Classical Music: Upcoming festivals

Jan 4 2008 by Peter Spaull, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL Capital of Culture may be occupying the headlines, but that doesn't mean there is nothing happening elsewhere. Birkenhead, for example, sees the creation of the Two Rivers Festival to celebrate music and the arts in the many beautiful buildings in Wirral.

Devised by Peter Davis and Andrew Thompson, it begins with three concerts at the Bushell Hall, Birkenhead School. On February 1, Martin Roscoe will play a recital of Beethoven Sonatas including the Pathetique and the Tempesta, and March 14 sees a Captain Corelli night with Craig Ogden and Alison Stephens on guitar and mandolin, and John Dowland is celebrated by Emma Kirkby and Anthony Rooley on April 2. Tickets in advance on the door.

There is also good news from Chester where, after worrying signs of its demise last year, the Chester Summer Music Festival will take place for one week in July. Full details will be announced in March, but I hear that I Fagilioni, violinist Janine Jansen, pianist Kathryn Stott, and saxophonist John Harle will be appearing. There will be lunchtime concerts, a composer-in-residence and the Festival Chorus with the Liverpool Philharmonic. Andrew Cornall is the new artistic director.

Meanwhile, Hoylake Chamber Concert Society has three concerts remaining in its Season at St Hideburgh’s Church, Hoylake, including the Navarra string quartet, a highly regarded group from Holland who play Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert on March 10.

Clwyd Theatr Cymru’s Celebrity Season continues on February 24 with the popular Kungsbacks Piano Trio, followed by pianist Llyr Williams and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Music Vitae, playing Viva de Handel, Telemann and Grieg, with recorder soloist Claudia Muller in the Vivaldi and Telemann. Euxton Festival, in July, goes from strength to strength. This year, they have the comic opera The Poacher by Lortzing, Purcelli’s Dido and Aeneas, and an English triple-bill of Riders to the Sea, by Vaughan Williams, and Savitri and The Wandering Scholar, by Gustav Holst. These are in-house productions under the direction of Andrew Greenwood and visiting companies include a showing of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene. Full details shortly.

Those who recall the three years which Marek Janowski spent in charge of the RLPO can find his Suisse Romande Orchestra at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on January 25. Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony is paired with the Mozart Piano Concerto K 467, soloist Nikolai Lugansky.

Finally, a Capital of Culture event at the Philharmonic Hall which is not in the Philharmonic Programme. That is the visit by the European Union Youth Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, on March 30. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No 1 and the Symphonia Domenistica, of Richard Strauss, open and close the programme, but for me the special attraction is the soloist Arabella Steinbacher, who plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto. This is only the second public appearance in this country of the 26-year-old Munich-based artist, but she already has a considerable reputation around Europe, doubtless to be soon acknowledged here.