21/09/2026
🤔 Not sure where to start this week? We ask Artistic Director Libby Burgess for her tips.
🙋♀️ Libby, there’s a lot coming up in this festival! What would you suggest for someone…
❓ …looking for something energising?
Mozart’s Piano Quartet (Saturday morning) and Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata (Friday morning) are both beautifully sunny!
❓ …looking for room to reflect?
Music is brilliant for exactly this, especially in a space like St Mary’s. Elgar’s Piano Quintet, which we’re playing on Saturday morning, was written just after the First World War: its slow movement is full of the anguish of that period, and a nostalgia for a simpler time. The string team are also playing Puccini’s romantic Crisantemi (‘Chrysanthemums’ - about loss) on Friday night. Or lots of Hugh’s songs (Saturday night) have a nocturnal quality to them!
❓ …looking for something to bring a young person to?
Connaught Brass! This vibrant group are early in their career and would be really inspiring. Their programme is a wonderful mix, from the peaceful to the jazz-infused - and their concert is just after school pickup time!
❓ …looking for famous music?
In this case I’d suggest Martin James Bartlett’s piano recital: it’s packed with piano hits by Chopin, Fauré, Handel - and even Mozart’s famous Rondo ‘alla Turca’.
❓ …looking for something off the beaten path?
Lots of people won’t have heard music by Grażyna Bacewicz, even though she was famous in her lifetime. Her third string quartet is full of dance rhythms but also moments of real reflection. Catch that on Friday night alongside Britten and Puccini. Sir James MacMillan is much better known today but his Cello Sonata No 1 is rarely done - it’s amazing, both brutal and magical. I’m so looking forward to playing that with Leo Popplewell on Friday morning.
❓ …looking for something inspired by other art forms?
Well Roderick Williams’ concert (Thursday) is built on musical settings of poetry by Yeats, Masefield, Hardy, Rossetti and more. It draws on such universal themes - the passing of time, aging, loss, but also nature and hope! Roddy is famously such a wordsmith, and the meeting of poetry and music will be really evocative. Martin James Bartlett is playing some of Goyescas by Granados - inspired by the work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. And Morpheus on Saturday night includes the moving Don McLean song, Starry Starry Night, about Van Gogh - sure to prompt a few tears.
❓ ….looking for new perspectives?
Dr Flora Willson, who writes for the Guardian and presents on the BBC, is giving a talk on Saturday afternoon, all about music programming - what the issues are, what’s important, and how fashions have changed over time. She’s a great mind and a very engaging speaker - we’re lucky to have her!
❓ …looking for talent-spotting?
The teenage musicians on our Voyagers scheme are performing as the ‘warm-up act’ before all of our evening concerts, and on Saturday morning. We’re very proud of these talented youngsters!
❓ …looking to hear a celebrity?
Well, all of our musicians are celebrities to us… but hearing Roderick Williams OBE live is a special opportunity! He really is one of the most celebrated classical singers in the UK today. And Martin James Bartlett has been a household name since he won BBC Young Musician in 2014.
❓ …looking for the feel-good factor?
Definitely Morpheus on Saturday night! We performed this at Wigmore Hall last year and the audience went wild. It’s a really inventive programme featuring marimba and celeste side by side with baroque strings and theorbo. There are seemless creative links between different pieces and styles, and the whole thing is inspired by the nighttime. Hugh [Cutting] is breathtakingly brilliant but the whole ensemble is fantastic. It’s lovely for us that it includes double bassist Alex Jones who was a hit in the spring festival! The bar will be open in the interval and I’m so looking forward to this closer to the festival.
