Thursday 11 March 2021

Rarely performed RVW & Gurney plus an Edgar Bainton premiere: this year's English Music Festival

St Mary's Church, Horsham, location for this year's English Music Festival
St Mary's Church, Horsham,
the location for this year's English Music Festival

The 14th English Music Festival will be taking place from 28-31 May 2021 at St Mary’s Church, Horsham, West Sussex, where the festival hosted several concerts last year. This year's festival will feature several rarely performed works including RVW's Violin Concerto, the Concerto Accademico, Ivor Gurney’s song-cycle The Western Playland, which sets words by A. E. Housman, and the world premiere of a piano piece by Edgar Bainton.

The Orchestra of the Swan launches the festival with a concert which features the RVW concerto alongside music by Peter Warlock, Walter Leigh, Gustav Holst, and John Ireland. Violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck and pianist Duncan Honeybourne will be performing sonatas by Bliss, Howells, Delius and Ireland alongside the Bainton premiere. The Aurora Trio perform works for flute, viola and harp by RVW, Bax, York Bowen and Paul Lewis.

Baritone Roderick Williams, the Bridge Quartet and pianist Michael Dussek will perform the Gurney song-cycle alongside Gerald Finzi’s Thomas Hardy song-cycle I said to Love, and music by Parry, Stanford, Holst and Delius. Lucy Stevens and Elizabeth Marcus will be performing Shakespeare settings by composers ranging across four centuries, whilst baritone, Gareth Brynmor-John, and pianist Christopher Glynn will be performing songs by the friends and contemporaries, Warlock, Bax, Moeran and Delius.

Looking at early music, the Armonico Consort, under their conductor Christopher Monks, will perform works by Handel and Purcell, whilst Ensemble Hesperi, directed from the harpsichord by Thomas Allery, will include Scottish Baroque music alongside lesser-known repertoire by composers of the North of England and the Midlands.

Full details from the festival website.

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