The Elgar Festival (27 May – 2 June) is working with a 40% funding cut from Arts Council England
In this short film, Festival Patron Julian Lloyd Webber introduces the Fundraising Campaign:
The Festival is raising money to help deliver its 2024 iteration, due to a 40% funding cut from Arts Council England
Donations are valuable in helping to continue the legacy of one of England’s most revered composers. As the festival’s organisers say, “We believe Elgar is for everyone and our developing range of events are for people of all ages, interests, and lifestyles.”
Floorplan take another step along the road in their relationship with Classic with a powerful club track, What A Friend.
Previous releases on Luke Solomon’s label have been well received – WeGiveTheeHonor has done particularly well on UK radio, while LikeDat was a strong club track. Robert and Lyric Hood have also been busy on stage, at Brunch Elektronik in Barcelona, The Warehouse Project in Manchester and Igloofest in Montreal.
WhatAFriend has the familiar chopped vocal samples with tough, four to the floor beats, deliverng a strong blend of tougher techno and gospel tinged woth euphoria. You can listen below:
Dan Snaith, the man better known in musical circles as Caribou, returns with his first new material in two years. Honey is a dancefloor track, co-produced by Four Tet, that has a pretty nippy beat, a rounded bass sound and some pretty psychedelic goings-on up top. Fans will be pleased! You can watch below and listen / buy via Bandcamp:
Here is a nod in the direction of the English Music Festival, returning next month for 2024. For the first time, all festival events will be held in Dorchester-on-Thames. The concerts will take place in Dorchester Abbey, while the talks will be held in the historic Village Hall. The details, copied from the press release, are below:
The seventeenth annual English Music Festival (EMF) returns to Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire from Friday 24 May until Bank Holiday Monday 27 May 2024. Celebrating anniversaries of two of Britain’s greatest composers across the event, the opening concert, given by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Martin Yates, features Stanford‘s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Michael Collins, and Holst‘s ‘Cotswold’ Symphony. Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Concert Fantasy is given a World Premiere, alongside works by Doreen Carwithen and Frederick Delius. Orchestral, chamber and choral concerts continue throughout the weekend.
The English Music Festival celebrates the brilliance, innovation, beauty and richmusical heritage of Britain with a strong focus on unearthing overlooked or forgottenmasterpieces of the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.
“Each year audience feedback proclaims the latest EMF the best yet and we are delighted to be able to continue developing and improving our now much-loved Festival”, says Em Marshall-Luck, Festival Founder-Director. “This year’s is typical EMF programming, in the range from solo piano recitals to full orchestra and choral concerts, and from early music through to contemporary, while we retain our focus on the EMF’s raison d’etre, those overlooked and forgotten works by British composers of the Golden Renaissance.
“We are delighted to have been able to attract top performers from abroad, with musicologist, tenor and English-music expert Brian Thorsett joining us from the USA and brilliant pianist Peter Cartwright from South Africa, where the EMF has a collaboration with the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. I am particularly looking forward to their concerts, as well as-in particular-the Vaughan Williams premiere with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the first modern performance of a gorgeous work by Sir Thomas Armstrong, as well as pianist and Radio 3 presenter, Paul Guinery‘s late-night recital, which celebrates the release of his third disc of Light Piano Music for the Festival’s own record label, EM Records.” The works of Gustav Holst (1874-1934) have been at the heart of Founder-Director Em Marshall-Luck’s programming at the EMF and remain a perennial favourite amongst audiences, with many memorable performances of the composer’s often overlooked major works having been given, as well as recorded by the Festival’s independent recording arm, E M Records. This year, the composer’s early Symphony, ‘The Cotswolds’, takes centre stage.
One of the leading musicians of his generation – as performer, conductor, composer, teacher and writer, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) had a profound effect on the development and history of English music. In addition to the Directorship of the Royal College of Music, amongst other august musical establishments, and his influence on several generations of composition students who went on to became household names, Stanford was a prolific composer, completing seven symphonies, eight string quartets, nine operas, more than 300 songs, 30 large scale choral works and a large body of chamber music.
The centenary of his death this year provides an opportunity for evaluation of some works from the large canon that have fallen under the radar. For the EMF’s opening concert, there will be a rare performance of Stanford’s Clarinet Concerto featuring one of today’s leading exponents of the instrument, Michael Collins.
WORLD PREMIERES
First performances include the World Premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘Richard II’ Concert Fantasy; the complete incidental music the composer was commissioned to write for Frank Benson’s 1912-13 production at Stratford, which will be performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Conductor, Martin Yates.
Vaughan Williams first discovered Shakespeare as a child when he was given the complete edition by his relative, Caroline Darwin, and ‘Richard II’ become a favourite. The composer took Shakespeare’s many references to English folk-ballads as supporting his own ‘national’ approach to music, saying “Shakespeare makes an international appeal for the very reason that he is so national and English in his outlook.” He went on to set and write over 20 Shakespeare texts and incidental music, often using folk-songs and ballads, and the well-known ‘Greensleeves’ appears in ‘Richard II’.
CHORAL CELEBRATIONS
The EMF regularly showcase live choral music. This year The Godwine Choir and Holst Orchestra conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton bring a programme of popular favourites to Dorchester Abbey, including a first modern performance of Edward Elgar’s ‘Give Unto the Lord’, and Excalibur Voices perform works by Coleridge-Taylor, Milford, Dyson, Bainton, Walford Davies and others.
INTERNATIONAL APPEAL
Returning to the EMF is South African pianist Peter Cartwright, who joins violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck in recital to perform works by Holst, Farrar, Stanford, Bliss and Howells.
American tenor Brian Thorsett and pianist Richard Masters, who enjoy a particular association with British music, are making their first appearance at the EMF with a programme of Finzi, Ireland, Frank Tours and Somervell.
RELAXED LISTENING
John Andrews raises the baton for the English Symphony Orchestra in a programme of works by Finzi, Delius, Howells, Milford, Dyson and Warlock, while Piano Trio, Ensemble Kopernikus, performs Delius, Holst, Rebecca Clarke, John Ireland and Percy Hilder Miles. Pianist and British music specialist, Phillip Leslie, performs works by Rawsthorne, Bowen, Dyson, Leighton, and John Ireland’s masterpiece, ‘Sarnia’.
Rosalind Ventris and Richard Uttley will be performing works for viola and piano including Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. Rosalind’s album ‘Sola’ is currently nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award in the 2024 ‘Premiere’ category.
Always a popular fixture, late-evening recitals are a special feature of the EMF, with the ancient warmth of Dorchester Abbey providing the perfect setting for audiences to relax in and enjoy a performance from The Flutes & Frets Duo – Beth Stone (historical flutes) and Daniel Murphy (lute; theorbo and guitar), and for a discovery of the lighter side of British composers when pianist Paul Guinery returns to the keyboard. Informative talks include those on anniversary composers, Stanford and Holst, as well as Farrar and Bliss.
This year, the Festival is remaining in Dorchester-on-Thames for the duration of the long weekend.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Further information including the full programme is available on the EMF’s website
Tickets go on sale via the website from 22 March (8 March to Festival Friends) and by means of a postal booking form. Full Festival and Day Passes are also available. Tickets for individual concerts will be available on the door, subject to availability
The story behind Erland Cooper’s new work Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence is by no means an ordinary one – it is a deeply personal document.
On his website, Cooper himself describes the work as “a meditation on value, patience and time, as well as the often disposable nature of music. It seems fitting to me that the tape will slowly return and dry out between Orkney and London, in those safe havens of record shops that bring value to mine and my peers’ work.”
Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence will be released on the Autumn equinox, 20th September 2024, following its premiere live at The Barbican in London on 8th June. This first public reveal comes 3 years after the only master tape was planted deep in the soil of the Scottish Highlands and Islands of Orkney and all digital copies were deleted. It will be released exactly as it sounds from the earth. The recording is Cooper’s new three-movement work for solo violin and string ensemble.
After digitisation, the composer will complete the score for live performance as a true collaboration with the natural world. The piece was written to mark the centenary of celebrated Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown, as 2021 marked 100 years since his birth.
Inspired by natural landscapes and ruminating on time, hope, community and patience, the sole recording of the work – on ¼ inch magnetic tape, with the digital files permanently deleted – was planted, to grow and be nurtured or “recomposed” by the earth, before being exhumed and released. A treasure hunt of clues was slowly revealed by the composer every equinox period for fans and his record label alike to search for it if they so wished. In three years, if not found, the composer would return to dig it up himself.
In late 2022, the tape was found on a hunt by Victoria and Dan Rhodes. The album will now be digitised on the spring equinox in a special ceremony captured on film and released, exactly as it sounds from the earth, with nature having collaborated in the compositional process. The final score will then be completed and performed by live musicians at special concerts scheduled across the UK, Europe and America.
You can explore purchase options for the limited edition vinyl release of Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence on the Mercury KX website
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