Tippett and more: looking ahead to the Southwell Music Festival

This year's Southwell Music Festival runs from 22 to 27 August 2018 with events in and around Southwell Cathedral in Nottinghamshire. Curated by artistic director Marcus Farnsworth, the centrepiece of the festival is a performance of Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time with Marcus Farnsworth conducting the Festival Voices and Festival Sinfonia with soloists Susanna Hurrell, Madeleine Shaw, Andrew Tortise and Roland Wood. Also in the concert is a performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist.

The inclusion of the Tippett (written in 1939) hints at one of the themes of the concert, the 1918 centenary of the end of World War One, and an Armistice Commemoration includes Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale alongside music by Debussy, Butterworth and Stuart MacRae. A Festival Voices concert on the wider theme of Remembrance includes Howells' Requiem alongside Knut Nystedt, James MacMillan and John Tavener

The busy Festival Voices are also singing Bach's Mass in B Minor with the Festival Sinfonia, conducted by Farnsworth. The Festival Sinfonia perform two Strings in the Quire concerts, exploring a mixture of Baroque and 20th century string music. There are also piano recitals from Clare Hammond and Konya Kanneh-Mason, and chamber music recitals with Czech music as a theme.



Full details from the Southwell Music Festival website.