Looking ahead: Incontri in Terra di Siena

Pianist Alessio Bax is the new artistic director of the festival Incontri in Terra di Siena. Based at the Villa La Foce and the nearby medieval castle, Castelluccio, the Val d'Orcia, Tuscany, the chamber music festival runs from 29 July to 5 August 2017. The programme will feature Sarah Connolly in recital with Julius Drake, the Escher String Quartet and jazz pianist Dan Tepfer in Tepfer's Solar Spiral, violinist Joshua Bell in recital with Alessio Bax, as well as appearances from pianist Lucille Chung, viola player Lise Berthaud (a former BBC Young Musician), violinist and composer Henning Kraggerud, and cellist Paul Watkins.

The festival was founded 29 years ago by Antonio Lysy in memory of his grandparents, Antonio and Iris Origo. Iris Origo was the Anglo-American author of War in the Val d'Orcia, a book describing the events during the Second World War in Tuscany, and The Merchant of Prato which paints a detailed picture of Italian domestic life in the Renaissance based the astonishing cache of letters surviving from an Tuscan merchant dynasty.

Full information from the festival website.