Classical Literary Festival Listings 2018

Festival includes new productions of Verdi’s Alzira and Mozart’s Idomeneo (6th–22nd July). Later, the town hosts previews of Harrogate’s International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival that includes all but one of the G&S operas (8th–27th August). Hubert Parry finally gets a look-in at this year’s Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. Elgar’s early Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf also features (28th July–4th August, booking 23rd April).

Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and Elgar’s The Music Makers are headline works at the St Endellion Festival in North Cornwall (31st July–10th August, booking 11 June). Conversely, chamber music and song, including a chance to hear Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in the composer’s own transcription with piano, are the forte of the North Norfolk Music Festival, based in the richly appointed Anglo–catholic church in South Creake (13th–24th August). August is dominated by the Edinburgh Festival (3rd–27th August, programme 14th March) and Fringe. Their Bank Holiday close coincides with Nottinghamshire’s Southwell Music Festival (22nd–27th August, booking 4th June) where Elgar’s Cello Concerto shares a Saturday evening programme with Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.

October brings the Oxford Lieder Festival (12th–27th October, booking 1st June) and Sir James Macmillan’s Cumnock Tryst in East Ayrshire (4th–7th October, booking June), this year featuring Sir James’s new Armistice piece All the Hills and Vales Along, inspired by the Scottish-born poet Charles Sorley, killed in action, aged twenty, in 1915.

Booking open unless otherwise stated