From Baroque to Bumblebees
This year’s West Meon Music Festival – to be held from 14th to 16th September – promises a weekend of music to enchant the entire family. From a sparkling opening concert of 'Viennese Treasures', to a light-hearted children’s concert, great piano quintets and late night folk music, to an afternoon remembering the end of the First World War there is music to match all tastes.
Now in its eighth year, the Festival – started by the internationally renowned Primrose Piano Quartet in 2011 – opens with a candlelit concert featuring such favourites as Schubert’s B flat Piano Trio and Lehár’s Gold and Silver waltz.
On Saturday 15 September there will be a total of four concerts, starting with a charity concert 'A Transport of Delight' for children – including the Flight of the Bumblebee – and followed by a colourful programme of trios and quartets for woodwind and harpsichord from Harmoniemusik in the afternoon. The candlelit evening concert includes piano quintets by Schumann and Shostakovich and the Quartet will be joined by renowned violinist Jonathan Stone. The day ends at the village’s Thomas Lord pub when local folk band Head North! make a return visit to the Festival to raise funds for this year’s Festival charity – The Rosemary Foundation, which provides a 'hospice at home' service in the locality.
Sunday morning’s coffee concert includes Beethoven's Cello Sonata Op 69 in A major and Edward Elgar’s Violin Sonata, written in 1918 at Brinkwells in West Sussex where Elgar had retreated to recover from bouts of ill health and depression brought on by the carnage of the War.
In the Festival's closing Sunday afternoon concert, one hundred years to the day after the last airborne German bombing raid of the War on 16 September 1918 on Paris, The Primrose Piano Quartet will be commemorating the end of the First World War with a special concert of songs, instrumental pieces and readings created during the period by composers and writers, many of whom served in the War.
The Quartet will be joined by internationally renowned tenor James Gilchrist who will be singing some of the best loved works from the period. The programme includes settings of poems from A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad composed by both George Butterworth – who was killed in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme – and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who had begun the war driving ambulances in France and ended it as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.
Joining him at the concert will be the wonderful violinist Jonathan Stone and former Radio 3 presenter, Paul Guinery , who will be reading some of the best-loved poems written by the War’s poets, including Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke.
Full details of all the festival programmes can be found at the Festival's website
Ticket prices include a glass of wine, refreshments and cakes where available (except concerts 2 and 5).
The final concert on Sunday afternoon will be preceded at 2.30pm by a pre-concert talk from Paul Guinery focusing on how the composers featured in the concert were affected by the War.