SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Dorchester Abbey - Photograph © Craig Thornber

Over one of the wettest Bank Holidays in living memory, Keble College, Oxford, Radley College, Abingdon and the nearby villages of Dorchester on Thames and Sutton Courtney all  played host to one of the newest and most innovative music festivals in the UK. From the evening of the 23rd of  May until Tuesday the 27th, Oxfordshire rang not only to church bells but to the sound of  continuous English Music, performed by an array of great artists gathered for the occasion. In between the concerts, an interesting series of short talks took place in the guest house of Dorchester's eighth century abbey parish church.

Begun by Artistic Director Em Marshall in 2006,  the English Music Festival has become  a major event remarkably quickly as this year's  programme clearly showed. The inaugural concert by the BBC Concert Orchestra consisted of works by Parry, Holbrooke, Rawsthorne and Alexander Mackenzie and concluded with Bantock's  Celtic Symphony for strings and  six harps - far too rarely played,  though worthwhile with only three harps as here.  Three or four equally interesting events took place every day over the extended weekend.  Purcell, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Finzi, Holst, Britten and Bridge were performed of course but also great deal more; so much in fact that the programme read like a history of musical activity from mediaeval England through to the present  day. The festival ended  with a concert of special English Music Festival  commissions from Ronald Corp, David Owen Norris, Matthew Curtis, Philip Lane, Cecilia McDowall and Paul Carr:  no mean feat for such a young enterprise and something for which the organisers and sponsors deserve much praise.

On Sunday the 25th, the only day when I was able to be present and sadly not for all of it,  four concerts were programmed. The Bridge Quartet played music by Alwyn, Bridge, Purcell/Britten and Delius in Radley College Chapel and later the Amaretti Chamber Orchestra from Manchester gathered in the college's Silk Hall - a purpose built music facility for the students -  to play Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Ireland and Elgar.

The Amaretti Orchestra is a group of string players, some professional, some music teachers and others who are experienced amateurs who gathered together  in 2004 with the twin objectives of performing to the highest standards possible and of raising money for charities. Both goals have been pursued vigorously and with great success ever since. From 2005 onwards,   Louise Latham, a professional orchestral violinist and a teacher at Lancaster University, has been the group's  conductor.

Their  concert consisted of two very familiar works, Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia and Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, paired respectively with Finzi's Clarinet Concerto and John Ireland's lyrical  Downland Suite (in the string version by Ireland's pupil Geoffrey Bush). It was easy to understand the orchestra's reputation for excellence from the outset as they began with the Tallis Fantasia,  clearly undaunted by having an audience of 300 or so people sitting close up to them in the relatively cramped confines of the hall. Apart from a few minor lapses of intonation and ensemble here and there, the orchestral sound was full, warm and well rounded and each piece was played with evident affection, particularly the Finzi Concerto - with David Campbell as its eminent soloist  - in which the work's restless and edgy  first movement, the rapturous and moving second,  and the final perky rondo were all brought off equally skilfully.  The full-house audience clearly enjoyed the concert enormously and while both the Vaughan Williams and the Elgar brought the expected enthusiastic applause, it was  good to hear similarly warm responses to the Finzi and the Ireland.

An interesting talk by MusicWeb reviewer John Leeman, on English literature and European Romantic Music,  followed this concert and began by challenging its own audience. What connected, we were asked,  America's Hail to the Chief anthem, the US black statesman Frederick Douglass, the Ku Klux Klan, a Scottish village needing a special railway line to accommodate a rush of tourism and a Rossini opera?   Nobody knew and the answer turned out to be Sir Walter Scott's poem, The Lady of the Lake. As John went on to explain,  the success of Scott's writing was enormous in his time and plots and imagery from it were taken up by  a surprisingly large group of  composers. After many musical examples from works based on Scott, Byron and Shakespeare, the talk  ended with another brain teaser, which almost everyone failed  miserably yet again. Early Wagner  sounds just  like Sullivan? Yes, it does.

I missed the early evening concert of music by Arne and Linley played by The Cannons Scholars in Dorchester Abbey, but I caught The Dufay Collective's late nighter there, along with maybe fifty other people. Al Manere Minstrelsy, an hour of songs and dance music from 13th and 14th century England could hardly have been bettered, especially in such an appropriately ancient building. Dufay Collective originals William Lyons and Peter Skuce were joined by John Banks and Vivien Ellis, along with their customary crop of flutes, recorders, harps, percussion, bagpipes and simfony and kept everyone entertained marvellously with virtuoso playing and singing, not to mention some very good jokes. This was wonderful stuff, historically as informed as the Dufays always  are, in which the only (literal)  dampener was having to trip out into the rain after the encored Sumer is icumen in. 'Sing Cucu', ho,ho,ho.

If this sampler day was a reflection of the excellence of the whole festival - and there's every reason to think that it was -  then  it deserves wholehearted support from everyone who loves English music. The range of  the programme was as impressive as  the quality of the artists taking part. Ticket prices were reasonable too,  even though festival funds come only from ticket sales, the Friends scheme and a few Trusts, Funds and composer societies on which the enterprise is wholly dependent. So unique as EMF may be, force majeur it is very tightly budgeted and will need as much help as possible to survive: I urge everyone  to help sustain its future.

Bill Kenny

The English Music Festival web site, which includes details on supporting it practically and financially,  is HERE

More of Craig Thornber's photographs of Dorchester on Thames can be seen HERE

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