Thursday 1 April 2021

Hertfordshire Festival of Music 2021

Friends Meeting House, Hertford (Photo taken by Equus caballus, November 24, 2012, from Wikipedia)
Friends Meeting House, Hertford (Photo taken by Equus caballus, November 24, 2012, from Wikipedia)

Live classical music is cautiously coming out of hibernation and events cancelled or postponed last Summer are being scheduled for this year. The Hertfordshire Festival of Music, which was cancelled in 2020, has announced that the 2021 edition of the festival will be taking place from 4 to 10 June 2021, and for many coming to the festival this will be the first live classical music they have heard in over a year.

Launched in 2016 as a small weekend event and run by co-Artistic Directors conductor Tom Hammond and composer James Francis Brown, the festival has grown rapidly to become a major summer celebration of classical music based in and around the historic county town of Hertford.

This year's festival will feature violinist Chloe Hanslip as principal artist and she perform with the Hertfordshire Festival Orchestra in music by Pärt and Sibelius, will also give two recitals with pianist Danny Driver and masterclasses at Queenswood School in partnership with Future Talent.

This year’s Featured Living Composer will be Judith Weir and the festival will feature performances of her music with performances from the Albion String Quartet, Chloe Hanslip, the Hertfordshire Festival Orchestra, and Danny Driver. And Judith Weir will be in conversation with Tom Hammond talking about the music.

Other visitors to the festival include Fontanella Recorder Consort, which will be giving a concert celebrating the 350th anniversary of the building of Hertford’s Friends Meeting House, the oldest in the world still being used for its original purpose, ZRI (featuring Max Baillie, violin, Matthew Sharp, cello, Ben Harlan, clarinet, Jon Banks, accordion, and Iris Pissaride, dulcimer) named after Zum Roten Igel, or ‘To the Red Hedgehog’, the tavern in Vienna frequented by Schubert and Brahms, and Matthew Sharp will also be presenting Fairytale Stories, a one-man musical story-telling show for children 3+ and their families.

Full details from the Festival website.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts this month