What’s in Store? The Cheltenham International Music Festival 2011 (JQ)

There doesn’t seem to be a specific theme to this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival – at any rate none is mentioned in Director Meurig Bowen’s introduction to the festival prospectus. However, there appear to be a number of thematic strands, including several percussion events; Music & Maths; and Norway Calling. Everyone will have their own priorities in assessing the seventy-five festival events. Here are just a few that strike me.

If you are fascinated by the huge variety of sounds that can be conjured up by virtuoso percussionists then there are several highly attractive events during a percussion-focused weekend. The weekend is launched by Dame Evelyn Glennie, who performs four contemporary works, including two premières, with the Festival Academy Soloists (July 1). Two days later comes a chance to hear one of the great twentieth century works for percussion when The Colin Currie Group perform Steve Reich’s Drumming (3 July). Earlier in the same day the Japanese-American virtuoso, Kuniko Kato performs three more Reich works in arrangements for percussion (3 July)

Lovers of song recitals will find much to entice them to Cheltenham. Tenor Allan Clayton and soprano Caroline McPhie share a recital that includes Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson as well as a new work by Ian Venables. (29 June). The very next evening baritone Florian Boesch, who impressed me in Schubert lieder in 2008 ( review), teams up once again with Roger Vignoles to perform more lieder by Schubert as well as music by Loewe and Mahler (30 June).

Among the recitals and chamber music concerts, an appearance by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is sure to be popular. He offers music by Haydn, Ravel, Debussy and Liszt (7 July). Another stand-out recital will be the appearance of Leif Ove Andsnes, playing Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenberg (5 July).

Orchestral concerts feature less prominently in the festival programmes these days, due, no doubt, to cost considerations. However, this year Cheltenham has secured the services of two of the “hottest” partnerships currently in the UK. Vladimir Jurowski brings the London Philharmonic in a programme of Wagner, Strauss (Four Last Songs with Amanda Roocroft) and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. (2 July). Near the end of the Festival Kiril Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra appear, bringing with them Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto (Boris Giltburg) and music by Mussorgsky including Pictures at an Exhibition (8 July). Every one of the pieces in both programmes is a fine work and no doubt both concerts will attract large audiences, which is an important consideration. However, both programmes are very “safe” and it seems a shame to have engaged these artists and not asked them to play at least one work in their respective concerts apart from the mainstream repertoire.

A couple of choral concerts stand out. The fine British ensemble, Stile Antico performs a mouth-watering programme entitled ‘The Immortal Glory of Spain’ in Gloucester Cathedral (29 June). Music by Victoria and other mainly Iberian polyphonic composers will be sung while the audience has the chance to view projections of paintings by El Greco and other artists of the period. Gloucestershire’s other magnificent medieval church, Tewkesbury Abbey, will be the venue for a Bach programme to be given by the Magdalena Consort. (6 July). This will include the great cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV 147 and the Third Brandenburg Concerto.

There are seventy-five events in all, offering music and music-related events to suit the widest range of tastes. Details are on the festival website www.cheltenhamfestival.com/music where bookings can also be made. Telephone bookings can be made at 01242 505444. I hope that before next year the festival authorities will redesign the brochure. This year’s offering is a complete mess, to be frank. The events have been grouped by venue rather than chronologically, which makes it very difficult for prospective patrons to plan their concert-going. However once the brochure has been negotiated there’s much to entice music lovers to Cheltenham between 29 June and 10 July.

John Quinn