Focus on the flugelhorn: Imogen Whitehead's residency at Ryedale Festival champions an instrument that often sits in the shadows with new concerto by Gabriel Jackson

Imogen Whitehead with flugelhorn

The flugelhorn has its origins in a German type of hunting horn. In early 18th century Germany, a ducal hunt leader known as a Flügelmeister used a Flügelhorn to direct his wing of the hunting party. This developed into a valved bugle in the earlier part of the 19th century. It is similar to the trumpet and cornet, but its wider conical bore means the sound is darker and more mellow. It employs the same fingering system, so its similarity in size means it can be played by trumpet and cornet players, with some adjustment to breath and embouchure. 

 It is a standard member of the brass band and is occasionally found in classical music: there are flugelhorn parts in Stravinsky's Threni, Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 9 and Tippett's Symphony No. 3.

This year's Ryedale Festival is providing a chance to get up close and personal with the flugelhorn.  The Festival, which runs from 10 to 26 July, is presenting some 60 events in 40 venues across North and East Yorkshire. The Festival programme is anchored around five artistic residencies - The Gesualdo Six, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London, Van Baerle Piano Trio, cellist Laura van der Heijden and brass player Imogen Whitehead.

Imogen Whitehead's residency will be focusing on the flugelhorn and her appearances include recitals with organist Rachel Mahon at Ampleforth and with harpist Olivia Jageurs at St Michael’s Church Coxwold, and an appearance with Kirkbymoorside Town Brass Band (where flugelhorns will be in abundance alongside Whitehead's solo appearance) as well as a masterclass with young brass players from across the region.

But the heart of the residency will be the world premiere of a new Flugelhorn Concerto by Gabriel Jackson, co‑commissioned for Imogen Whitehead by the Ryedale Festival and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Charlotte Corderoy conducts Whitehead and the RLPO in the concerto's premiere at St Peter's Church, Norton alongside Weber's Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4.

Imogen Whitehead is championing an instrument that often sits in the shadows and is at the heart of creating new music and a stronger future for it.  She is also taking an instrument most rooted in brass‑band culture and bringing it to the classical mainstream. This is not the first time she has championed the instrument in new music, back in 2023 she commissioned a new solo flugelhorn piece from composer Charlotte Harding. 

She is part of a growing cohort of women pushing into what has long been a very male‑dominated corner of the profession, and interestingly trumpeter Matilda Lloyd will be joining the Gesualdo Six at the Festival for a joint concert.

Full details of the Ryedale Festival from their website. 

A significant commitment to bringing orchestral music to audiences across North Yorkshire: John Wilson, Sinfonia of London & Ryedale Festival in three-year partnership

John Wilson & Sinfonia of London

The Ryedale Festival has announced a new three-year partnership with Sinfonia of London and the conductor John Wilson, marking a significant commitment to bringing orchestral music of the highest quality to audiences across North Yorkshire and the wider region.

The partnership will begin in summer 2026 with a major orchestral concert presented as part of the Ryedale Festival at York Barbican on 12 July 2026. Entitled An English Summer, the programme features Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, William Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, as well as a glorious parade of British light music classics by composers including Richard Rodney Bennett, Eric Coates and Haydn Wood. 

Launched by John Wilson in 2018, Sinfonia of London revived the legendary studio orchestra of the same name, founded in 1955. It made its live debut in 2021 at the BBC Proms and has appeared there on an annual basis since. The orchestra has quickly built a celebrated range of over 30 recordings on the Chandos label, covering a wide range of music with the orchestra’s most recent releases being Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady and Walton’s Cello Concerto and Symphony No.1.

This year's Ryedale Festival runs from 10 to 25 July and the full programme will be announced on 27 March 2026. The festival was founded in 1981 and its artistic director is pianist Christopher Glynn. It has twice been a finalist at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards where it was praised for ‘an extraordinary breadth of programming’ and the way it ‘always wraps its arms around the local community’.

Full details from the Ryedale Festival website. 

Six world premieres, celebrating RVW and Abba, a pop-up Handel opera: Ryedale Festival returns with 52 concerts

Sledmere House - one of the venues for this year's Ryedale Festival

Having kept last year's festival deliberately low key [see my interview with artistic director Christopher Glynn, A gloriously offline moment] the Ryedale Festival returns in July 2022 for 52 concerts involving some 300 performers. As ever, the festival mixes a variety of historic venues, from quieter churches in out of the way places, to iconic venues such as Ampleforth Abbey, Hovingham Hall and Castle Howard.

There is a focus on the new and the old this year. There will be premieres from Julian Philips, Errollyn Wallen, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Joseph Howard, Roberts Balanas and Callum Au, plus celebrations of RVW's 150th birthday as well as celebrating the 50th birthday of Abba! There is a pop-up production of Handel's pastoral gem Acis and Galatea which will visit three ancient churches.

Artists in residence include baritone Roderick Williams, the Maxwell Quartet, San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque (their first UK tour in over a decade), the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the Gesualdo Six, but there is also a chance to hear Dame Janet Baker in conversation, and pianist Stephen Kovacevich in recital, whilst the festival opens with the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings in concert.

There is a strong focus on Ryedale Festival Young Artists. Violinist Roberts Balanas performs a late-night candlelit concert, while the Scottish accordionist Ryan Corbett sets out on a ‘troubadour trail’ bringing music, from Bach to Tchaikovsky, to beautiful and little-known churches across Ryedale. Siân Dicker, soprano, and Krystal Tunnicliffe, pianist, create a relaxed, informal and interactive concert for people living with dementia, their friends, family and carers – and anyone else who would like to attend. And bassoonist Ashby Mayes collaborates with Krystal Tunnicliffe in an enterprising programme performed at one of the festival’s many Coffee Concerts. 

A new partnership with the Richard Shephard Foundation is working in primary schools to is transform the festival’s engagement with children across Yorkshire and supports Seven Mercies, a new Community Song Cycle by Joseph Howard and Emma Harding, inspired by the famous murals of Pickering Church. A celebration of local heritage and talent, about countering difficult times through small acts of kindness, Seven Mercies will be performed on 21 May at the Church of St Peter and St Paul Pickering, and is one of two major elements of the festival taking place outside the main festival period in July.

In October, the Hallé Orchestra and Chorus, Natalya Romaniw, Alice Coote, Thomas Atkins and James Platt with conductor Sir Mark Elder come together to perform Verdi’s Requiem in York Minster. 

The Ryedale Festival runs from 15-31 July 2022, full details from the festival website.

A gloriously offline moment: I chat to artistic director Christopher Glynn about the 40th anniversary Ryedale Festival

How do you plan a festival in a time when the rules about what might and might not be possible are constantly changing and where simply getting artists to travel can be a challenge, never mind finding venues where you can have a socially distanced audience. When I asked Christopher Glynn, artistic director of the Ryedale Festival, this question he laughed and said hard work and a determination to do it. This year's Ryedale Festival is running from 17 July to 31 July 2021 with a series of events with live audiences. I chatted to Christopher recently by Zoom to find out more about how they made it happen.

Christopher Glynn (photo Joanna Bergin)

This year is the festival's 40th anniversary so they were determined to make something happen and the decision was taken early on to have a late-announced, one-off festival with 40 events (for 40 years) as opposed to their regular happening with around 80 events. This year the concerts are shorter and they are all repeated, as most of the venues are relatively small. Yet this is something that Christopher has found it fascinating to explore, another way of looking at the festival and throughout our chat I was struck by his creative attitude, taking the restrictions as a way of re-evaluating. The venues are all being operated at 50% capacity so every concert is being given twice.

So the big difference this year to the regular festival is that there are fewer concerts, they are shorter and there are no intervals. This latter is something that Christopher comments that they will be interested to see what happens. Whilst some people will miss the interval, he has already had positive comments from people who find having a shorter concert a benefit, meaning that you can easily fit dinner in beforehand or afterwards. 

Normally, the festival takes pride in creating events that could not be heard anywhere else, which Christopher regards as an important feature of the festival. But this is not happening this year, and they will be saving up their ideas for next year.

Ryedale Festival launches its 40th birthday celebrations with on-line Spring festival

The Long Gallery, Castle Howard
(Photo Heikki Immonen via Wikipedia)

The Ryedale Festival is 40 this year and there will be celebratory festival in the Summer (16 July-1 August 2021), but to get us in the mood there is an on-line Spring festival next month (2-8 May 2021). Seven filmed performances created in collaboration with Castle Howard, Yorkshire Arboretum and filmmaker Cain Scrimgeour, all available on RyeStream, the festival's streaming platform.

The main festival will feature  40 headline events in one-off, late-announced, open-ended, can-do bursts which allow it to remain responsive to the unique circumstances of 2021 and as creative and flexible as possible. 

In-person music-making returns in June when Nicola Benedetti opens her festival residency by joining Leonard Elschenbroich cello, Alexei Grynyuk piano at Pickering Parish Church on 4 June 2021 for Beethoven and Brahms.

The Spring festival launches with Michael Collins (clarinet) and Michael McHale (piano) in Beethoven's Spring Sonata and music by Weber and Poulenc, and then pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy performi Schubert and Brahms' piano duets in the Long Gallery at Castle Howard. Other performers include the Maxwell Quartet in Haydn's Op.74 No. 1, Scottish folk music and Anna Meredith, the soprano duo Fair Oriana in a programme which mixes Renaissance, Baroque, folk and more, jazz group The Immy Curchill Trio, and mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and pianist Christopher Glynn (artistic director of the festival) will be giving a Spring-inspired programme with music by Schumann, Brahms, Copland and Finzi, plus music from the Isolation Songbook [see my review]. The festival ends with the London Mozart Players and Ruth Rogers in Grieg, RVW and Vivaldi.

Other venues being used during the festival include the Great Hall at Castle Howard, St Mary’s Church, Ebberston, and Helmsley Arts Centre. Full details from the festival website.