Opera House.

C R E AT I V E L E A R N I N G

The Orphans of Koombu with seven schools across Derbyshire

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We took on an ambitious project: to teach students from secondary schools and youth groups across Derbyshire how to sing and act in opera. We chose The Orphans of Koombu as the work to engage and inspire them. Based on the book The Secret Song, written by Michael Williams, the Chief Executive of Buxton International Festival, The Orphans of Koombu was first performed by Cape Town Opera to communities throughout South Africa. With our director Mark Burns and conductor Tom Newall, nine young opera singers with piano, marimba and African percussion, worked for 10 weeks to bring Koombu to our chorus of KS3 and year 6 students.

Each school or group had a 90-minute session per week which focused on how an opera comes together – from understanding diction, melody, rhythm and harmony to creating their own costumes. This became a 75-minute show, bursting with operatic beauty, musical theatre and African harmonies, to give our young students the chance to perform it in their school halls before an audience. This took away some of the fear of performing in Buxton Opera House.

We’re thrilled to be giving seven performances of

Delivering Arts Awards with Carnival of the Animals, Buxton Festival Fringe and the Babbling Vagabonds Along with our delivery of Discover Arts Awards in infant schools, we’ve collaborated with Buxton Festival Fringe to deliver Explore Arts Award, and celebrate the 40th anniversary of Buxton Festival and the 40th Buxton Festival Fringe in the community. Students from four junior schools have worked with our team to understand the music and the story of Carnival of the Animals, by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). We commissioned the Babbling Vagabonds to help them design a small part of the giant animals from the Carnival, creating a parade of eye-catching creatures which will march as part of Buxton Carnival to celebrate our performance – see if you can spot one!

Singing in the community Filled with fun and frivolity, Kaleidoscope Choir celebrates the joy of singing together. Building on the success of 2018, the choir has grown in number with more people trying singing for the first time. The group has taken part in a number of performances, aided by local folk legend, Bella Hardy.

Banishing the winter blues With funding from the Hall Bank Trust, in January we took one of our previous interns, young singer Ellie Hull, into three care homes. With a pianist, Ellie devised a set which was filled with operatic pieces and with songs to take the residents back to their youth.

BUXTON F E S T I VA L FRINGE

Buxton Festival Fringe goes from strength to strength with many artists using it as a preview for Edinburgh. FRINGE40 in 2019 represents its 40th year, with the event lasting three days longer than usual and boasting a record-breaking number of entries - nearly 220 with 760 individual performances.

The Fringe showcases performers and artists of all kinds with music, drama, comedy, spoken word and visual arts proving particularly large categories. Events are taking place across Buxton and beyond.

The Fringe is an open arts festival. Anyone can enter!

The programme can be seen at www.buxtonfringe.org.uk and also via a new Buxton Fringe App. The free printed programme is also widely available. For queries e-mail info@buxtonfringe.org.uk, call 01298 70705 or text 07952 193 521.

(Trustees: Philip Barton, Dr Ian Johnston CB DL (rtd), Kate Redford)

B U X T O N F E S T I VA L F O U N D AT I O N

Through a grant to the 2018 Festival, the Foundation supported the very successful and much enjoyed productions of The Daughter of the Regiment and Tisbe. The Foundation was set up in 2002 as a separate charitable trust to provide development funds to support the Festival and an endowment fund for long term financial stability. Many artistic organisations have a similar fund with its own trustees, and this arrangement reduces the risks from unpredictable box-office income and helps with uneven cash-flow. The Foundation hopes to make grants to facilitate increasing the range, diversity, and quality of the festival programme.

This year it is supporting the opera The Orphans of Koombu.

Since its inception the Foundation has received significant donations from two companies, 10 charitable trusts, 66 individuals and several anonymous donors, and all have helped make a big impact, e.g. with buying the Festival’s offices.

There have also been six legacies and two donations in memory of Friends who enjoyed the Festival. We are particularly grateful for recent very welcome donations, one from an anonymous donor and three from individual legatees, namely Janet Ede, Charles Elston, and Majorie Calow. Looking to the future, we would like to encourage anyone who enjoys the Festival to consider leaving a legacy to the Foundation. This can be very tax efficient for the donor’s estate and main beneficiaries, and the Foundation’s Trustees will channel the money towards specific projects if you wish, such as helping to develop young performers. Most local solicitors have details about the Buxton Festival Foundation, Registered Charity 1096269. If you need more information or want to discuss what is involved, please contact me via the Festival Office on 01298 70395 or by email at foundation@buxtonfestival.co.uk Meanwhile we still need urgently to rebuild the endowment fund and are delighted that CEO Michael Williams shares that ambition. At his instigation, any proceeds from the opening concert (New Voices), will go to the Foundation. The concert features budding stars singing excerpts from popular operas, and we hope that this will appeal to people new to opera as well as those who know the tunes very well. It is appropriate that by providing financial stability in the long term, the Foundation helps the Festival offer good career opportunities to these rising stars, which means that we, our children and grandchildren can enjoy the Festival for years to come. So please do support the concert, the Festival, and the Foundation and, particularly, do consider leaving a legacy to the Foundation. What could be more worthwhile?

Jane Davies OBE, Chairman, Buxton Festival Foundation 167

1979 Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti; The Two Fiddlers Maxwell Davies† 1980 Hamlet Thomas; Beatrice and Benedict Berlioz; Cinderella Maxwell Davies† 1981 Il matrimonio segreto Cimarosa; Let’s make an opera Britten† 1982 Háry János Kodály; The Spinning Room Kodály Nightingale Strouse† 1983 Griselda Vivaldi; La colombe Gounod; James and the Giant Peach Chappell† 1984 Médée Cherubini; Jason Cavalli; Robin Hood Kay† 1985 La buona figliuola Piccinni; Il filosofo di campagna Galuppi; David and Goliath Read 1986 King Arthur Purcell; Ariodante Handel; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Blackford;

B U X T O N F E S T I VA L O P E R A S 1 9 7 9 – 2 0 1 8

The Ring for Children Caggiano†

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1987 Il Pigmalione Donizetti; L’occasione fa il ladro Rossini Don Quixote in Sierra Morena Conti; Master Peter’s Puppet Show de Falla 1988 Armida Haydn; Torquato Tasso Donizetti; Help, Help the Globolinks Menotti 1989 L’italiana in Londra Cimarosa; Il pittor parigino Cimarosa Double Bill: Il maestro di cappella Cimarosa / Peter and the Wolf Prokofiev 1990 Tancredi Rossini; Le Huron Grétry Double Bill: Catnapper Copland /The Princess, the Poet and the Pagliacci Man Werner 1991 The Abduction from the Seraglio Mozart Double Bill: The Impresario / Il sogno di Scipione Mozart The Black Spider Weir† 1992 Agrippina Handel; The Italian Girl in Algiers Rossini 1993 Maria Stuarda Donizetti; The Secret Marriage Cimarosa 1994 ll re pastore Mozart Double Bill: Gianni Schicchi Puccini I Pagliacci Leoncavallo* 1995 The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland Monteverdi; The Turn of the Screw Britten 1996 Amadigi Handel*; The Beggar’s Opera Gay* 1997 Il mondo della luna Haydn* Triple Bill: Il maestro di cappella Cimarosa/The Telephone Menotti/Susanna’s Secret Wolf-Ferrari 1998 La finta semplice Mozart; Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky* 1999 Double Bill: Il campanello di notte Donizetti/The Beautiful Galatea Suppé The Rape of Lucretia Britten*; Il tabarro Puccini* 2000 Fierrabras Schubert Rodelinda Handel*; Jane Eyre Berkeley* The Martyrdom of St Magnus Maxwell Davies*; Burning Waters Keable 2001 Un giorno di regno Verdi Partenope Handel*; The Lighthouse Maxwell Davies*; The Nose Shostakovich* 2002 La Périchole Offenbach; Erismena Cavalli* Double Bill: The Young Man with the Carnation Rushton/ The Bear Walton*; The Electrification of the Soviet Union Osborne*; The Green Children LeFanu† 2003 Maria Padilla Donizetti; Semele Handel; Candide Bernstein* Gwyneth and the Green Knight Plowman*; Hansel and Gretel Humperdinck

2004 Il turco in Italia Rossini; Hercules Handel; Maria de Buenos Aires Piazzolla The Turn of the Screw Britten*; The Blackened Man Will Todd Triple Bill: Mahagonny Songspiel Weill*/ Trouble in Tahiti Bernstein*/ Walking not Driving Tim Coker* 2005 The Merry Wives of Windsor Nicolai; Ascanio in Alba Mozart; Hollow Hill Ian McQueen; Ariodante Handel* The Knot Garden Tippett*; The Barber of Seville Paisiello*; The Birds Ed Hughes* 2006 The Fair Maid of Perth Bizet; Armide Gluck; Pimpinone Telemann; Noye’s Fludde Britten† The Nose Shostakovich*; The Coronation of Poppea Monteverdi*; Apollo and Hyacinthus Mozart*; Isabella and the Pot of Basil Laurence Roman* 2007 Roberto Devereux Donizetti; Bluebeard Offenbach; Le nozze di Figaro Mozart*; King Arthur Purcell*; Tobias and the Angel Jonathan Dove†; Romeo and Juliet Benda*; Julie Boesmans* 2008 The Poacher Lortzing; Samson Handel Triple Bill: Savitri Holst/The Wandering Scholar Holst/Riders to the Sea Vaughan Williams; Street Scene Weill* Dido and Aeneas Purcell*; A Chair in Love John Metcalf* 2009 Lucrezia Borgia Donizetti; Véronique Messager; Camacho’s Wedding Mendelssohn The Lighthouse Maxwell Davies*; Mitridate Mozart*; Orlando Handel* 2010 Luisa Miller Verdi; The Barber of Baghdad Cornelius; Idomeneo Mozart, arr. R. Strauss; Zaide Mozart*; Into the Little Hill Benjamin*; Alcina Handel*; Trouble in Tahiti Bernstein*; All the King’s Men Bennet† 2011 Maria di Rohan Donizetti; Saul Handel; Mignon Thomas; Flying Circus Monteverdi*; Greek Turnage*; The Italian Girl in London Cimarosa*; The Lovely Ladies Cowdrey* Tarka the Otter McNeff†; Pimpinone Telemann* 2012 Intermezzo R. Strauss; Double Bill: The Maiden in the Tower Sibelius/ Kashchei the Immortal Rimsky-Korsakov Jephtha Handel; Too Hot to Handel Handel*; L’Olympiade Vivaldi*; The Marriage of Figaro Portugal*; The Turn of the Screw Britten*; James and the Giant Peach Chappell† 2013 Double Bill: La Princesse Jaune Saint-Saëns/La Colombe Gounod; La finta giardiniera Mozart; Ottone in villa Vivaldi*; Church Parables: Curlew River/ The Prodigal Son/ The Burning Fiery Furnace Britten*; Double Bill: The Killing Flower Sciarrino/Eight Songs for a Mad King Maxwell Davies*; Fortunio Messager* 2014 The Jacobin Dvořák; Orfeo ed Euridice Gluck Otello Rossini‡; Gloria – A Pigtale Gruber* 2015 Giovanna d’Arco Verdi; Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti; Louise Charpentier‡; Dido and Aeneas Purcell* 2016 Leonore Beethoven; I Capuleti e i Montecchi Bellini; Tamerlano Handel The Golden Dragon Eötvös*; La Sena Festeggiante Vivaldi*‡ 2017 Macbeth Verdi; Albert Herring Britten; Lucio Silla Mozart Y Tŵr Puw* 2018 Alzira Verdi; Idomeneo Mozart; The Daughter of the Regiment Donizetti*; Tisbe Brescianello ‡ * visiting production † community opera ‡ concert performance

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THANK YOU TO OUR FRIENDS!

The Friends have been the life and soul of Buxton Festival since 1980, providing financial support, friendship and enthusiasm that underpin the Festival’s abiding appeal and success. We represent the main body of our festival audiences and our membership donations, along with other fundraising, make a significant contribution to the Festival’s finances. All Friends receive the Festival Newsletter and emails, enjoy priority booking and receive early notice or our events and of our holidays provided by our partner, John Whibley Holidays with Music.

Download an application form and join our Friends today!

FRIENDS DAYS WED 10 JULY WED 17 JULY

Patron Wyn Davies Friends Trustees Chairman David Brindley Vice-Chairman Pete Spriggs Secretary John Gaunt Treasurer Prof Anthony Parsons Membership Secretary Judy Barker Events Organiser Joan Matthews

FRIENDS

Other Trustees Esther Allbutt Harriet Grubb Louise T Potter DL Lee Barnes (co-opted) Jane Davies OBE (co-opted) Felicity Goodey CBE DL (co-opted) Michael Williams (co-opted)

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Friends Book-Keeper Sarah O’Gorman Directors Circle Mr Mark H Brackenbury George & Daphne Burnett Wyn & Jane Davies OBE Mr Richard C A Eastwood & Dr Carol Lomax John Marsh & Felicity Goodey CBE DL Dr D J Mather Mr R J Mayson & Mrs K Blandy-

Mayson Mrs Patricia Payne & Mr Peter Leach Mrs Louise T Potter DL Dr John & Dr Frances Riordan Prof F Schmid & Ms B Eickhoff Dame Janet Smith & Mr R Mathieson Mr Oliver & Mrs Fiona Stephenson Mr M E Sutherland Mr & Mrs W J Tyson Mr & Mrs Jan Woloniecki Benefactors Mr & Mrs P Barton Mr D E Boden Mr & Mrs G F Budenberg Dame Sandra Burslem DL Mrs H M Coates Mr G A Collens Prof Bruce Collins & Dr D Collins Mr & Mrs E Coningsby Mr & Mrs N B B Davie-Thornhill Miss M Derome Duke of Devonshire KCVO, CBE, DL Mr & Mrs D J Dickinson Mr & Mrs D Dugdale Mrs D E Field Mrs F Findlay Ms C S Gibbs Mr J Glover & Mr M Parris Mr & Mrs R L Greenwood Sir Philip Haworth Bt Mr P R W Hensman OBE & Mrs C Hensman Mr M P Herring Mr & Mrs R F Huddie Mrs D M Jeffrey CBE DL Mr J Kendall Sir Richard Lambert Mr & Mrs S Lester Mrs L E Ling Mr & Mrs F D Mathews Mr R D Milnes Mr & Mrs P Moderate Mr & Mrs D C Moss

Mr J S Nicoll Mr T Osborne Mr D Peters & Dr J Peters Mr R W Sanders OBE & Mrs H Sanders Mr & Mrs M J Seaton Mr & Mrs P Stubbs Miss S J Wallwork Mr & Mrs G K Watson Mr D Webb Mr W J Weston Drs R & Z Woodhead Gold Patrons Mrs E B Benson Dr N G Bramley-Haworth Dr J S Drury CBE Mr & Mrs M L Ferrar Mr & Mrs G T F Fletcher Mr & Mrs S Glover Mr & Mrs R J Lewis Prof & Mrs A J Parsons Mr J Gaunt & Mrs K Redford Mr A P Sainer Miss J M Tanner Mr & Mrs J Weaver Honorary Life Patrons Glyn Foley Lord Hattersley Sir Philip Haworth Bt Anthony Hose Donald Maxwell David Rigby Patrons Anonymous Mr & Mrs P R F Abbott Mrs P M Allott Mr & Mrs D M Allwood Prof & Mrs R Anderson Mrs H J Armitage Mr A Atack Mrs C Ball Mrs J A Barker

Mr D A Barrass Dr R N Barton Mr P K Berry Mr & Mrs M Bignell Mrs J Blenkharn Prof Sir Robert Boyd Mr & Mrs D H Brindley Mrs M J Brooke Dr A Browne Dr & Mrs H E Browning Mr & Mrs M F Buchanan Mrs E Bunker Mr B J Burge Mr P Cartledge & Mr T Hersey Prof & Mrs M Chisholm Mr & Mrs N Chubb Mr & Mrs P Coffey Dr & Mrs M C Cook Mrs J B Cooke Mr & Mrs P Croft Dr C M Dennehy Miss J M Dickens Mr J S Downham Mr & Mrs T A Dryburgh Mr & Mrs S B Duncan Mr & Mrs F I Dunn Ms M Falk Mr & Mrs A Feinstein

Dr & Mrs M Fleming Miss S R E Fletcher Mr & Mrs E D Foulkes Mr A Fraser Mr D W Fryer Dr & Mrs R Gibson Dr & Mrs P V Gill Mr J Glazier Ms Emily J K Gottlieb Mr C Gregory Mr & Mrs S Grime Mrs D S Y Hambleton Mr B C Hargreaves Mr R W Hartman Mr & Mrs J T Harvey Lady Mary Hatch & Simon Avery Mr Keith Hatchick Lord & Lady Hattersley Mr & Mrs C E Henderson Mr & Mrs H P Henderson Mrs P Holland Mr & Mrs C J Howell Mr & Mrs E W L Hughes Dr A J F Hutton Mr & Mrs T JacksonBaker Mr & Mrs P M Johns Dr & Mrs I A Johnston Mrs M M Joscelyne Mr & Mrs J Joyce

Ms L Ring Kapila OBE Dr & Mrs W S Karwatowski Dr J Kennedy Mr P J Kenyon & Mr K Ren Ms M Kerr Mr & Mrs S J Kleiser Mr & Mrs S R LancelynGreen Mr M Lang & Ms H Gerrard Mr & Mrs P Lee Dr R E Lee Mrs A M Lees-Jones Dr S A Leslie Mr B Lewis Mr & Mrs A G Lockyer Sir Andrew & Lady Longmore Mrs J M Love Ms F MacCarthy Sir David & Lady Maddison Mr J Mason Mr & Mrs A Matthews Mrs M J Matthews Prof John Mavor Dr & Mrs J McQuaid CB Miss S Mensforth Mr J C Middleton Dr & Mrs M Monaghan Prof D H J Morgan & Prof J Finch Mr P Morris & Mr J D Clarkson Mr D Mulvey & Miss G Costello Mr D J P Nevell Sir Bryan & Lady Nicholson Mr G Northam & Ms P Jones Mr & Mrs P Nowak Miss A O’Brien Mr & Mrs J Olivier Mr & Mrs K Pearce Mr A E Pike Mr P Ramsbottom & Mr D Ward Ms A Redfearn Mr & Mrs R Reed Mrs B C Reeve Mr & Mrs C Richards Mr & Mrs G A Rowlands Dr & Mrs J B Salmon Mr & Mrs J Scampion Mr W Scott Mr P J Sellar Mr M A Shales Miss B M Sharratt Prof Judy Simons Mr D M Smith Mr T W D Smith Mr B Spiby Dr M R Spiers & Dr P E Tinios

Mr & Mrs P Spriggs Mr & Mrs C L Stephenson Mrs B Stringer Mr R Stubbings & Mr R A Moore Dr & Mrs P F Tatham Mr A J Templeton & Mr R J Snell Mrs J B Thornton Mr & Mrs R C Tonge Mrs M O Trotman Mr J I Tudor-Griffith Ms D T A Turck & Rev E Packham Mr & Mrs R A M Wade Drs R A & J Wartnaby Mrs K C Watson Dr I Webster Mrs C C Williams Mr & Mrs M Williams Mrs F M Willis Dr & Mrs M D Winton Gold Friends Mrs M A Al-Kishtaini Dr A E Allan Mr P Allatt Mr B Allman Mrs A Almond Mr R K Anderson Mr & Mrs J R Anfield Miss H Atkinson Miss P M Austin Mr R A Ayling Mrs A M Bailey Mr & Mrs C E J Baker Ms E B Ball Mr & Mrs M Bamford Mrs A Bankes Dr J Barber & Prof S Davies Dr M C Barchard Mrs G M Barker Mr A L L Barnes Mrs M Barstow Mr & Mrs P Batchelor Mr & Mrs P J Bate Mrs M Bates Mr R A Bedgar Mr J G Bellak & Mrs J Case Mrs J E Bellerby Mr & Mrs G G Bennett Mr & Mrs M Blackburn Mr & Mrs N Blech Mrs P B Bolton Mr & Mrs J L Booth Mr & Mrs P F Booth Dr P M Borrell Dr D Bostwick & Mr A Barber Mr & Mrs F G Botham Mr & Mrs D Bourne Mr T A Bowker P Boylan Mr & Mrs G H Boyle Mr J Braithwaite Rev P D Bridgwater Dr R D Bridgewater Mrs G S Brooks

Mr J Brough Dr L Broughton & Mr N C Denyer Miss V A Brown Mr A W Brunt Mrs A Buckley Mr J Bullock Mr & Mrs P A Burchell Mr & Mrs F A Burnley Mr & Mrs G Burrows Mr A L Carey Mrs S J Carey Dr & Mrs A J Carter Mr & Mrs T Carter Mr R V Chaplin Mr T Clark Mr & Mrs R H Clow Mrs V Cochrane Mr & Mrs M A Coe Mr P Connor Mr & Mrs G L Cooksey Dr D Cornthwaite Dr D Costain Mr R G Cottam Dr T P Cowhig Mr & Mrs J D Cullingham Mrs J A Culver Mr R A Cunningham Mrs E Currie Jones Mr N C Dalrymple Mrs N J Davies Mrs M Deacock Mr T Dimmock Mr R C Duncalf Mr J A Duncan Mrs E A Dyson Prof Christopher Easingwood Mr R Eaton Ms P Edwards & Mrs S Hammill Miss B M Eickhoff Mrs J Elliott Mr N Ellis Mr & Mrs R Ellis Mr & Mrs M R Elsom Mr D W Elwood Mr & Mrs H R Evans Prof J Exum Mr & Mrs K Fairbrother Dr & Mrs G S Feggetter Prof David Ferguson Mr N T Fitt & Ms V Robinson Mr & Mrs J Forbes Dr & Mrs R Ford Mr & Mrs R Foulkes Mrs A Fox Mr C A Fox Mrs C Freeman Miss C Fremantle Mr & Mrs P J Frogley Mr S Fuller & Dr A R Fuller Mr & Mrs M Fullerton Mr & Mrs C Fullwood Mr S Fussell Dr D Gill Miss D Goodchild Mr & Mrs A Gordon Mr & Mrs J S Gordon Mr & Mrs W J Gordon Mr D J Gorman

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Mrs T Gough Mrs S Graham & Dr P Williams Mrs A E Gray Dr D R Grey Mr & Mrs V W Griffiths Mr & Mrs C J Grimes Mr G M Hadley Mr B Hall MBE Mr & Mrs R F Hall Mrs M J D Halliday Mrs B M Hall-Petite Mr M Hancocks Mrs A I Harding Mr J D Harkness Mrs H Harrington Mr D Harris HH Judge & Mrs D M Harris Mr & Mrs J B Harrop Dr & Mrs E P Hart Mrs H Hastings & Mr A P Burton Mr & Mrs M Hawkins Mr & Mrs J Hayes Mrs J M Heginbotham Mr H N S Higgins Mr R F Hill Mr J Hilton Mr & Mrs P R Hitchcox Mr G P Hitchen Dr & Mrs A Hoaksey Mr & Mrs W T Hoath Mr J A Hockin Mr D J Hodgkins Prof & Mrs V Hoffbrand Mr M Hofman Dr A P Hogg Dr & Mrs C D Holdsworth Mr J M Hollis Mr & Mrs J B Holmes Mrs M J Holmes Mr & Mrs R Hornstein Dr & Mrs G Howells Prof Geoffrey Howson Mrs K Huddie Dr M F Hudson Mr & Mrs C Huff Dr P Hughes & Dr S Hughes Mr R P Hulley Mr D C Hunter Ms A Hyatt King Miss D Idiens Mr & Mrs L W A Ingram Mr & Mrs G M Jackson Mr J N M Jackson Mr M D Jackson Mr & Mrs G Jaques Mrs H M Jarrett Ms R Jenkins Dr & Mrs J A Jennings Mr & Mrs J P Jillings Mr R N Johnson Mr C Joll Mr H D Jones Mrs O Jose Mrs R J Joshi-Godrez Mr A Joyce Mr R B C Juneau Mrs M F J Kako Mr & Mrs P E Kanas

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Dr R H Kandler Mrs S Kardahji Mr E Kay MBE Dr G E Kay Mr B A Keen Mrs E A Kennedy-Young Mr & Mrs M R Kenward Mrs P R Kilpatrick Mrs D King & Mr I W Torrance Mr & Mrs R King Mrs A Kitchin Mr J Klein & Mr T McConville Mr P Knatchbull-Hugessen Mrs L G Krikler Mr M P Lambarth Mrs J Lancelyn Green MBE Mr A W & Dr J Laughton Dr E A Laurence Dr C Lawson Mr & Mrs J G Lee Mr J C Lees Mr W R Lees-Jones Ms G Leftwich Mr N Leonard Dr & Mrs D G Lethem Mr & Mrs A A Lewington Prof & Mrs D Lewis Mr I Lindsay Mr & Mrs D G Lucas Dr K M Lumb Mr & Mrs S P Lunn Mr & Mrs K Maclean Miss E MacRobert Prof M Maden Mrs K J Malbon Mr G J Mallon Mr M B Manser Miss H Marchant Mr & Mrs C Marshall Mrs P M Marshall Ms Janette Martin & Mr N Ottaway Ms M Martin & Mr G Little Prof R Mayer & Mr D J Munro Mr D Maxwell & Mr S Buxton Mrs R Mayson Miss E McBratney Mrs J McDermott Mr P D McGuire Mr C P McKay Mr D R McLeod Mr J McNamara Mrs P McWilliam-Fowler Dr & Mrs D R K Medley Mr D L Mellor Mr & Mrs P F Merry Mrs C E Millar Dr & Mrs G S Milne Mr J Moffett & Ms A Larner Mr M Molloy Lady Morris Mr J E C Morris Mr & Mrs J Morrison Prof Robert Mulholland Rev & Mrs P Myers Mr & Mrs K Naismith Mr & Mrs G A Needham Mrs G Newlyn

Dr J H Newton Mr M J Newton Mr J M Nichols Ms S Nightingale & Mr J R Howard Mr & Mrs J G Nolan Mrs L Norris Mrs S V Norris Miss C E Nuttall Mrs A O’Connor Mr & Mrs D N Odling Ms B M Oliver Mr C L Oram Miss H S Ormiston Rev & Mrs J M Overton Dr & Mrs R Oxtoby Mr R R W Page Mr & Mrs A Parker Mr & Mrs C G Parker Prof & Mrs D Parker Mr R V Parkinson Prof Geraint Parry Mr G J Parsons Mr E Pattison Mr & Mrs R I Payne Mr S H Pennell Mrs A Perkins Mr M Petch Rev D Peters Mr M Phillips CBE Mr D Pike Miss C F Pinion Mrs S P Plant Dr & Mrs R J Pollitt Dr & Mrs R J Postlethwaite Dr C Poulson Mr R M W Poynter Mrs D Primrose Hon Mrs J Prola Mr F R Purslow Mr & Mrs M F Radcliffe Mr P J Radcliffe Mr & Mrs D E Ratcliffe Mr J M Rattey Mr & Mrs H C Reid Mr P Rhodes Mrs A M Richards Mr & Mrs P A Richards Mr & Mrs R H Richardson Mr & Mrs G L Roberts Mr H Robinson HH Judge M B Roddy Ms J Rodgers Mr N M Rolt Mrs M Rorison Dr A Ross Dr J Rowley Mrs J Rushton Mr & Mrs P D Ryder Mrs C A Sanderson Mrs M J Sangster Mr G W Sara Dr R Saunders Mr & Mrs P P Savage Dr L M & Dr J Schonfelder Mr & Mrs M Seal Mrs V Seddon & Mr J F Burgess Ms J Segal & Mr S Thompson

Mr & Mrs A Shaw Mr & Mrs D Shaw Mr D C Shaw Mr & Mrs T C Shaw Mr J R Sheppard Mr G Sheppey & Mrs D Y Aplin Dr A B Shrank Ms A Siddell Mr J Simons Dr T J B Simons Miss D E B Simpson Mr & Mrs R Sinclair Mrs M Slack Dr C S Slater Mrs B Small Mr & Mrs B Smith Prof Graham Smith Mrs K J Smith Mrs M E Smith Mrs M M Smith Mr & Mrs P Smith Mr & Mrs P R S Smith Mrs A M Smithers Mr R Snaith Dr & Mrs H A Sowerby Mr & Mrs J D Spencer Mr R B Spencer Mr & Mrs K M C Staniforth Ms S Stedman & Mr M Slade Mr R Stevens Mr R A Stevens Mr G C Stirling Miss M Stock Dr C F & Dr P Stoneman Mr B Stringer Mr & Mrs B D Taylor Ms C Taylor Mr M B Thomson Mr M A Thorpe Mr R J Thorpe & Mrs L Cattee Ms S L Tomkinson MBE Mr J P Tours Mrs E K Towler Mr & Mrs R H Trickey Mr & Mrs P Tunwell Mr R Turburville Mrs S H Turner Mr F W M Van Straelen Prof D Vaughan & Ms J M Barrett Mrs P Wadeson Mr & Mrs D Wainwright Mr P Wainwright Mr & Mrs D Wake-Walker Mrs M J Walkden Mr B Walker Dr & Mrs D J Walker Mr M J Walsh Miss I Walton Mr T Warburton Mr & Mrs D Watson Mr D Webb Mr D Webb Mr J N Webb Dr & Mrs P Webb Mr & Mrs C E Webster Mrs J E White Dr T White Dr A B Whitehouse

Mr J F Whitworth Mr G L Whyte Mrs D Wilcox Mrs M A Wiles Mrs P D E Wilkie Mr A & Mrs S Wilkinson Mrs A S Wilkinson Mrs D V Williams Mrs E Williams Mr G Williams & Mr M Penn Mr J L Williams Mrs K M Williams Mr & Mrs R A Williams Mrs G M Williamson Mrs A Wilson Mrs A Witcher Mr L Wolfson Mr & Mrs A D Wood Mr & Mrs R Woodbridge Mrs M Wragg Miss S B Wroughton Dr R Wynne Ms R Yablon Mr & Mrs N C Yeowell Friends Mrs J M Abbott Mrs I R Abel Mr & Mrs A D Abrams Mr E J T Acaster Mr C Adams & Prof R Lucas Mrs H E Adams Mr I Adler Mrs K M Aikin Miss E Allbutt Mr & Mrs P R Allen Mr E Allies Mr K R Alsop Dr T A S Amos Mr & Mrs B Anderson Mr C Anderson & Ms L Storey Mr & Mrs S N Anderson Mr J Angel Mrs K Anstey Mr A E Arblaster Mrs P J R Arnold Mr D A Ashbury Mr & Mrs B Ashby Mr J T Ashe & Ms S Ashe Mrs J H Aslan Mr D Asquith Mr A C Atkinson Dr & Mrs P G Atkinson Mr M D Aubrey Mr R Avery Rev A Axe Mr & Mrs M Bachner Mr I Bagshaw Mr & Mrs N E Bagshaw Mr & Mrs M C Bagshawe Mr P Baker Mrs C Baldwin Mrs J Ball Mr & Mrs T Ball Mr P E Banks Mr & Mrs B Barber Miss D A Barker Mr M Barkwill

Dr & Mrs A Barnes Mr & Mrs G Barnes Mr & Mrs K M Barnes Mr L W Barnes Mrs R B Barnes Mrs M K Barron Dr & Mrs N C Bartlett Mr & Mrs P Bartley Mrs J Bassil Mr P Basten Dr P M Bateson Mr L F Baxter Mr & Mrs J E Beach Mr & Mrs D Beale Mr A R Beard Mr J Beaumont Mr D R Beavers Mr & Mrs G Bebbington Mrs J A Beckett Mrs P Beech Mr P G Beer Mr & Mrs J Belshaw Mr & Mrs A Belton Mr M Bennett Mrs S Bennett Mr S E Bennison Mr P Berridge Prof & Mrs A Berry Mrs M L Bestwick Dr & Mrs M S Bethell Mr & Mrs P Bianchi Mrs C R Bibby Mrs T P Bicknell Mrs M Bird Mr & Mrs M C Bishop Mr & Mrs D I Black Sir William Blackburne Mrs S Blackham Mr T Blagbrough Mr P F Bleasby & Ms K Wardle Mr & Mrs B Blissett Mr P Boardman Mr P K Boden Mr & Mrs D Bodey Mr & Mrs A C Bolger Miss J Bonner Mr & Mrs S Bonsall Mr D F Booker FCA Mrs B Booth Mr D Booth Dr H Booth Mrs V J Booth Mr T Boothby & Ms C Cheetham Mr E Boothroyd Dr A C Borg Mr & Mrs J A Borkowski Mr A Borthwick Mr & Mrs D G Boshell C Bostock Mr C & Dr C Bowler Mr & Mrs P K N Bowler Mrs P Bown Mr & Mrs A C Bownes Mrs C A Bowns Mr J D Boyle Mr & Mrs D Bradley Mr & Mrs D N Bradley Mr & Mrs J M Bradley

Dr K H Bradley Dr S Bradshaw & Julie Mostyn Ms C Branch Miss A Brawn Mr & Mrs M L Brayne Mrs G M Brewin Mr M W Bridger Miss L Briggs Mrs D E Brining Mrs B A Brooks Miss P R Brooks Mrs J Broughton Ms D Brown Ms H Brown Mr K W Brown Mrs M P Brown Mr & Mrs N C H Brown Mr PAR Brown & Mrs S Brown OBE Mr & Mrs R C Brown Mr R C Budenberg Mr D G Bunce Rev & Mrs C Burch Dr R Burdekin Mr & Mrs C A Burney Mr & Mrs N Burt Mr & Mrs B F C Burton Dr R J Butcher & Ms J Persey Mr & Mrs D R Butler Prof. & Mrs R Butlin Mr H E Butterton Ms J E Byers Ms M Byrne Mrs P A Caffyn Mr & Mrs J R Cairns Rev & Mrs J Cam Mrs M Campbell Mr & Mrs J Cane Mr G A Capner Mr & Mrs I R Carless Mrs P Carlisle Mrs P J Carlson Mr J Carr Mr & Mrs J Carrington Mrs A Carter Mrs H M Carter Mr R Carter & Ms B Pryce Miss R M Carter Mr G B Cave Mrs J Cavet Mrs M A Cawley Miss M Chadderton Mrs H Chadwick Prof Peter Chadwick Ms J Chamberlain Mr F M Charnock Dr C S Chatterton Mr R F Cheesbrough Mr B Chesworth Mr & Mrs M Chichester-Clark Mrs B Childs Mrs E Christie Dr A Christys & Dr Wood Dr & Mrs D Clark Mr E I Clark Mr & Mrs G Clark Miss L G Clark Mr B H Clarkson Dr M F Cleverdon

Mr A E S Clifford Miss C Clout Ms S Clover Mr J R Clowes Mr R L D Cochrane Mrs S M Cockayne Mr & Mrs D J Cocker Dr & Mrs S H Cocksedge Mrs A Cohen Dr G F & Dr M Cohen Mr A N Cole Miss E F Cole Mr & Mrs G Cole Mr R A Colley Mrs E V Colling Dr & Mrs W A Colling Mr T Collins Rev & Mrs W F M Collins Ms S Colver Ms S G Comins Mr A Connel Mr & Mrs R J Connelly Mr & Mrs C D Cook Mr C J Cooke Prof Barry Cooper Dr & Mrs G J Copley Mrs Penelope Corbett Mr R Corbett Mr R Corbett & Mr M Brewer Mrs H Corcoran Mr & Mrs R S Cornish Dr J E T Corrie Miss F M Cowen Mr J Cowhig MBE Mrs J Cox Mrs P T Cox Mr & Mrs C R Cresswell Mr R Crich Mrs J R Crook Mr & Mrs R Crookes Mr & Mrs J R Crosby Mrs L S Crowe Dr J K Cruickshank Mrs J A Crump Mr R J Cruse Mrs P E Cullis Ms M Cully Mrs H Cummins Mrs A Cunningham Mr J H Cunningham Dr S M Cunningham Mrs D Curtis Mr M Curtis Mrs M E Curtis Mr & Mrs P D Cutts Mr R Czartoryski Mr G Dakin Mr R A Dale Mrs S M Dale Mr & Mrs K Dale-Risk Mr & Mrs S Daniell Mr & Mrs D Danson Mr & Mrs P L Darnton Mrs J Darwent Mr R Daugherty Dr D Davidson Mr I P Davies Prof Lindsey Davies CBE &

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Prof Sir Peter Rubin Mr & Mrs P Davies Dr P Davies Mr J T Davis Mrs S Davison Mrs F Dawson Mr S R Dawson Mr J M Day Mrs M A Deighan Mr F Dent & Mrs A Poulten Ms C M H Depla Ms L Dexter Mr K G Dickenson Mr & Mrs R L Dixon Mrs F E Dobson Mr J A S Donald Dr T Donald Miss M S Doran Miss J D A Dormer Mrs A H Dossetter Mrs A M Down Mr J A Downes Mr C M Drake Mrs A Dudley Mrs P S Dunn Mr R Dunstan Mrs C Dutton Mr & Mrs Dyson Mr A C Eagles Mr & Mrs B East Mrs E Eastwood Mrs J Eastwood Mrs E Edwards Mr S Edwards Mrs A D Ellery Mrs S D Ellins Mrs R A Elliott Mr R E Ellis Mr R Ellison & Ms V Brown Mrs J Ennis Dr D B A Evans Miss D M Evans Mr J H Evans Mr R L Evans Mr R W Evans Mrs M Fairbairn Mr & Mrs E Fairclough Miss M Falby Mrs J K Farley Mr D J Farrant Mr R Farrants Mr A J Faulkner Mr & Mrs A R Favell Mr & Mrs T M Featherstone Mr M Feltham Dr R Ferrari Mrs V Field Prof & Mrs R Finch Mrs B R Fisher OBE Mr & Mrs G Fisher Mrs J Fisher Mr & Mrs R Flint Mrs L Forbes Mrs S Ford Mr & Mrs M V P Fordham Mr & Mrs M Fordyce Mr I R Forster Miss E A Foster

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Dr P J Foster Mr R Fowler Mrs S C Fowler Mrs E A Fox Mr A Foxon Mrs P L Frank Mr & Mrs M Franklin Mr & Mrs H L Franks Mrs T M Fraser Mrs P Fryer Mr & Mrs N J Fuller Mr J H Furniss Prof Charles Galasko Mr J Galt Mr N Gater Dr A Gault Dr C G Geary Mrs M J Gelling Mr & Mrs P J Gemmell Mr M Gent Mr P J V Gibbs Hon H M T Gibson Mr D O Gilbey Mr D Gill Mr T G Gilman & Ms F Allen Dr & Mrs G J Gittens Mrs V Gladwin Mr & Mrs J Godden Ms G Goldsworthy Ms J Gooch Mrs G M Goodacre-Kemp Mr B M Goodey Mrs B R Goodman MBE Dr D Gosling Prof Colin Gough Mr & Mrs N Graham Mr D Grant Dr A C G Gray Ms M Gray Mr & Mrs J R F Green Mrs J Greenway-Cole Miss D M Gregory & Miss P Jones Mr J H Gregory Mr & Mrs R I Gregory Mr & Mrs J S Grenville Mr R F Grieve Mr A Griffiths & Ms P Vanags Mrs H Griffiths Mrs E Grimsey Mrs J P M Grossman Mr & Mrs C Grubb Mr D Gulliver Mr & Mrs W Gurney Mrs L S Gwyther Mr J Haddon Mr J M Haldane Miss D H M Hall Mr J D S Hall Mr R Hall Dr P Hallgarten Mrs D Hamer Mr R J Hance Mr & Mrs P Hanwell Miss J Harding Mr & Mrs R D Harding Mrs R M Harding

Mrs J Hardman Mr & Mrs M Hardman Mr I Hargrave Brigadier General D Hargreaves Mr M Hargreaves Mr P Hargreaves Ms D Harlow Mrs R H Harrigan Mr T C Harris Mr N Harrison Mr & Mrs C Hart Mr J Hartley Mrs R Hartley Mrs C R Hartwell Miss J E L Harvatt Dr J Hassall Mr A Hattrell Dr & Mrs J Hatwood Mrs E Haughton Mrs S A Hawthorn Mrs S E Hay Mr P Hayes Mr & Mrs J R Haynes Mr S Haywood Mr T J Heard Mrs M Heasman Mr & Mrs P Heathcote Mr A F Heaton Mr J Hedley Rt Hon Charles Hendry Mr A Hessel Miss E A Hibbert Mr O Higgins Miss J W Higham Mr J B Highcock Mrs P R Hiley Mr & Mrs D S Hill Dr J B Hill Ms J H Hill Mr & Mrs M Hillard Ms J Hillgrove Mr E P Hillier Mrs G H Hillmer Mrs M A A Hills Mr J H Hind Mrs M E Hinde Ms S Hinds Mrs E M Hirst Mr A Hitchings & Ms E Harvey Ms C E Hivey Mr S Hobson Mr & Mrs W A Hobson Mrs J R Hockenhull Mrs Christine Hodkinson Mr & Mrs R Hoerty Dr F M Hogwood Mrs V Holden Mr & Mrs P Holder Mr & Mrs D Holdway Mr R Holland Mr & Mrs P Hollins Mrs H F Hollis Mrs B M Holmes Mrs I Holmes Mr & Mrs J Hopkins Mr K C Horncastle Mrs G D Horrocks Mr & Mrs J T Horrocks

Mrs P L Hotson Mr & Mrs B Houghton Mr E J W Houghton Mr D W Hoyle Mr F I Hoyle Mr & Mrs G H Hubbard Mr H R Hudson Mr M Hughes Miss K Hunt Mr & Mrs S Hurrell Ms H Huschauer & Mr D Beck Dr J Huthnance Ms R Hutten Mr J A Hyde Mrs S Isted Mr K Ivatt Mrs V Ivell Ms E L Jack Mrs E Jackaman Mrs F Jackson Dr E Jacobs Ms J S Jaffe Miss C M James Mr & Mrs P D James Dr R James Mr & Mrs J A Jarratt Mrs S Jarratt Mrs C Jennings Mr R John Mrs D E Johnson Miss H Johnson Mrs V Johnson Mr & Mrs A C Joly Mrs A Jones Dr & Mrs B Jones Miss D J Jones Mr G Jones & Dr J Brown Mrs M J Jones Dr O Jones Mr P B B Jones Mr S Jowett Mr & Mrs R Julian Mr C Juster Mr & Mrs N Kavanagh-Brown Mr J Kelly Mr & Mrs J Kelly Drs P & B Kelly Mrs A G Kemp & Mrs L Schofield Mrs H F Kennedy Mrs V A Kenning Mr & Mrs A L Kent Mr & Mrs W Kidston Mr & Mrs J King Ms A M Kingdon Sir John Kingman Mrs M J Kirkham Dr M Klaber Mr P A Knapton Mr P Knowles Mr A G Korris Mr R P Kumar Dr & Mrs I G Laing Mr & Mrs M Lamb Mr J Lanchbery Miss J Langcroft Mr J G Langdill Dr F Lannon & Miss G Peele Mr C Latham

Mr R Latham & Mr R Hindle Mr R J Law Miss A J Lea Mr C Leach Mr & Mrs D R Leak Mrs C Lear Mr D J Leathley Miss M W Lees Mr John Leigh & Ms K Ecclestone Mrs K Lethem Mrs R U Lewington Miss D M Lewis Mr R Linington Mrs E S H Little Miss Littlewood & Miss M C Cockayne Mrs G Llewellyn Sir Timothy Lloyd Mr & Mrs A Lockley Miss M Longson Mr & Mrs D Love Mrs J Loverseed & John Russell Mrs J Low Mr W H Lowe Mr G Lucas Mrs J Lucas Dr G A Lunn Mr S Lyell Mr M J Lynch Dr T C MacDonald Miss F D MacGillivray Ms G E MacGregor & Ms Sandra Newton Mr & Mrs Machin Mrs E A Mack Mr R F Maddock Mr & Mrs P Mahon Mr R Mahony Mr & Mrs R J Mallabon Mr & Mrs M J Mallett Miss M L Mann Mr & Dr N Mann Mr & Mrs A L Margree Mr & Mrs T Marsh Dr G Marshall Mrs S A Marston Mr Martelize Ms K M Martimo Mrs J A Martin Ms M M L Martin Mr P A Martin Dr P K Martinez Dr K H Matheson Mr D R Matthews Mrs J K Maybury Lady Eliza Mays-Smith Mrs J McCulloch Dr G & C McDade Mr M McGarry Mrs P C McGee Mr J McGerty Mr J C McGlone Mrs F McIntosh Ms J McLeish & Mr M Playfer Mrs J R McMurray Ms G E McNeill Ms L H McRobie

Mr J Meadows Mr J L Medlock Mr N Megahey Mrs J L Mellor Sir Graham Melmoth & Lady Melmoth Ms J Meredith Miss C E A Michael Miss J A Michael Mrs I Michaelson Mrs H A Micklethwaite Sir Peter Middleton Dr C M Miller Dr W G Miller Mrs E A Mills Mr J W Milner Ms E Minister Mr D Mirfin & Louise Volkert Mr & Mrs D J Mitchell Mr J Moffat Mrs V Moir Mr J P Monaghan Dr C Moore Mr J G Moore & Ms R Wood Mr J Morcom Mr D A Morgan Mr N Morris Ms S C Morrison Mrs G Morton Mr & Mrs M Moseling Mr & Mrs I Mosley Mr W D Moyle Mr & Mrs J H Mulholland Miss C Murphy Mr B Musgrave Dr C M Ni Bhrolchain Mr C Nichols Mr J R Nichols Mrs A M Nicol Mrs S R Noble Miss D L North Mr & Mrs C O’Brien Dr N O’Connor Mr M O’Donnell Prof Anthony Ogus Mr & Mrs H R Oldfield Mrs A Oliver Mr J Ormerod & Ms M Gosling Mrs J Owens Mrs F Pacey Mr R Padgett Mr D G Page Mrs H Page Mrs S W Pain Ms A Paine Mr T Palmer Mr S Parfett Mrs J L Parker Prof Malcolm Parker Mr G Parry Mr R Parry Mr & Mrs A Patrick Mr & Mrs N Patterson Mrs E Paull Dr R G Paull Dr J Payan Mr & Mrs M J Payne Ms S Payne

Mr N D Peace Mrs M Peacock Mr G R Pearce Ms B Pearson & Ms A M Allison Dr J Pearson Mr S Pearson & Dr L Pearson Mr D W Pease HH Judge Pelling QC Mrs P Percival Mr & Mrs C H Perry Mr & Mrs P Phillips Dr R J W Phillips Mr S Phippard Ms B Pickles & Mr A G Haynes Mr J Pickles Mr & Mrs M Pilling Mrs M H C Pitt Mr & Mrs N A Pitts-Tucker Mr B J Pollard Miss H M Pollard Mr & Mrs D R Pomfret Ms Sheriff I A Poole Miss A M Pountney Mr D Powrie Mrs G Proudlock Mr R T Pumfrey Mr & Mrs D C Purchase Mr & Mrs M M Purser Mr & Mrs I R Purver Mr J Rackstraw Mrs S Ramsden Mr D L Randall Mr C N Rangeley Mrs I Raphael Mr C Rea Mr & Mrs G Redford Mr & Mrs J Redhead Mrs H Rees Mrs R Reid Mrs P Rendall Ms E A Renshall Mr G Revill Mr & Mrs Riddington Mrs C M Rider Ms M E Ridgewell Mr & Mrs M Ridout Ms M S Riebold Mr & Mrs D A Rigby Dr & Mrs A F Roberts Mr D P Roberts Mrs G M Roberts Mr & Mrs A Robinson Mr & Mrs D W Robinson Ms E Robinson Mrs H Robinson Mrs P J Robinson Mr G Robson Ms Jean Rodger & Mr A Brown Prof D Roebuck Prof & Mrs Simon Rogerson Ms J Rose & Miss M Taylor Mrs J A Rosen Mrs L Rosen Dr G Rowland Dr & Mrs I Rowlands Mrs J M Rudd Mrs A K Runnalls

Mr & Mrs R Russell Ms E C Ryder HH Judge & Mrs J Ryland Ms T Sanders Mrs P J Sandford Mr S Sands Mr M Sargent Mr K Savage Mr T L Schollar Mrs J M C Scott Mr L H Scott Mr & Mrs D J Seddon Mr D A Sellars Mr & Mrs G Sellars Mr J Sellars Mr J Shapcott Mrs G Sharpe Mr R L Shearmur Mr & Mrs A G Sherratt Mr B Sherriff & Ms M E J Costa Mrs M Shields Canon Stephen Shipley Mr & Mrs D Shipp Mr & Mrs M Shuttleworth Mrs H A Silvester Mr & Mrs P J Simmons Mr & Mrs M Simpson Ms P A B Simpson Mr R Simpson Mrs J Singleton Mr J Sisson & Ms C M Inglis Mr P Slack Mrs W Smalley Mr J Smart Sir Andrew & Lady Smith Mr W Smith & Dr G Hemmings Mr W Hibbert Mr & Mrs C Smith Rev & Mrs C Smith Prof Derek Smith Mr & Mrs G Smith Ms Julia Smith & Mr W Hibbert Mr & Mrs M A Smith Mr P Smith Mr & Mrs P H Smith Dr & Mrs M Snaith Mr & Mrs D R Sneath Dr M Sobhy Mr R J Sowersby Mr J L Speaight Mr & Mrs J Spencer Mr & Mrs M Spencer Mrs P Spencer Ms A Spilsbury Mrs S Spriggs Mr N J M Spurrier Mr & Mrs P M Stafford Mr R Stanley Mr B Stead Mr P A Steiner Mr & Mrs R Stephenson Miss P M Stewart Mr & Mrs S Stiller Mr & Mrs R Stokes Dr & Mrs W D Stone Mr J R Stonehouse Mrs V A Straw

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Mr M Street Mr M Studdert & Ms C Taylor Mr B Sullivan Ms R Sully Rev F Swan & Ms C Swan Mrs P E Swindlehurst Mrs A Swinson Mr J D Symon Mr & Mrs M E J Taft Mrs E Talbot Miss A P Tapp Mrs C Taylor Miss E R Taylor Mr & Mrs G O Taylor Miss H Taylor Mr & Mrs H Taylor Mrs I Taylor Mrs M L E Taylor Mr R Taylor Dr E Tebbs Mr R Temple Mrs N E G Tennant Mr S Terry Dr & Mrs J R Tesh Mr & Mrs G L Thaw Mrs E M Thirlby Mr D A Thomas Dr & Mrs E H Thomas Prof & Mrs J Thomas Mrs C Thompson Mrs D Thompson Mrs G Thompson Mr & Mrs P Thompson

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Mr & Mrs M D Thurgur Mr A Thurlow Miss A A Tilley Mr P M Tilling Mr & Mrs R N Tole Mrs K Tollis Mrs P J A Townsend Mr R S Tresidder Mrs A L Trowman Dr & Mrs M Tunbridge Mr S Turk Mrs H M Turner Mrs K Turner Miss M Turner Mr & Mrs M J Tute Mr W Uttridge Mrs C J Valentine Miss E C Vallance Mr N D Vaughton Mrs R M Viner Mrs L Walker Mrs N Walker Mr & Mrs M Waller Mr G Wallis Mrs I Wallis Dr E M Walsh-Heggie Mr R J Walters Dr & Mrs R L Walters Mr & Mrs B S Walton Mr P Walton Mr & Mrs P Warburton Mr D R Ward Ms S Ward

Mr D & Ms S Wason Mr R W Waterhouse Mr & Mrs G Watkins Mr P Watson Dr M Watt Miss B A Watts & Ms H Walters Mr & Mrs D S Watts Mrs J Watts Mr & Mrs I Weatherley Mrs E Webb Mr & Mrs N Webb Mrs C A Webber Dr & Mrs R J Webster Mr K Welfare Mr & Mrs J M Wells Mrs K Whale Mr M White & Dr R Yates Mr R J White Prof Richard Whitley Mr & Mrs D A Whitworth Mr & Mrs R J Whysall Prof & Mrs A Wickens Mrs H M Wickham Mr D Wieberg & Ms M Stone Dr & Mrs A R Wightman Mrs D P Wild Mr & Mrs I D Wildbore Miss M P Wilkins Mrs S Wilkins Mrs J Wilkinson Mr & Mrs P Wilkinson Mrs L Wilks Father B Williams

Mr & Mrs G C Williams Mr L Williams Mrs M H Williams Mr & Mrs R A Williams Ms E S Williscroft Ms C Wilmot Dr P D Wilson Mrs S E Winkworth-Smith Mr R D Wise Mr G D Witts Mrs M R Woffenden Mr & Mrs A J Wood Mr J W Wood Mr & Mrs K Wood Mr R H Woodcock Mr M J Woodhall Mrs S Woodhurst Dr F Wooding Mr G S Woods Mr C R Woodward Mr & Mrs C Woolf Dr M Wren Mr J Wright Prof M Wright Mrs M J Wright Mr & Mrs R H Wright Mr & Mrs R C Wynn Mr J Young Mr & Mrs R E Young Miss V M Youngson Ms V Yule

Art lets you see the world through the eyes of others, and annually fresh visions of Buxton are created in oils, watercolours, collages and embroidery as amateurs and professionals vie for the Buxton Spa Prize. The Festival is proud to support the Prize, which was created in 2014 to raise the profile of artists and their work while enhancing Buxton’s reputation as a centre for the arts and culture. The Festival team has a special say in the competition, providing judges for the Buxton Festival Choice award.

Pictured here are the paintings chosen by the team in 2018. They feature a range of media including Giles Davies’s startling use of magazine pages to create a collage called Buxton The Greens of Summer; Buxton Town Hall caught atmospherically in the threads of a textile picture by Tracey Coverley; the Opera House in mixed media by Kate O’Brien; Buxton’s busy Fiveways junction captured in acrylic by Janet Mayled; and a glowering sky above the Crescent and the Devonshire Dome by Lor Bird.

This year’s winners, including the Festival’s 2019 choices, will be on display until the end of July at the Green Man Gallery on Hardwick Square South. The competition boasts a generous first prize of £4,000, provided by the Trevor Osborne Charitable Trust. The second prize is £1,000 and a third prize of £500 is sponsored by Creative Heritage. There is also the Sketchbook Prize of £750, a Children’s Prize for artists under 12 years and a teen prize for those under 18.

In September 2019 there is a new competition with a race against the clock in the Come Rain or Shine contest. Artists will have four hours to complete a work featuring a Buxton scene on the theme of water.

For full details of the Buxton Spa Prize, see www.buxtonspaprize.co.uk

Janet Mayled, Fiveways - Acrylic

Kate O’Brien, Buxton Opera House - Mixed Media

Giles Davies Buxton - The Greens of Summer Magazine collage

Lor Bird, Buxton - Mixed Media

Tracey Coverley, To the Town Hall - Pure Textile

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B U X T O N I N T E R N AT I O N A L F E S T I VA L C O M PA N Y

President Duke of Devonshire KCVO, CBE, DL

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Vice Presidents John Anfield Sir Peter Bazalgette Lady Antonia Fraser Lord Hattersley Donald Maxwell Trevor Osborne Dame Janet Smith Baroness Williams of Crosby Michael Williams MBE Board of Directors Felicity Goodey CBE DL (Chairman) Mark Burns Chris Fry Julian Glover OBE Emily Gottlieb Stuart Lester Annie Lydford Louise Potter DL Mark Sutherland BIF TEAM Chief Executive Officer Michael Williams

Artistic Director Adrian Kelly

Book Festival Director & Publications Victoria Dawson

Development Director Joanne Williams

Fundraiser Lucy Marsden

Marketing Manager Emma Lloyd

Press Officer John Phillips

Digital Marketer Mel Rogerson

Press & PR Consultant Emma Menniss

Financial Manager Brian Shawcross

Finance Assistant Julia Travis

Administrator & Company Secretary Lee Barnes

Artistic Administrator Caroline Hewitt

Outreach & Audience Development Officer Lucie de Lacy

Venue Manager Jean Ball

Concerts Manager Jeff Snowdon Book Festival Assistant Shakshi Singh

Festival Interns Katy Beale Madison Halworth Elinor Henson Nick Hermadi Dominic Levey Emily Parker Kate Price MUSIC Head of Music and Chorus Master Iwan Davies Répétiteur Berrak Dyer Florent Mourier Surtitle Operators Katherine Beale Nicolaus Hermadi Kate Price STAGE MANAGEMENT Company Manager Jocelyn Bundy Stage Managers Jocelyn Bundy Checca Ponsonby Deputy Stage Managers Martha Everett Emma Furness Joe Jenner Checca Ponsonby Assistant Stage Managers Rachel Bell Ryan Jaques Orpheus Stage Managers Joe Jenner & MaliBeth Roberts

PRODUCTION Production Manager James Anderton Assistant Directors Thomas Henderson Matthew Holmquist Shelby Williams Head of Stage Michael Potter Props Supervisor Jo Hotchkiss Costume Supervisor Mark Jones Deputy Costume Supervisor Michelle Bristow Costume Makers Michelle Bristow, Megan Kennedy Costume Assistant Kathryn Lawton Wardrobe Mistress Vicki Louise Smith Wardrobe Assistant Jilly McKeown Hair & Makeup Supervisor Jackie Sweeney Hair & Makeup Assistants Molly Carroll Mia Ellison Assistant Lighting Designer Paige Leaf-Wright Production Electrician Tim Ball

Jim Morgan Robert Oatley Paul Scouler Tim Zybert Rehearsal Rooms Alford House, Vauxhall Volunteers We benefit enormously from voluntary support from Friends of Buxton Festival and interested local residents and would like to thank the following for their invaluable help: Frances Allan, Esther Allbutt, Cath & David Allwood, Judy Barker, Jane Barrett, Mary Barstow, Carolyn Bourne, Carol Bowns, David & Frances Brindley, Morwenna Brooke, Helen Brown, Janet Byers, Carol Davey, Celia Dunk, Annabel Fallows, Meg Fowler, John & Kate Gaunt, Trevor Gilman, Meg Grigg, Harriet Grubb, Caroline Hardwick, Viv Holden, Jo & David Holdway, Pat & Philip Holland, Keith Horncastle, Charles & Carol Huff, Heike Huschauer, Sylvia Isted, Cynthia Jennings, Sue Kardahji, Sue Lamsley, Janice Lucas, Sheila Macdonald, Joan Matthews, Janet & Anthony Mellor, Gill Morton, David Nevell, Pauline O’Brien, Sue & Tony Parsons, Louise Potter, Cathy & Tony Riddington, Pete Spriggs, Barbara Stringer, Judith Tanner, Jo Thornton, Maria Todd, Liz Tonge, Sue & David Wason, Frances Watson, Alex Watts, Alan & Glynis Wells, Beryl Woods.

Our special thanks go to Esther Allbutt and Helen Brown for their many hours of assistance in the Festival office. Finally, Buxton International Festival would like to thank the staff and front-of-house volunteers of Buxton Opera House.

Georgiana Set Durham Scenic Workshop Orpheus in the Underworld Set Handmade Productions, Southampton Lucio Papirio Dittatori Set Durham Scenic Workshop Orphans of Koombu Set Durham Scenic Workshop Drapes JD McDougalls, Gerriets, & Showtex Transport Paul Mathew Transport Lighting Equipment Hire Stage Electrics Surtitle Screens CVC Event Services Costume Hire Royal National Theatre, Cosprop & Bristol Costume Services Thanks to: Palace Theatre, Watford English Touring Opera English National Opera The Royal Academy of Music Opera Holland Park

PROGRAMME

Lighting Programmer Ian Wilson

Editors Joyce Kennedy Gerry Northam

Lighting Board Operator David Marsden

Programme notes Mike Wheeler

Festival Crew Thomas Baum Aron Bennet Jack Cirillo Pete Cirillo Matt Cowan Rod Drake Hannah Griffiths Mark McNiell

Rehearsal photography Genevieve Girling Photography PRODUCTION CREDITS Eugene Onegin Set Durham Scenic Workshop

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FESTIVAL PRE-SHOW DINING Between 17:00 - 19:00 in the Pavilion Cafe Full festival menu using locally sourced fresh ingredients Pavilion Gardens open daily from 09:00

Please book in advance on 01298 32114

01298 23114

The Pavilion Gardens St John’s Road Buxton, SK17 6BE paviliongardens.co.uk

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Working in pa nership

FRIDAY 5 JULY 7.30pm New Voices 66 Buxton Festival Foundation Concert SATURDAY 6 JULY 9am Perspectives: 156 Is digitalisation killing classical music?

146 10.30am Mark Cocker & Friends 76 12pm In the Spotlight: RNCM 146 2pm Mark Wigglesworth 80 3.30pm Imogen Cooper 64 6pm Opera Talk 75 6pm Song at Six 78 6.30pm Out of Africa – CTO at Haddon Hall 10 7.15pm Eugene Onegin SUNDAY 7 JULY 146 10am Sarah Ward & Friends 140 10.45am Festival Mass 82 11am Improviso 147 12pm Amanda Foreman 24 2pm Georgiana 134 3.30pm Lizzie Ball 5.15pm Georgian Dinner 75 6pm Song at Six 6pm Mill Songs & Georgian Chamber Music 158 79 6.30pm Grace Notes – CTO at Haddon Hall 146 7.30pm Lucy Worsley 84 8.30pm Zorada Temmingh MONDAY 8 JULY 147 10am Gillian Moore 85 12pm Philip Moore & Huw Watkins 86 12pm BIF Vocal Recital 147 2pm Alan Powers 88 3.30pm Castalian String Quartet 4pm Festival Walk: How Buxton helped build the 20th century 64 6pm Opera Talk 75 6pm Song at Six 44 7.15pm Orpheus in the Underworld 7.30pm Out of Africa, CTO at St John’s Church 78 TUESDAY 9 JULY 9am Perspectives: The Future of the Economy 157 147 10.30am Robert Skidelsky 90 12pm Matilda Lloyd & Richard Gowers 12pm Festival Walk: Raising the curtain on Buxton’s ghost theatres 148 2pm Diarmaid MacCulloch 92 3.30pm Alessandro Fisher & Ashok Gupta 148 4pm The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie 64 6pm Opera Talk 75 6pm Song at Six 34 7.15pm Lucio Papirio Dittatore 161 7.30pm The Literary Salon: Alan Powers 135 9pm Kabantu WEDNESDAY 10 JULY – BIF FRIENDS DAY 148 9am BIF podcast 148 10.30am Ian Kershaw & Matthew Parris 76 12pm In the Spotlight: RNCM 149 2pm Cookery: Max Fischer 95 3.30pm Peter Donohoe 149 4pm Robin Hanbury-Tenison 64 6pm Opera Talk 75 6pm Song at Six 158 6pm Dr Peter Collinge 10 7.15pm Eugene Onegin 161 7.30pm The Literary Salon: Peter Moore 136 9pm Jason Singh & Friends THURSDAY 11 JULY 9am Perspectives: Brexit Britain: What Next? 157 149 10.30am Max Adams

98 12pm Bethan Langford & Keval Shah 12pm Festival Walk: The man behind the Victorian splendour 64 12.45pm Opera Talk 44 2pm Orpheus in the Underworld 149 2pm Dorian Lynskey 96 3.30pm Peter Donohoe & Alissa Margulis 150 4pm Richard King 75 6pm Song at Six 158 6pm Dr Gillian Williamson 99 7pm Dinner & Musical Theatre in the Dome 100 7.30pm BBC Philharmonic 150 7.30pm An Audience with Kate Humble FRIDAY 12 JULY 150 10am Peter Hennessy 56 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 102 12pm Soraya Mafi & Adrian Kelly 12pm Festival Walk: Buxton on the Home Front 159 2pm Dr Ruth Larsen 150 2pm Cookery: Saliha Mahmood Ahmed 104 3.30pm La Vaghezza 151 4pm Tristram Hunt & Julian Glover 5.15pm Georgian Dinner 64 6pm Opera Talk 24 7.15pm Georgiana 7.30pm The Literary Salon: 161 Adrian Kelly & Michael Williams 77 9pm In the Spotlight: University of Derby SATURDAY 13 JULY 151 10am Jacqueline Riding 56 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 106 12pm Jonathan Radford & Ashley Fripp 151 2pm Max Hastings 151 4pm Venki Ramakrishnan 64 6pm Opera Talk 34 7.15pm Lucio Papirio Dittatore 161 7.30pm The Literary Salon: Tom Service SUNDAY 14 JULY 152 10am Tom Service 141 11am Festival Mass 86 12pm BIF Vocal Recital 64 12.45pm Opera Talk 10 2pm Eugene Onegin 108 2pm Clare Hammond 4pm Clare Hammond masterclass 5pm Friends’ Dinner 75 6pm Song at Six 110 7.30pm Alistair McGowan 111 8pm VOCES8 MONDAY 15 JULY 152 10am Jenny Waldman 56 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 77 12pm In the Spotlight: Chethams 21 2pm Scenes from an Opera: Eugene Onegin 3.30pm Peter Donohoe, Alissa Margulis 96 & Per Nyström 152 4pm Sophie Thérèse Ambler 5.15pm Georgian Dinner 64 6pm Opera Talk 75 6pm Song at Six 24 7.15pm Georgiana TUESDAY 16 JULY 152 10am Simon Winder 56 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 112 12pm Savitri Grier & Yundu Wang 12pm Festival Walk: The man behind the Victorian splendour 2pm Scenes from an Opera: 42 Lucio Papirio Dittatore

3.30pm Peter Donohoe 3.30pm The English Concert 3.30pm Anna Pasternak 3.30pm Festival Walk: Picking up ideas on foraging 6pm Opera Talk 6pm Song at Six 7.15pm Eugene Onegin 9pm Chris Ingham Quartet WEDNESDAY 17 JULY – FRIENDS DAY 9am Perspectives: Are gender stereotypes damaging our children?

10am Festival Walk: Picking up ideas on foraging 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 10.30am Christopher Somerville 12pm Frith Piano Quartet 2pm Scenes from an Opera: Georgiana 2pm Cookery: John Wright 3.30pm La Serenissima 6pm Opera Talk 6pm Song at Six 7.15pm Orpheus in the Underworld 7.30pm The Literary Salon: Anna Beer 7.30pm National Youth Jazz Orchestra THURSDAY 18 JULY 9am Perspectives: Science & AI 10.30am Anna Beer 12pm Victoria String Quartet 12pm Festival Walk: Buxton on the Home Front 12.45pm Opera Talk 2pm Lucio Papirio Dittatore 2pm Martin Moore 3pm Roderick Williams & Iain Burnside 6pm Song at Six 7.30pm The Julian Bliss Septet 8.30pm Ex Cathedra 9pm Bella Hardy FRIDAY 19 JULY 9am Perspectives: The Future of our Political Parties 10.30am Nick Robinson 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 12pm Nick Robinson and Michael Gove MP 12pm Victoria String Quartet 12pm Festival Walk: Raising the curtain on Buxton’s ghost theatres 2pm Melissa Harrison & Tim Pears 3.30pm Garry Magee & Tim Lole 3.30pm A Good Reed?

4pm David Cannadine 6pm Opera Talk 6pm Song at Six 7.15pm Eugene Onegin 7.30pm The Literary Salon: Naoko Abe SATURDAY 20 JULY 10am Melvyn Bragg 10.30am The Orphans of Koombu 12pm Victoria String Quartet 2pm Jane Glover 3.30pm Carnival of the Animals 4pm John Lanchester 5.15pm Georgian Dinner 6pm Opera Talk 6pm Song at Six 7.15pm Georgiana 9pm Dominic Alldis Trio SUNDAY 21 JULY 11am Festival Mass 2pm Brodsky Quartet

96 114 153

64 75 10 137

157 56 153 116 33 153 118 64 56 44 161 138 157 153 122 64 34 154 120 56 138 126 139

158 154 56 154 123

154 128 129 155 64 56 10 161 155 56 124 155 130 155 64 56 24 139 140 132

181

182