“This year I’ve chosen the theme of “Home” and throughout the Festival I’ll be looking at what a sense of “Home” can mean in different contexts. We’ll be celebrating the influences of folk, jazz and world music on the classical genre, and the different places and ways of life they evoke, as well exploring the loss of home and displacement. We’ll be examining the plight of refugees who create new homes, and showing how our most ancient folk songs ground us to generations past and future. I hope you find plenty to enjoy over these two weekends, with music to soothe, question, transport us and ultimately to fill our hearts.”
Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Artistic Director
DARTMOOR 5th-8th OCTOBER
The Swingles “Bach and Beyond”
THURSDAY 5th OCTOBER 7.30pm
Exeter Corn Exchange, Market Street, EX1 1BW
Ticket Price: £25
The Swingles take a look back over almost six decades of vocal artistry with this programme celebrating the five-time Grammy® winners’ extraordinary musical heritage. Featuring everything from beloved Ward Swingle arrangements of J.S. Bach fugues to fiendish Bulgarian folk and new original songs as well as pop and jazz favourites reimagined for the 21st century.
The Swingles Workshop: Singing without a Safety Net
FRIDAY 6th OCTOBER 11.30am
Southernhay United Reform Church Hall, EX1 1QD
Ticket Price: £7.50
We all have music inside us – some of us just have a hard time getting it out! Banish your inhibitions and use the tools we all possess to create music in the moment. Suitable for any age or level of experience, this will be a truly empowering session that gets to the heart of what musicality means.
“Stunning reinventions... audacious harmonies... superhero singing to truly raise goosebumps.”
THE GUARDIAN
“The Jazz Age”
FRIDAY 6th OCTOBER 6pm
Great Fulford, Dunsford, Near Exeter, EX6 7AJ
Ticket Price: £80 to include two concerts and supper with wine
David Orlowsky – Clarinet
Mario Häring – Piano
Jack Liebeck – Violin
Khachaturian: Trio for clarinet, violin and piano
Bartók: Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano
Ravel: Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major
Solo clarinet improvisations
“Jack’s playing is virtually flawless in its technical ease, scintillating articulateness and purity of tone.”
GRAMOPHONE
An evening of clarinet, violin and piano celebrating the heady jazz influences on Bartok and Ravel, and the mid European exoticism of Khachaturian. Classical music becomes the home of jazz, folk and world music, and clarinettist David Orlowsky brings back the lost art of improvisation, for which he is famed, with influences ranging from Purcell to klezmer, from jazz to Radiohead.
Beethoven: String Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Op. 131 Maxwell Quartet
Considered by Beethoven to be the greatest of his late Quartets, the Maxwell Quartet give us a performance of this work that exists, in Schumann’s words, “On the extreme boundary of all that hitherto has been attained by human art and imagination”.
“Alter Ego”
SATURDAY 7th OCTOBER 11.30am
The Nicholls Hall, Lydford, EX20 4HB Ticket Price: £15
David Orlowsky – Clarinet
David Bergmüller – Lute
“‘Alter Ego’. Two bodies, one breath. What a gift, what a surprise this release is.”
Embark on a journey into unexplored and exquisite sound worlds in the UK premiere of this ground-breaking programme. The seductive combination of lute and clarinet function as opposing and complementary personalities, as the two artists re-imagine well-loved works by composers such as Purcell and Dowland, as well as including new music of their own, which sits seamlessly alongside. This disc was the starting point for the Festival’s theme due to these artists’ creation of a new musical home, from a rich and unbounded musical heritage.
MAGAZINE GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINEFamily Concert - The Story of Babar
SATURDAY 7th OCTOBER 3.30pm
St Andrew’s Church, Ashburton, TQ13 7DT
Ticket price: £5
Mario Häring – Piano
Narrator – TBC
Poulenc: The Story of Babar the Little Elephant
Haydn, Purcell & Scottish Folk Songs
SATURDAY 7th OCTOBER 7.30pm
St Michael the Archangel Church, Chagford, TQ13 8BN
Ticket Price: £35/£25/£15/£10
Maxwell Quartet
Haydn: String Quartet in E Flat Major, Op. 20 No. 1
Purcell: Four Part Fantasias
Scottish Worksongs arr. Maxwell Quartet
Discover the adventures of Babar wittily set to music by Francis Poulenc. A perfect treat for all the family.
The Maxwell Quartet play Purcell, our early great English composer, and Haydn, the man who created chamber music as we know it today. His music is always infused with folk idiom, and as the Maxwells demonstrated on their recent acclaimed recording, pairing Haydn with the Scottish folk music they all know brings out the similarities in these two types of music.
Preludes and Poetry
SUNDAY 8th OCTOBER 3.30pm
St Andrew’s Church, Ashburton, TQ13 7DT
Ticket Price: £35/£25/£15/£10
Mario Häring – Piano
Narrator – TBC
Debussy: Preludes Book 1
Debussy: Children’s Corner
Selected poems by Baudelaire & others
artist very much in tune with the composer’s psyche.”
Debussy’s musical world, filled with poetry, wonder, and magic, perfectly displays the magpie-like influences of classical music from all over the world, which Debussy makes completely his own, in his new musical language of French Impressionism. Mario Häring, prize-winner at the Leeds Piano Competition, has won several awards for his atmospheric delivery of Debussy’s works.
“Take note of the Maxwell Quartet… they bring charisma and a sense of adventure to their programmes.” NEW YORK TIMES
“Mario…. demonstrates that he is a sensitive
GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE
EXMOOR 12th-15th October
Dido and Aeneas
THURSDAY 12th OCTOBER 7.30pm
St Andrew’s Church, Wiveliscombe, TA4 2LR
Ticket Price: £35/£25/£15/£10
Armonico Consort and Baroque Players
Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
“The vocal ensembles are beautifully sparse and luminous and the instrumental playing is brightly streamlined.“ THE GUARDIAN
Dido and Aeneas has become a work at the heart of the British musical heritage. Performed with minimal staging, Armonico Consort’s beautifully tender and entertaining rendition of this incredible opera has delighted audiences across Europe, earning spectacular five-star reviews from the national press.
Proust’s Salon “Le Concert Retrouvé”
FRIDAY 13th OCTOBER from 2.30 pm
Castle Hill, Filleigh, South Molton, EX32 0RH
Ticket Price: £95 to include garden visit, two concerts and high tea
Sitkovetsky Trio
Ailish Tynan – Soprano
Christopher Glynn – Piano
Mathilde Milwidsky – Violin
Edgar Francis – Viola
Simon Russell Beale – Readings*
SPONSORED BY
Inspired by the salon evenings that feature in Proust’s famous book In Search of Lost Time and the concert he put on at the Paris Ritz, we present our own “Concert Retrouvé”, set in the breathtakingly beautiful Castle Hill, a Palladian style house and Grade 1 listed parkland. The music will include Fauré’s C Minor Piano Quartet, Wagner-Liszt’s Liebestod, César Franck’s Violin Sonata, Reynaldo Hahn’s Venezia, and a selection of French songs from Fauré, Poulenc, and SaintSaëns.
*Subject to acting commitments
Talk - “A Home for all Seasons”
SATURDAY 14th OCTOBER 11am
Riverside Hall, Bampton, EX16 9LT
Ticket Price: £10
Gavin Plumley explores the significance of home through his perspective as a cultural historian and with reference to his book A Home for All Seasons. Charting his Herefordshire house across centuries, through Reformation, pestilence and climate change, his curious mix of memoir and history similarly follows the drovers from farm to market, Vaughan Williams recording local songs and flights of swallows in search of a home.
Young Musicians’ Competition Winners Concert
SATURDAY 14th OCTOBER 1.30pm
St Michael & All Angels Church, Bampton, EX16 9NA
Ticket Price: £15
Harold Long Lee – Oboe (age 17)
Dee Dee Redford - Piano (age 9)
Teagan Craggs - Violin (age 15)
Hannah Eden - Flute (age 16)
Ginevra Dobson - Voice (age 13)
This concert showcases the most exciting young musical talents in the South West, performed by the five winners of the Two Moors Festival Young Musicians’ Competition. Previous winners have gone on to significant professional careers so don’t miss the opportunity to see the young stars of the future!
“Homecoming”
SATURDAY 14th OCTOBER from 5pm
All Saints’ Church, Dulverton, TA22 9BU
Ticket Price: Both concerts: £40/£30/£19/£15
Tickets to individual events can be purchased separately
These concerts explore what it is that makes us feel we are home, when we have lost the world we knew, our land, our people. Examining the plight of refugees who create new homes, as well as weaving through the programme our most ancient folk songs that ground us to generations past and future, this promises to be a powerful programme that asks a lot of questions.
“Truly a revelation on every page.”
PETROC TRELAWNY
“A typical striking recital from Soprano Ruby Hughes… her vibrato light voice is extremely expressive even when her volume is turned low.” THE TIMES
“Homecoming”: Music and Poetry 5pm
David Neita - Spoken word poet
Ruby Hughes - Soprano
Mathilde Milwidsky - Violin
Huw Watkins - Piano
“Homecoming”: Tchaikovsky Piano
Trio in A Minor, Op. 50 8.30pm
Sitkovetsky Trio
Massive in scale, this ultimately tragic work encapsulated Tchaikovsky’s feeling of being forever an outsider, a sense of longing, never being able to feel fully at home in his own culture. The internationally acclaimed Sitkovetsky Trio have made this work one of the hallmarks of their life on the concert platform.
Spoken word poet and human rights activist David Neita opens the evening, followed by the world premiere performance of Deborah Pritchard’s new work Liberty alongside Vaughan-Williams' iconic Lark Ascending and works by Britten, Schumann and Bach.
“Like three good friends enjoying a glass of wine and a natter, the Sitkovetsky Trio sparkle with conviviality… it’s wonderfully uplifting.”
Gemütlichkeit: Love's Philosophy
SUNDAY 15th OCTOBER 3pm
All Saints’ Church, Dulverton, TA22 9BU
Ticket Price: £35/£25/£15/£10
Sitkovetsky Trio
James Newby – Baritone
Christopher Glynn – Piano
Schubert: Piano Trio No. 1 in B Flat Major Selection of Mahler and Brahms songs
A heart-warming finale featuring 2016 Katheen Ferrier winner, James Newby, this concert celebrates the particular joy in the fellowship of feeling at home that the music of Brahms, Schubert and Mahler can evoke. A feast for the ears and, most importantly, the heart.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
“Newby’s voice has plenty of weight and richness but can be surprisingly light on its feet.” THE GUARDIAN
Booking Information
Tickets may be booked directly online, by telephone or in person from Exeter Tickets.
Programme and venues are subject to change so please check website www.twomoorsfestival.co.uk
Priority booking dates
Patrons: 19th May 2023
Benefactors: 24th May 2023
Associates: 29th May 2023
Friends: 5th June 2023
General booking
12th June 2023
Online bookings:
The full programme can be found on our website and tickets can be booked online 24 hours per day: www.twomoorsfestival.co.uk
Booking Office:
By phone: +44 (0)1392 665 938
In person: Exeter Tickets
Corn Exchange, 89 Fore Street, Exeter, EX4 3HX
Opening hours: Monday-Friday: 10am – 4pm
If the event is showing as “Sold Out”, there may be tickets available on the door. Please call the Festival Office on 01772 439062
The Two Moors Festival Limited is a Registered Charity No. 1095723 PATRON: HRH THE DUCHESS OF EDINBURGH GCVO