A much-loved spring highlight, the Bromsgrove Festival has been extended this year. Christopher Morley gives us the lowdown.
One of the region’s springtime highlights for well over half a century has been the Bromsgrove Festival, which this year returns in a welcome extended format.
The festival spans nearly a month to allow us all to catch our breaths between each event.
It kicks off today, with the first preliminary round of the much-respected International Young Musicians’ Platform, itself now into its 33rd year. This competition for performers aged between 17 and 25 is held in the charming New Guesten Hall at the Avoncroft Museum of Buildings, with free public admission to the early rounds continuing tomorrow and Saturday (9.30am - 6pm), and Sunday’s semifinal (9.30am - 1pm).
The final is held on Sunday evening (7pm) at Avoncroft, Sir Philip Ledger heading the panel of adjudicators.
A previous winner of the Platform, violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, is joined by pianist Wu Qian at Avoncroft on Wednesday (April 18) for performances of a Delius Violin Sonata and the wonderful Sonata by Cesar Franck (held by many to be the world’s greatest). This recital follows a showing of ‘A Song of Summer’, Ken Russell’s acclaimed 1968 film about Delius (played by Max Adrian) and his young Yorkshire amanuensis Eric Fenby (Christopher Gable, who later went on to become an accomplished dancer and choreographer). The film begins at 7pm.
Another renowned television film, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, about another of our great composers Gustav Holst (who died in the same year of 1934 as Delius - and Elgar) is shown at the Artrix on April 28 (7.15pm), when it will be introduced by its producer and director Tony Palmer.
Before that, however, the probable highlight of this year’s Bromsgrove Festival comes on Friday April 27 at the Artrix (7.45pm) with ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, an entertainment exploring highways and byways of musical taste devised by flautist and passionate social historian Gabrielle Byam-Grounds and featuring the English Serenata and celebrity narrators from the Royal Shakespeare Company.
These include the rising young actress Katy Stephens and the much-loved RSC veteran Jeffery Dench (we are promised that Jeffery will at one point don drag and a veil to portray Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’).
Soprano Lois Murray joins the company, repeating the rewarding collaboration she shared with the English Serenata and Jeffery in ‘Love Letters in a Time of War’.
This World War II anthology was premiered at the Bromsgrove Festival in 2010, and has recently been released on a double-CD, beautifully packaged, with English Serenata joined by Dench and Murray, as well as mezzo Yvonne Howard and actors Hannah Barrie, Sam Alexander and Sam West. Songs of the period, as well as other evocative music, are interspersed with letters exchanged between a pair of lovers with connections in Birmingham and the Black Country, and stirring speeches by Winston Churchill (Dench in tremendous form). These treasurable discs have the serial number CRC2114. Returning to this year’s Bromsgrove Festival, May 4 will hear the Artrix ringing with the sounds of children from four of the town’s middle schools as they take us round the world in “Big Spring Sing”, with songs they have learned from Ex Cathedra’s award-winning education team (6.30pm).
More youth comes to the fore next day (May 5) when the renowned and stylish Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra visits the Artrix. John Ruddick is the musical director, and the guest vocalists are Katie Gaskin and Tom Sharp (7.45pm).
A change of venue comes on May 9, when the Bromsgrove Festival moves to the historic Grafton Manor Chapel adjacent to the Grafton Manor Hotel.
The pleasant grounds will be open from 6.45pm, but the concert itself begins at 7.45pm, when the Chilingirian String Quartet celebrating its 40th anniversary is joined by the exciting young Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson in a programme of Haydn, Finzi, Turnage and Ravel. The Festival ends on Saturday May 12, with a Diamond Jubilee-themed programme from the English Symphony Orchestra and Elgar Chorale, Donald Hunt conducting, at the Artrix (7.45pm).
The menu is largely English, with works by Ireland, Butterworth, Parry, Elgar (the poignant ‘Nursery Suite’, written for the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, who sat on their best behaviour at the work’s premiere at the Abbey Road Studios, Elgar conducting, with their parents -- the Duke and Duchess of York -- as well as George Bernard Shaw present on VIP seats), Handel and Walton.
Bringing the concert, and indeed the Festival, to its conclusion is Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the National Anthem. If we must still continue to have such a sycophantic dirge to represent our country, then please let it be this version.
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