BACKSTAGE WITH…
Steven Devine Conductor & keyboard player
You are conducting the English Haydn Orchestra and playing with the English Haydn Piano Trio at this year’s English Haydn Festival. Can you tell us about these ensembles?
Both ensembles get together just for the festival, but are made up of players who know each other from lots of different other groups – it’s nearly exactly the same team every year, because it’s become such a favourite moment in the calendar for us all.
How long have you been involved with the festival?
I’ve been involved six or seven years now. The festival itself dates back to 1993, when it was founded by the violinist John Reid who wanted to have what was then a two-week event dedicated to Haydn and his contemporaries. He thought that Bridgnorth in Shropshire would be a nice place to do this, though it’s not somewhere you might immediately associate with Haydn!
The repertoire at the festival is not just Haydn. How do you choose which other composers to programme?
Though we do have themes each year, they provide more of a starting point rather than leading to specific works. So, for instance, while this year’s theme is about Haydn’s influence on musical composition, we don’t say ‘this piece is directly influenced by Haydn because of this’ but instead look for general trends he inspired. We’re looking at, say, how the symphonic repertoire increased at the time and also at the composers who had clicked into what Haydn was looking at – such as Krommer, who we’re doing for the first time. Within the orchestra, we have brilliant musicians who are keen to explore some of these byways.
Haydn isn’t often championed in this depth. Has the festival become a magnet for fans of the composer?
Yes, and they are brilliant! Many of them stay for a week, come to every concert and remember what pieces we’ve done previously and which guests we’ve invited. Some also like to challenge me occasionally by asking why we’ve done something a certain way. That’s wonderful for me, as I always feel I want to justify why I make certain artistic decisions, particularly with regards to performance practice. It’s certainly also true that Haydn doesn’t get performed as much as he ought to elsewhere. For me, this is completely mystifying, as he is one of the most important composers in the Western canon, in terms of looking both back and forwards, plus there is his sheer orginality in terms of form, structure and so on. And there’s so much of it too!