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58 events, 35, locations, seven world premieres, one Bob Marley song, Ryedale Festival opens today. Highlights here

Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron: One of six artists in residence at Ryedale Festival. Picture: Victoria Cadisch

IN the words of guest speaker Dame Sheila Hancock, “classical music thrills, comforts and amazes me. When I begin to lose faith in the human species, it reminds me what the best of us can do.”

“That seems a good motto for the Ryedale Festival 2024,” says director Christopher Glynn, introducing the programme of 58 events at 35 locations that begins today.

“Our aim at the Ryedale Festival is simple: to make North Yorkshire one of the best places in Europe to enjoy and encounter classical music, and to do it with a sense of vision and adventure.

“I look forward to welcoming audiences from near and far to enjoy internationally renowned performers this summer, from Angela Hewitt performing Bach to Sheku Kanneh-Mason playing Bob Marley – and all in beautiful Yorkshire locations.

“Just as importantly, the festival offers opportunities to hundreds of local young people and a platform for emerging talent, as well as breaking new ground with seven world/UK premieres. Above all, it’s a team effort involving thousands of people who all believe in the important and life-enhancing role that music can play in our communities.”

Dame Sheila Hancock: “Classical music is one of the biggest comforts and joys of my life,” she says. Picture: Neil Spence

Actress and author Dame Sheila, 91, will reflect on her life and introduce live performances of favourite works by Mahler, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Beethoven and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in My Music: An Afternoon With Dame Sheila Hancock at Duncombe Park on July 25 at 3pm.

“I love classical music. It’s my stabiliser,” says Dame Sheila, who will be joined by the Carducci Quartet, soprano Caroline Blair and interviewer Katy Hamilton. “It’s one of the biggest comforts and joys of my life. And I want everybody to have the opportunity of that – I really do. We need people to know that it’s for everybody.”

Violinist Rachel Podger: Troubadour Trail at St Oswald’s Church Filey (24/7/2024, 11am), Christ Church, Appleton-le-Moors (25/7/2024, 11am) and Church of St Michael and All Angels, Garton on the Wolds (26/7/2024, 3pm)

Pianist Angela Hewitt opens the festival tonight with an 8pm programme of Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E minor, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Scarlatti’s Three Sonatas and Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel at Church of St Peter and St Paul, Pickering.

The festival has no fewer than six artists in residence: international horn player Felix Klieser, who was born without arms and taught himself to play with his feet; trailblazing guitarist Xuefei Yang, whose musical journey began at a time when the guitar was banned as an “hooligan” instrument in China; mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, born to a British father and Singaporean mother; violinist Stella Chen, the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year; the Van Baerle Trio and baroque violinist Rachel Podger, whose Troubadour Trail solo programme takes her to three North Yorkshire churches.

Nigel Short conducts the choir Tenebrae in A Prayer For Deliverance at Ampleforth Abbey on July 17 at 8pm when highlights include Joel Thompson’s title work Richard Rodney Bennett’s tribute to Linda McCartney, A Good-Night, and Herbert Howells’ Requiem to his young son Michael.

Violinist Maria Wloszczowska directs the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Mozart In Scarborough, a 7pm programme of Mozart concertos and Prague symphony at Church of St Martin-on-the-Hill  on July 20.   

Royal Wedding cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason performs music from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances to Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, Burt Bacharach’s I Say A Little Prayer to Antonio Carlos Jobim’s The Girl From Ipanema, Laura Mvula’s Sing To The Moon to Dvorak’s Song To The Moon, on July 27 at both St Peter’s Church, Norton (1.30pm), and Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York (6pm).

Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Two concerts in one day. Picture: Ollie Ali

He will be joined by violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason, guitarist Plinio Fernandes, Fantasia Orchestra and conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh at both St Peter’s Church, Norton (1.30pm), and Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York (6pm).

“You can spot stars of tomorrow, such as Georgian pianist Giorgi Gigashvili (who started as a child pop singer and even won The Voice), conductor and ‘spark to watch’ Tom Fetherstonhaugh, Brazilian guitar pioneer Plínio Fernandes, and an array of others, including our own Ryedale Festival Young Artists,” says Christopher.

“All are welcome to Come and Sing Fauré’s Requiem [A Tenebrae Effect Workshop] at St Mary’s Church, Thirsk or promenade through a Triple Concert at Castle Howard [Van Baerle Trio, Long Gallery; Catrin Finch & Aoife Ni Bhriain, Great Hall; Marian Consort, Chapel).

“You can also picnic in the interval of a Double Concert [Piatti Quartet and Katona Twins] at Sledmere House and Church, enjoy the Orchestra of Opera North [Final Gala Concert] at Hovingham Hall, or join us at new venues such as Selby Abbey[Marian Consort, In Sorrow’s Footsteps, Allegri’s Miserere, July 25]  and stunning locations on the Yorkshire Wolds, North York Moors and coast.”

Jazz, folk and world music feature too. Claire Martin & Friends mark the 100th anniversary Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blues at the Milton Rooms, Malton, on July 19, and Northumbrian folk band The Unthanks perform there with an 11-piece line-up on July 23.

Becky and Rachel Unthank: July 23 concert at Milton Rooms, Malton

Fleur Barron and pianist Julius Drake will be joined by Hibiki Ichikawa (shamisen) and Suleiman Suleiman (actor/dancer) for Spring Snow, a meditation on sound and silence, solitude and communion, love and loss, built around the Kabuki play Yasuna and Schubert’s Winterreise as shamisen music meets Japanese dance-theatre at St Peters Church, Norton, on July 16.

Family concerts, talks, masterclasses, late-night candlelit concerts, choral evensong, Kirkbymoorside Town Brass Band and seven world/UK premieres will be further highlights.

For the full programme, visit: ryedalefestival.com. Box office: 01751 475777 or ryedalefestival.com.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Angela Hewitt, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, April 12

Angela Hewitt: “A multitude of subtleties and a sensational technique”

PIANIST Angela Hewitt played preludes and fugues, framing examples by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich and Barber with the original master himself, J S Bach. These bare facts mask a multitude of subtleties and a sensational technique. She held her capacity audience spellbound.

Most performers are ill advised to open with an address, just when the punters are all agog with anticipation. But her words were delivered so graciously, with wit and charm, that we were delighted to hear her insights. And she was insistent on no applause until the interval, a smart decision that helped everyone’s focus.

In mid-career Mendelssohn made a deliberate study of Bach’s counterpoint, which resulted in his six Preludes & Fugues, Op 35. The first of these swerves between E minor and E major. Hewitt made a stunning moto perpetuo of its prelude, before robustly highlighting the fugue subject in a majestic crescendo to its climactic chorale.

Shostakovich was another composer to hold Bach in reverence and he wrote a full set of 24 Preludes & Fugues, Op 87 in 1951. The spare textures of the F minor fugue, No. 18, are ideally suited to Hewitt’s style and its counterpoint emerged with immense clarity.

Even more incisive was the demanding fugue that concludes Barber’s piano sonata, its relentless cross-accents dazzling at high speed.

Hewitt had opened with the earliest numbers from the Book I of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier, a handful more than the programme had promised – perhaps she was in the zone and forgot herself. No-one minded in the least, quite the contrary. Her ability to give differing degrees of prominence to contrapuntal lines, even as many as three or four, remains one of the wonders of her intelligent approach to Bach.

The last of Bach’s six partitas (dance suites in all but name), BWV 830 in E minor, is one of the towering monuments of the keyboard repertory. The crispness of her rhythms was especially apparent here.

After a rhapsodic Toccata, with a fine central fugue, the Allemande was phrased with particular subtlety, so that the succeeding Corrente, taken at some pace, had a jack-in-the-box flavour by comparison; the abrupt Air was brisk too.

The stately Sarabande was deeply melancholic, its dotted rhythms making it taut, even edgy. There was room here for a touch more serenity. After a witty Gavotte, the Gigue, even with the jagged intervals of its fugue, was remarkably balletic, further testament – although none was needed – to Hewitt’s prodigious dexterity, both mental and physical.

As an encore, she wound down with the very first of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, in E major, generating a wonderful cantabile.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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York Chamber Music Festival returns for live concert series from September 16 to 18

Angela Hewitt: Canadian pianist to play recital and gala concert at York Chamber Music Festival

YORK Chamber Music Festival 2021 celebrates the return of live chamber music with a stellar cast of musicians and “some of the most beautiful music ever written” from September 16 to 18.

Billed as “the chance for a few days to refresh ourselves after the lockdown”, the festival opens with a solo recital by Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, performing works by Francois Couperin, Mozart and J S Bach at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, on September 16 at 7.30pm.

Two nights later, she joins fellow festival artists Anthony Marwood and Pablo Hernan, violins, Lilli Maijala, viola, and Tim Lowe, cellist, at the Lyons for the 7.30pm closing gala concert of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 17, The Hunt, Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A Minor and Dvořák’s sunlit Piano Quintet in A Major.

Festival artistic director Lowe persuaded Angela Hewitt to come to York at a dinner party in London. “Her passion, on which her international career has been built, is playing Bach’s keyboard music on the piano,” he says.

“This music would have been composed for harpsichord or clavichord. Bach himself was always a great experimenter and surely would have loved the sound world of the piano, which, apart from anything else, is much more suited to modern concert halls.

Tim Lowe: York Chamber Music Festival artistic director and cellist

“Why not do the same for Bach’s contemporary, the French composer François ‘Le Grand’ Couperin, who also composed for the harpsichord? So, Angela’s recital is based around these two great composers.”

Festival artists Marwood, Hernan, Maijala and Lowe play string quartets by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Schumann at the National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, on September 17 at 7.30pm.

Two lunchtime concerts at 1pm at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, complement the programme. On September 17, Tim Lowe and pianist John Paul Ekins perform Beethoven’s  12 Variations on a Theme from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke and Rachmaninov’s lush, romantic Cello Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Ekins returns on the Saturday to play works that connect Beethoven and Liszt: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, followed by Liszt’s Sonetto del Petrarca and Liebesträume No. 1 in A flat, concluding with Beethoven’s Adelaide, arranged for piano by Liszt.

Lowe, once a chorister at York Minster, looks forward to this month’s festival enriching his home city’s cultural life. “The idea is that everyone, players and audiences, should have a joyous few days of deep listening to music that is both intimate and compelling. We’re going live!” he says. “Please note, we’re offering an outreach free ticket for young people aged 18 and under.” 

Festival tickets for adults cost £10 to £15. To book, go to: tickets@ncem.co.uk. Full festival details can be found at ycmf.co.uk.