Tag Archives: English Music Festival

English Music Festival – Opening concert on 23 May 2025, with world premiere of Stanley Bate’s Symphony no.2

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From the official press release:

There have been many significant first performances at the English Music Festival’s opening concert over the years and this year sees the BBC Concert Orchestra give the much-anticipated World Première of the Symphony no.2 by Stanley Bate (1911-1959); another outstanding student from the Royal College of Music, whose teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams, R.O. Morris, Gordon Jacob, and Arthur Benjamin.
 
Stanley Bate’s prolific but vastly neglected output is overdue for re-evaluation and his works although being gradually recorded have yet to find a place in the concert hall. Symphony no.2 op.20 was completed in the spring of 1939, but the work appears to have been withdrawn by the composer without ever having achieved a performance.
 
Bate’s wife and fellow-composer, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, claimed her husband wrote a dozen or more symphonies and thirty or so piano sonatas. Often writing ‘en voyage’, Bate’s idiom can be dramatic and turbulent contrasting with interludes of exuberance, beauty and lyricism.

Anyone who knows Martin Yates’ recordings for Dutton will be familiar with the composer’s work. “Stanley Bate’s Symphony no.2 is, I think, going to be a revelation”, says Martin Yates. “He clearly was influenced by other composers working at the time, but he really did achieve something remarkable and individual with some of his works including this symphony. From the opening it explodes with tension. It is going to be incredible to hear it for the first time as it bursts into the world!”
 
Dedicated “To Mstislav Rostropovich with admiration and gratitude”, Arthur Bliss’ Cello Concerto is scored for small orchestra with the addition of harp and celesta. Heroic in character with ‘Quixotic’ flourishes and a soulful slow movement; according to Bliss, “There are no problems for the listener – only for the soloist!”
 
“The Arthur Bliss Cello Concerto is the most wonderfully crafted work, and I can’t understand its neglect”, says Martin Yates. “I know there is a lot of music that one could say that about, but Bliss really was a consummate musician and this concerto, written very late in his life, has a real lightness, yet depth that is utterly captivating and profound. It has a devastatingly difficult solo part with beautifully balanced orchestrations for a Mozart sized orchestras with the addition of a Celeste.”
 
The two works are performed alongside Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘trombone piece’, his Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue; a student work dating from 1901, which drew praise from his teacher Stanford who, according to the composer’s wife Adeline, chose the title for the piece. It remained unheard until a revival by the recording label, Dutton. Works by Delius and Alwyn complete the programme.

FURTHER INFORMATION AND HOW TO BOOK
 
Tickets are on sale from the website and by means of a postal booking form. Tickets for individual concerts will also be available at the door, subject to availability. Full Festival and Day Passes are also available. Programme and booking information is available on the EMF website

Dorchester Abbey (above) is the venue for the duration of the long weekend with talks taking place in the Village Hall as well as a Festival Lunch (pre-booking required). A dedicated mini-bus shuttle operates to/from Didcot Parkway rail station – bookings should be made via the website on publication of the timetable.

FRIDAY 23 MAY 2025
19:30 Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire
ENGLISH MUSIC FESTIVAL OPENING CONCERT
William Alwyn: The Innumerable Dance: An English Overture
Frederick Delius: The Walk to the Paradise Garden
Sir Arthur Bliss: Cello Concerto
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue
Stanley Bate: Symphony no.2 (World Premiere)
BBC Concert Orchestra
Martin Yates (conductor)
Raphael Wallfisch (cello)

Published post no.2,524 – Tuesday 6 May 2025

In concert – Michael Collins, BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates – The 17th English Music Festival @ Dorchester Abbey

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Michael Collins (clarinet), BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates

Carwithen Suffolk Suite (1964)
Delius Idyll de Printemps, RTVI/5 (1889)
Stanford Clarinet Concerto in A minor Op.80 (1902)
Vaughan Williams Richard II: A Concert Fantasy (1944) [World Premiere Performance]
Holst Symphony in F major H47 ‘The Cotswolds’ (1899-1900)

The Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames
Friday 25 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This latest edition of the English Music Festival, also the first to take place entirely within the spacious ambience of the Abbey at Dorchester-on-Thames, began with the customary concert from the BBC Concert Orchestra and Martin Yates. As conceived for amateur players, Suffolk Suite by Doreen Carwithen feels nothing if not resourceful – whether in the regal opulence of Prelude, evocative poise of Orford Ness then the alternately rumbustious or genial humour of Suffolk Morris; the martial tread of Framlingham Castle bringing about a resolute close.

Recent years have seen renewed interest in Delius’ early orchestral work, Idylle de Primtemps an appealing instance of the composer harnessing Nordic influences to the impressionist style then emerging in his adopted home of Paris – resulting in this short yet atmospheric tone poem.

It was enticingly given by the BBCCO, which then partnered Michael Collins (above) for a revival of the Clarinet Concerto by Stanford. As with numerous concertante works from the period, this is a three-movements-in-one design. The preludial Allegro introduces two main themes, their development continued (albeit understatedly) in a central Andante that unfolds with mounting eloquence, before the final Allegro brings a transformed reprise of the initial themes on route to its decisive ending. As with the First Cello Concerto of Saint-Saëns or the Violin Concerto of Glazunov, this is a piece the accessibility of whose idiom belies the ingenuity of its formal thinking or appeal of its ideas, and Collins (who evidently last played the piece four decades ago) brought subtlety and insight to music which ultimately delivers more than it promises.

These EMF opening concerts regularly feature first performances, and this evening brought that of the ‘Concert Fantasy’ as adapted by Yates (above) from Vaughan Williams’ incidental music to a production of Richard II for a BBC radio production and subsequently shelved. As might be expected, this abounds in allusions to earlier VW works from the period (notably Job and the Fifth Symphony), but the skill by which the composer reflects salient events in Shakespeare’s play and ease with which these fuse into a relatively continuous whole is its own justification.

It made sense to feature a major work by Holst in this, the 150th anniversary-year of his birth as well as the 90th of his death, with his Cotswolds Symphony certainly a welcome inclusion. If the weight and intensity of its second movement, Elegy (In Memoriam William Morris), rather dwarfs those other three, this is less an issue when the overall sequence was as astutely balanced as here. Yates secured a keen response in the opening Allegro, the personality of its ideas here outweighing any short-windedness, while there was no lack of verve and grace in the Scherzo or of animation in the Finale. That Elegy, though, is the real highpoint and the BBCCO did not disappoint with the sustained plangency of its playing. Numerous of Holst’s early pieces qualify as his primary achievement pre-Planets and this is arguably the greatest.

It duly rounded-off a fine opening to this year’s EMF. Maybe a future such occasion could see the revival of Stanford’s once popular Third ‘Irish’ Symphony or, even more pressingly, the first hearing for over a century of Holst’s doubtless unfairly derided suite Phantastes?

Click to read more about the English Music Festival 2024 – and on the names for more on the artists Michael Collins, Martin Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra. For more detail on the composers, click on the names to read more about Carwithen, Delius, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Holst

Published post no.2,186 – Wednesday 22 May 2024

English Music Festival 2024

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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

In concert – Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates: English Music Festival opening concert

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Raphael Wallfisch (cello, below), BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates

Lewis A Celebratory Overture (2023) [EMF commission: World premiere]
Lloyd Webber (orch. Yates) Scenes from Childhood (c1950) [World premiere]
Moeran Cello Concerto in B minor (1945)
Alwyn Serenade for Orchestra (1932) [World premiere]
Delius Two Pieces for Small Orchestra (1911-12)
Vaughan Williams (arr. Adrian Williams) A Road All Paved with Stars (1929/2016) [Public premiere]

Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on-Thames
Friday 26 May 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The breezy ebullience of Paul Lewis’s A Celebratory Overture (redolent of Malcolm Arnold without any risk of expressive ambiguity) launched this latest English Music Festival in fine style, with its crisp and precise playing from the BBC Concert Orchestra under Martin Yates.

As so often in these concerts, world premieres were not lacking and the first brought hitherto unknown partsongs by William Lloyd Webber arranged into suite-form then orchestrated by the conductor. If the resultant Scenes from Childhood adds but little to the reputation of this not inconsiderable figure, the Prelude yields appealing poise while Serenade is a waltz of no mean suavity, then the Finale nimbly combines elements of fugue and waltz on its way to a rousing close. Worth hearing, and not least when rendered with such obvious enjoyment.

The emotional weight of this first half inevitably fell upon the Cello Concerto by E.J. Moeran. Completed in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was the composer’s first large-scale piece for his wife Peers Coetmore; her belated and often approximate recording likely having deterred others from taking it up. Not so Raphael Wallfisch (above), his belief evident from the outset of a Moderato whose confiding eloquence is not without undercurrents of unease. These latter are made explicit at the start of the Adagio, otherwise centred on one of the composer’s most affecting melodies and building with due inevitability to a cadenza whose growing animation carries over to the final Allegretto. Here a jig-like main theme denotes an Irish influence that offsets any tendency to introspection as it guides this engaging movement to a decisive close.

Quite a performance, then, which was complemented after the interval by a first hearing for the early(ish) Serenade by William Alwyn. Written while on examination duties in Australia, this undemanding piece moves from a (mostly!) tranquil Prelude, through a stealthy and by no means uninhibited Bacchanale then a serene Air which could yet find favour as a radio staple, to a Finale that, as Andrew Knowles rightly indicated in his programme note, betrays more than a hint of Czech folk-music across its insouciant and ultimately boisterous course.

Hardly an interlude, the brace of pieces by Delius fairly encapsulate the inward rapture of his maturity. Yates (above) brought just the right lilt to the dancing gait of On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, while the subtle eddying of Summer Night on the River was effortlessly conveyed.

The final premiere tonight came in the guise of A Road All Paved with Stars – the ‘symphonic fantasy’ as arranged by Adrian Williams (a notable composer in his own right) from Vaughan Williams’ comic opera The Poisoned Kiss. Occasionally revived, its dramatic prolixity rather obscures its musical highpoints – emphasized here in what is both a chronological overview and cumulative paraphrase that also adds a non-symphonic orchestral work to its composer’s output. The surging emotion of those final stages could hardly leave an audience unmoved. This vivid reading concluded a memorable concert in which the Moeran was dedicated to the memory of Michal Kaznowski – who, as cellist of the Maggini Quartet and formerly section-leader at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, has left a legacy worth remembering.

To read more about the festival, visit the English Music Festival website. For information on the performers, click on the links to read more about cellist Raphael Wallfisch, conductor Martin Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and for more information on composer and arranger Adrian Williams and composer Paul Lewis

In concert – English Music Festival Day Four: Gareth Brynmor John & Christopher Glynn; Roderick Williams & Michael Dussek; Ensemble Hesperi

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11.00am – Songs by Bax, Delius, Moeran and Warlock
Gareth Brynmor John (baritone); Christopher Glynn (piano)

2.30pm – Songs by Finzi, Gurney, Parry and Stanford
Roderick Williams (baritone); Michael Dussek (piano)
String Quartet music by Delius, Holst and Parry
Bridge Quartet [Colin Twigg, Catherine Schofield (violins), Michael Schofield (viola). Lucy Wilding (cello)]

7.30pm – Eighteenth Century music from London and Edinburgh
Ensemble Hesperi [Mary-Jannet Leith (recorders) Magdalena Loth-Hill (Baroque violin), Florence Pitt (Baroque cello), Thomas Allery (harpsichord)]

St Mary’s Church, Horsham, Sussex
Monday 31 May

Written by Richard Whitehouse

It may have operated under ongoing conditions brought about by the need of social distancing in the (hopefully) last stages of the pandemic, but this fourteenth edition of the English Music Festival was no less successful because of it. Indeed, the decision to hold most of these events at St. Mary’s Church in Horsham, following on from the notably successful Christmas season last year, saw a focus on vocal and instrumental music that brought a wealth of unfamiliar or neglected pieces into the spotlight, with an informal atmosphere transcending the restrictions.

The final day’s activities began with a recital by Gareth Brynmor John (above) and Christopher Glynn, dominated by an overview of songs by Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) – not unreasonably so, given the variety of his response to a bewildering range of English verse. Almost all the phases and styles of his writing were featured – from such gauche but endearing songs as A Lake and A Fairy Boat, through such striking items as Mourn no more and Sweet Content, to the plethora of songs from 1922 (equivalent to Schubert’s 1815) of which The Bachelor and Sleep are just two of the most striking. Also here were several of Warlock’s ‘send-ups’ such as Mr Belloc’s Fancy and the Moeran collaboration Maltworms, whereas his stark setting of Bruce Blunt’s The Fox typifies that enveloping introspection Warlock was unable to escape.

Brynmor John was a sensitive guide to this music, Glynn no less sensitive in accompaniment. Interspersed among the Warlock were settings by composers who influenced him at various stages – hence Five Songs from the Norwegian where Delius takes the lyrical idiom of Grieg as a starting-point for his own increasingly personal expression, and four songs by Bax – not least the statement of identity that is To Eire and the wistful rumination of The White Peace – that remind one of the importance of this genre during his formative years. Most distinctive, though, were Moeran’s Seven Poems by James Joyce whose understatement, even reticence belies the keen formal subtlety or the expressive acuity brought to some frequently taciturn verse, and which were rendered with considerable insight by these finely attuned musicians.

The afternoon recital brought an equally wide-ranging programme from Roderick Williams (above) and Michael Dussek, opening with Three Poems by Robert Bridges as find Stanford’s word-setting at his most mellifluous and unaffected. Three often animated items derived from his Seventh Set of English Lyrics were a reminder that Parry made no less a contribution to the song than to the choral and chamber genres. Interspersed between these groups, Holst’s still little-known yet ingenious Phantasy on British Folk-Songs saw a trenchant response by the Bridge Quartet (below), but the Scherzo from Parry’s Third Quartet required a defter approach. The first half ended with I said to Love – last of Finzi’s song-cycles with texts by Thomas Hardy, whose eponymous final song summoned an eloquent response from Williams and Dussek.

After the interval, the Bridge Quartet returned for the slow movement – aka Late Swallows – from Delius’s solitary mature String Quartet. This made for a tranquil if by no means passive entree into the second of Gurney’s song-cycles after A. E. Housman, The Western Playland. The eight songs traverse a wide expressive range, with such as a limpid setting of Loveliest of Trees and a purposeful take on Is my Team Ploughing radically different in manner yet comparable in quality to those by Butterworth or Vaughan Williams. If the forced jollity of the initial Reveille strikes a jarring note, the final March conjures a luminous poise as is enhanced by its instrumental postlude. Having made the definitive recording (EMRCD065), Williams and Dussek conveyed this music’s often plangent emotion with unwavering resolve.

The evening recital saw a welcome return of Ensemble Hesperi (above) for an enterprising selection from the Baroque and early Classical eras, drawn from those musical centres of London and Edinburgh. Alongside trio sonatas by Purcell, Geminiani and Handel – also the latter’s Third Harpsichord Suite – came extracts from the compendious Airs for the Seasons by Fife-born James Oswald, the Second Harpsichord Suite by Londoner Abiel Whichello, a chromatically questing Solo Violin Sonata in B minor from Birmingham musician Barnabus Gunn and the rhythmically engaging Variations on a Scots Theme by the Edinburgh-born publisher Robert Bremner. All rendered with agility and resource by these excellent musicians, and a welcome ending to the festival for those staying in Horsham or able to take a late train back to London.

The Fifteenth Edition of this festival is scheduled for next May 27th-29th, with venues once again around the imposing edifice of Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire. Beforehand, events at Truro in July and an autumn weekend in Horsham are sure to keep the EMF before the public.

Further information on English Music Festival performances and recordings can be found at their website