Mozart in the Marches - somewhere for the weekend

Whittington Castle - photo David Preston

Whittington International Chamber Music Festival is dedicating itself to Mozart this year, with a week of his chamber music from 17 - 22 May 2016 in the Shropshire town. Under the artistic directorship of cellist James Barrelet, the festival is now in its fourth year with previous festivals having been devoted to Brahms, to Schumann, and to Mendelssohn. There are six concerts which concentrate, no on Mozart's string quartets, but on the plenitude of other chamber music he wrote so that there are string trios, piano trios, quartets & quintets, an oboe quartet, horn quintet, piano quintet, and six of the string quintets, plus arrangements for piano and string quartet of two of the piano concertos.

The performers are a group of young artists many of whom are playing throughout the festival, a format which enables audience members to really get to know players. The performers this year come from a wide variety of countries providing a fine international flavour and include artistic director & cellist James Barralet (UK), violinist Kristine Balanas (Latvia), bassoonist Joost Bosdijk (Holland), cellist Nathaniel Boyd (UK), violinist Bogdan Božović (Serbia), pianist Simon Callaghan (UK), violinist Tim Crawford (UK), pianist Caspar Frantz (Germany), violist Léa Hennino (France), violist Mark Holloway (USA), violinist Laura Lutzke (USA), clarinetist Chris Richards (UK), cellist Ditta Rohmann (Hungary), oboist Olivier Stankiewicz (France), violist Rosalind Ventris (UK) and horn player Katy Woolley (UK).

There is free admission to the concerts for 8 to 25 year olds. Full details from the festival website.