Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival to celebrate tenth anniversary (From Hereford Times)

Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival to celebrate tenth anniversary

7:00am Wednesday 30th December 2009 in

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IN January the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with six concerts across the region.

The festival is known for presenting music of international calibre in intimate venues with a core of the same musicians returning every year.

Highlights of this year’s festival include a mulled wine concert with Bach’s Goldberg Variations (arranged for string trio) played by candlelight, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence string sextet at Hellens Manor, Schumann Dichterliebe in St Briavel’s Church, Rachmaninov at the Bishop’s Palace in Hereford, and the hugely popular Discovery Day at Treowen Manor – this year on the chamber music of Schumann.

In response to popular demand there will also be more pre-concert talks on Bartok, Bach and Schumann.

The festival began in 2000 when 20 musicians came to St Briavel’s Castle, most of them in their early twenties, recently graduated and at the start of their musical career.

No-one was to know that ten years on they would still be returning, now as wellknown and respected names in the world of chamber music.

Artists who return in 2010 having been at the original festival, a decade ago, include Lawrence Power, now one of the world’s foremost viola players, Malin Broman, leader of the Swedish Radio Orchestra and member of the Nash Ensemble, Matthew Truscott, leader of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Simon Crawford-Phillips, pianist of the Kungsbacka Trio and with several BBC Proms performances under his belt.

The first concerts are on Saturday and Sunday, January 8 and 9, at St Briavel’s Church and Treowen Manor, Monmouth.

For full details of the festival programme and to book, go to wyevalleyfestival.com.

Tickets are also available on the door from 30 minutes before each concert.