Events

Vaughan Williams’ ever-popular baritone Songs of Travel explore themes of home and travel, setting the tone of longing and belonging for today’s concert. Britten’s arrangements of popular British folksongs were written from America, a homesick nostalgia for the British Isles – while Messiaen’s flute work Le Merle Noir is inspired by the blackbird’s song of his own garden, setting up a life-long fascination with birdsong and nature. Birdsong also features in Dvorak’s American Quartet, full of the folk music of his native Bohemia, but written - like his most popular symphony - “from the new world”.

Ahead of Katy Hamilton’s inspiring talk join us for supper in St. Mary’s Church Hall. A convivial occasion for festival goers before the closing events. The Friends of New Paths will be launched at this event. We extend a warm welcome to anyone who would like to become a Friend of the festival.

The music of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann reflects and celebrates many loves in their lives. Brahms remembered his beloved mother in the Horn Trio; and his love for the clarinet playing of Richard Mühlfeld drew him out of retirement to write sonatas and chamber works. Schumann composed for the love of his beloved Clara Wieck, in his choice of Lied texts and his dedication of works such as the Piano Quintet to the capable fingers of this most talented of pianists. Katy Hamilton, whose talk last year was enormously popular, discusses some of the loves and links between the two men, and the musical century from Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben to Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo ahead of the festival’s final concert.

Two major quintets bookend this glorious closing programme: Mozart’s sublime Quintet for Piano and Winds, one of the masterpieces of all the repertoire, and Schumann’s rapturous Quintet for Piano and Strings. In the middle of the programme we visit two masters of the English song repertoire: Benjamin Britten, in his deeply personal Michelangelo Sonnets, and Gerald Finzi, is his summing up of music and art, ‘To A Poet’.