London Handel Festival
When: 5 March – 10 April
Tel: +44 (0)7538 424370
Web: www.london-handel-festival.com
Halle has one, Göttingen has one and, in the city Handel called home for most of his life, there’s long been a tradition of Handel festivals, including the 19th-century gatherings at Crystal Palace brandishing a cast of thousands. Since 1978, his Parish Church of St George’s Hanover Square has been the hub of an annual celebration that this year tracks ‘Handel and the Hanoverians’. A ‘Mayfair and Marylebone Ramble’ and a Peckham Remix session punctuate a packed programme including the London premiere of the opera Fernando.
DON’T MISS:
Serse 25 March
It opens with a love song to a tree, and didn’t much impress at its premiere in 1738, but nowadays Serse is a hot ticket.
Christian Curnyn directs his Early Opera Company with mezzo-soprano Anna Stéphany in the title role.
St John’s Smith Square Holy Week Festival
When: 5-12 April
Tel: +44 (0)20 7222 1061
Web: www.sjss.org.uk
Artistic director Nigel Short describes his Holy Week Festival as ‘a moment of stillness in the heart of the city’, a celebration of the choral music of Lent under one roof. It’s a roof that shelters concerts in tandem with late-night liturgical events presenting Tenebrae Responsories – performed by Short’s own ensemble, Tenebrae. New this year is a focus on mental health with a discussion on ‘music and lamentation’. And Siglo de Oro’s opening concert devoted to ‘Easter in Hamburg’ is prefaced by a guided meditation. The
Tallis Scholars plumb Victoria, and there’s JS Bach twice-over: the St Matthew Passion and the B minor Mass.
DON’T MISS:
Tenebrae 8 April
A candlelit concert interweaves motets by Byrd and De Monte with Tallis’s searing Lamentations and Miserere settings by Allegri and James Macmillan.
London Festival of Baroque When: 9-23 May
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7222 1061
Web: www.lfbm.org.uk
Mark well the word ‘Beyond’. Although the ‘Beyond the Spanish Golden Age’ theme proclaims a focus on 16thand 17th-century Spanish fare, the programme showcases major excursions both geographic and temporal. Recalling Handel’s encounter with Corelli in Rome, The Brook Street Band forsakes the St John’s Smith Square headquarters for
Grosvenor Chapel; and Westminster Abbey hosts a Monteverdi Vespers. Back at base, Concerto 1700 delves into music written for the House of Alba, while the L’apothéose ensemble tours sacred and secular Madrid. JS Bach, however, has the first word and the last, from The Welltempered Clavier to the B minor Mass, and more besides.
DON’T MISS:
La Nuova Musica 17 May
Rounding out the London Festival of Baroque’s three-year excursion into Handel’s operas based on the poet Ariosto, David Bates conducts perhaps the greatest of them all: Ariodante.
Opera Holland Park
When: 2 June - 8 August
Tel: +44 (0)300 999 1000
Web: www.operahollandpark.com
Almost a quarter of a century ago, the company took its first curtain call with Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. And Opera Holland Park likes to keep Italian opera close to hand – the more obscure the better! In a bold double bill, this season pairs Puccini’s Le Villi with Delius’s Margot La Rouge. Directed by Natascha Metherell and conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, Rigoletto keeps the Verdian flame burning brightly. And on the lighter side, Lehár’s The Merry Widow shares the chuckles with Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.
DON’T MISS:
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
2-26 June
Anush Hovhannisyan and Samuel Dale Johnson are the out-of-sync lovers in Julia Burbach’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s first operatic brush with Pushkin. Dane Lam conducts.
OUR FESTIVAL CHOICE Summer Music in City Churches
When: 17-26 June
Tel: +44 (0)7849 757851
Web: summermusiccitychurches.com
One of the specialities of the muchmissed City of London Festival was its penchant for winkling out atmospheric venues such as lesser-known churches and livery halls. Filling at least part of the vacuum now is a festival that fills ecclesiastical spaces with music that ranges from intimate recitals to choral extravaganzas. For 2020, an Anglofrench entente cordiale promises
the Fauré Requiem under John Rutter, pianist Lucy Parham’s composer portrait of Debussy with actor Michael Dore, and La vie en rose, featuring songs by Piaf, Aznavour, Satie and Poulenc.
DON’T MISS:
City of London Choir 26 June
Poulenc’s sprightly Gloria and John Dankworth’s Clarinet Concerto, subtitled ‘The Woolwich’, sound a final ‘Amen’. Hilary Davan Wetton conducts the London Mozart Players with clarinettist Emma Johnson.
Spitalfields Festival
When: 24-28 June
Tel: +44 (0)20 7377 1362
Web: www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk
Until recently, Spitalfields Festival was the soundtrack to an East End summer; a magnet for innovation and a byword for ear-opening programming. Then the focus shifted exclusively to Christmas. Now ‘sumer is icumen in’ once more, with a festival curated by composers Edmund Finnis and Errollyn Wallen alongside BBC Radio 3 broadcaster (and BBC Music Magazine interviewer) Kate Molleson. It’s as adventurous as ever. Exaudi premieres a work by Jürg Frey, Tallis’s 40-part choral masterpiece Spem in alium fills Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, and Hanbury Hall is turned into a sonic outpost of Aberdeen.
DON’T MISS:
Dunedin Consort 25 June
Rameau’s opera Pygmalion fits the festival’s theme of ‘transformation’ to a ‘t’. Bringing together tenor Nicholas Mulroy in the title role and dancer Claricia Parinussa, it’s bookended by a musical response from cellist Lucy Railton.
Wimbledon Music Festival
When: 14-29 November
Tel: +44 (0)20 8946 5078
Web: wimbledonmusicfestival.co.uk
Wimbledon’s artistic director Anthony Wilkinson wondered if people might be a bit ‘Beethovened-out’ by the end of this year. But developing a musical drama about the composer’s deafness with Australian writer-director Tama Matheson has bulldozed any doubts. The drama makes accomplices of London Mozart Players, pianist Paul Lewis plays the Diabelli Variations with the two Op. 27 Sonatas, and across two concerts Nikolai Demidenko and the Vienna Chamber Symphony dispatch all five piano concertos.
DON’T MISS:
Academy Choir 14 November
‘From the heart may it go straight to the heart’, wrote Beethoven on his choral masterpiece, the Missa Solemnis. Matthew Best conducts the Academy Choir, London Mozart Players and a distinguished quartet of soloists.
Brighton
When: 2-24 May
Tel: + 44 (0)1273 709709
Web: www.brightonfestival.org
‘I have travelled the world, but never as far as imagination can take me,’ observes Brighton’s guest director, the writer Lemn Sissay. And, from Ray Lee’s ‘symphonic Sci-fi’ to Barely Methodical Troupe’s ‘Bromance’, imagination runs riot in a festival that embraces the shock of the new as much as it cherishes the imagination of past ages. So, while the Kronos Quartet ventures into outer space with Terry Riley’s Sun Rings, La Nuova Musica explores the world of ‘Handel’s Unsung Heroes’.
DON’T MISS:
Brighton Festival Chorus 14 May
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied the Chorus’s debut just over half a century ago and Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony brings them together again under Michael Seal.
Chipping Campden Festival When: 9-23 May
Tel: + 44 (0)1386 849018
Web: www.campdenmusicfestival.co.uk
‘In search of Beethoven’ is the title of Chipping Campden’s opening event, and it could serve as the festival’s motto. The Jerusalem and Endellion quartets devote themselves exclusively to the late string quartets; Paul Lewis and Richard Goode are single-mindedly in pursuit of the piano sonatas; and the Julian Bliss Wind Soloists offer a chamber perspective on the Seventh Symphony. Beethoven doesn’t have it all his own way, though. Vox Luminis sings Britten and Purcell, while harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani navigates Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
DON’T MISS:
Camerata RCO 20 May
No, not a confraternity of the Royal College of Organists but an ensemble drawn from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Their festival debut swaddles Webern’s Langsamer Satz in the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms.
Bath Festival
When: 15-24 May
Tel: +44 (0)1225 463362
Web: www.bathfestivals.org.uk
Sometimes it’s almost as much about place as the music. A matter of backdrop. Which is why Gorecki’s once-cult Symphony of Sorrowful Songs should sound extra poignant as Charles Hazelwood’s Paraorchestra perform it around the Roman Baths. And a private home lends extra immediacy to Poulenc’s one-woman opera La voix humaine. Of course, Bath isn’t short of jaw-dropping venues, and in the chandeliered Assembly Rooms the Heath Quartet completes a Beethoven cycle and
pianist Bertrand Chamayou plays Ravel’s shimmering Miroirs.
DON’T MISS:
Bath Festival Orchestra 18 May
It’s back! Founded by Yehudi Menuhin but long defunct, Bath Festival Orchestra rises from the ashes to play Mozart, Ligeti and Brahms. It also partners soprano Johanna Wallroth in Strauss’s Sechs Lieder. Peter Manning conducts.
Stour Music
When: 19-28 June
Tel: +44 (0)1227 769075
Web: www.stourmusic.org.uk
There’s Venetian music in 18 parts, a Catalan Battle Mass for three choirs, and an Adriatic Voyage. The incoming artistic director is out to cut a dash – and succeeds magnificently. I Fagiolini’s Robert Hollingworth takes over from Mark Deller, who occupied the Stour hot seat for 45 years, inheriting it from his countertenor father Alfred. And Hollingworth is keeping with tradition, conducting the Festival Chorus and Orchestra himself for the final concert
– which this year includes Purcell’s unfinished opera The Indian Queen.
DON’T MISS:
The Count and the Duke 27 June William Lyons assembles a 22-strong Renaissance ‘big band’, mobilising cornetts, rauschpfeifen, bagpipes and drums to pay homage to the inimitable David Munrow, a Stour favourite.
Cheltenham
When: 3-12 July
Tel: +44 (0)1242 850270
Web: www.cheltenhamfestivals.com
The Cheltenham Festival traditionally begins with a weekend of music at the idyllic Syde Manor. Its Beethovenian theme this year is something inevitable. And back in Cheltenham, Beethoven appears ‘Up Close’ in the Regency drawing rooms of Imperial Square, choreographed for New English Ballet Theatre, and cut down to size by clarinettist Julian Bliss’s new ensemble. But Cheltenham hasn’t forgotten its reputation for premiering new works – there are at least 14 this year – and institutes an equally invaluable Replay strand affording that often-elusive second performance.
DON’T MISS:
Sounds of the Solstice 9 July
Nigel Short’s Tenebrae and Tewkesbury Abbey make for an irresistible pairing in which harp interludes punctuate works by Poulenc, Harvey, Macmillan and a new commission from Joanna Marsh.
Dartington International
Summer School
When: 25 July - 22 August
Tel: +44 (0)1803 847070
Web: dartington.org/summer-school
There’s a new hand on the tiller at Dartington’s summer school-cumfestival. Writer and broadcaster Sara Mohr-pietsch steps into shoes that have greeted Stravinsky, Copland and Hindemith among others. Composer Nico Muhly is in residence as part of a week celebrating the quadricentennial of the Mayflower’s voyage. The interface between Baroque and folk musics is explored by The Dunedin Consort and Brecon Baroque, while an experimental finale features Quatuor Bozzini and the choral group Exaudi.
DON’T MISS:
Sarah Nicolls 16 August
The composer-pianist deploys her vertical inside-out piano in a work combining music, news and conversation around the issues of climate change.
OUR FESTIVAL CHOICE
St Endellion Festival
When: 28 July – 7 August
Tel: +44 (0)1208 880298
Web: www.endellionfestivals.org.uk
Of all Wagner’s operas, perhaps only Tristan und Isolde is more pertinent to briny St Endellion than The Flying Dutchman. And it’s the restless latter that’s festival director Mark Padmore’s operatic choice for 2020. But the collegiate church of St Endelienta doesn’t forget Beethoven 250. Martyn Brabbins conducts the Mass in C prefaced by pianist Imogen Cooper’s Mozart. Cooper also partners Padmore in Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.
DON’T MISS:
Wagner’s Flying Dutchman 5, 7 August ‘From here begins my career as poet,’ declared Wagner of The Flying Dutchman. The centrepiece of St Endellion’s summer is conducted by Duncan Ward with a cast including Peter Hoare, Mark Padmore and Rachel Nicholls.
Norfolk and Norwich Festival
When: 8-24 May
Tel: + 44 (0) 1603 531800
Web: nnfestival.org.uk
‘The Passing of Time’ is one of the drivers of this year’s festival. As well it might – the clock is ticking towards a 250th-anniversary edition in 2022. And it’s straight in at the deep end with Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time performed amid the timeless splendours of Norwich Cathedral. Among artists hoping to make time stand still are Vox Luminis, tenor Ian Bostridge, I Fagiolini and pianist Richard Goode. In the Spiegeltent, meanwhile, circus, cabaret and burlesque beckon.
DON’T MISS:
Britten Sinfonia 15 May
Trumpeter Alison Balsom hops aboard the Sinfonia’s time machine with
Maxwell Davies and Berio rearranging Purcell and John Woolrich reimagining Scarlatti. Plus Ligeti savours the Mysteries of the Macabre.
OUR FESTIVAL CHOICE
Bury St Edmunds
When: 14-24 May
Tel: + 44 (0)1284 758000
Web: www.buryfestival.co.uk
Bury overflows with choice venues, from Italianate Ickworth House to St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and Regency Theatre Royal to the acoustically blessed Apex. Come festival time, it knows exactly how to exploit them. Messiah hallelujahs in the Cathedral, as does
The Sixteen as it heeds ‘The Call of
Rome’. And that’s not to mention the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, which lends a little native insight to Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. Over in the Athenaeum, ‘Gin and Phonic’ propels Oz Clarke and Armonico Consort over the yardarm on a ‘spirited’ quest.
DON’T MISS:
David Le Page & Friends 24 May Words and music collide in an invigorating mash-up spanning Purcell, Janá ek and Toivo Kuula, as well as poet Emily Dickinson and The Moomins’ creator Tove Jansson.
Aldeburgh
When: 12 – 28 June
Tel: + 44 (0)1728 687110
Web: snapemaltings.co.uk
With a quartet of artists-in-residence divided evenly between composers and singers, Aldeburgh neatly echoes its founding fathers Britten and Pears.
With over 20 world and UK premieres, including Tom Coult’s new opera Violet, it remains a Suffolk powerhouse for the new. The old too, as the Monteverdi Choir heads for 17th-century Venice and London in its programme. In Ely Cathedral, meanwhile, Tenebrae turns to Tallis – before his 40-part masterpiece, Spem in alium, the choir gives the first UK performance of Unsuk Chin’s ‘prelude to Spem in alium’, Nulla est finis.
DON’T MISS:
CBSO & Chorus 21 June
Britten’s War Requiem makes its belated Snape debut, conducted by Mirga Gra inyt -tyla and with an international cast of soloists in keeping with Britten’s original vision.
King’s Lynn Festival
When: 19 July-1 August
Tel: +44 (0)1553 764864
Web: kingslynnfestival.org.uk
Shakespeare reputedly trod the boards in the town’s magnificent Guildhall.
Its restoration some 350 years later provided the impetus behind the creation of a festival that notches up its 70th anniversary this year. The
King’s Lynn Festival’s vice president Freddy Kempf teams up with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on the last night for the Schumann Piano Concerto in a programme that also includes Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Beethoven. There are birthday felicitations too from the Skampa, Piatti and Marmen Quartets.
DON’T MISS:
The Academy of Ancient Music 25 July Drilling down into music with local connections, the Academy of Ancient Music leavens Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli and Avison with works by Pieter Hellendaal, the Minster’s organist in the early 1760s, and Thomas Arne, who composed a cantata for a King’s Lynn secret society.
North Norfolk Music Festival
When: 5-15 August
Tel: +44 (0)1328 730357
Web: northnorfolkmusicfestival.com
An excursion to Burnham Norton excepted (where you’ll hear Oliver Condy give an afternoon organ recital), North Norfolk’s heart belongs exclusively to the 15th-century Church of Our Lady Saint Mary South Creake, whose alluring angel roof hovers over an enterprising line-up. The Maxwell Quartet set their own arrangements of Scottish folk music alongside Joey Roukens’s Visions at Sea; the Marian Consort straddles five centuries of ‘Music for the Queen of Heaven’; and Trio Ondine wraps Haydn and Brahms around Per Nørgård.
DON’T MISS:
Carducci Quartet 15 August
In a two-pronged celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary the Carducci Quartet’s second concert features baritone Benjamin Appl in a new transcription of the song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte.