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August 2016 CHELTENHAM MUSIC FESTIVAL SOCIETY VOL 36, NO. 2www.cmfsoc.org.uk

NEWSLETTER

CHELTEN

HAM

MUSIC FESTIVAL SO

CIETY

Chairman’s MessageReflecting on the absorbing 2016 Music Festival just afterthe final concert the overriding impression is one ofdiversity inspired, surely, by the wide variety of musicalexperiences I have enjoyed especially over the eveningofferings of the Festival which ranged from the compellingSeven Angels of James MacMillan in Tewkesbury Abbey atone extreme and, at the other, the mirth and merriment ofthe Alehouse Sessions in the Town Hall. In between therewas a cornucopia of splendid performances, that of theRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Petrenkobeing especially fine and evocative of the orchestralconcerts which filled the programmes of the first years ofthe Festival.There was diversity too in the performances of the many

individuals who contributed to the successful completion of840 repetitions of Satie’s Vexations. The composer mayhave intended every iteration to sound like the one beforebut each of the many pianists, amateur and professional,taking part over the 21 hour marathon produced a range ofinterpretations often unintentional, as nervousness or lackof concentration played a part. I speak from personalexperience!Our Society can be very satisfied with its support of

Vexations and all the other components of the keyboard

strand that wove its way throughout the Festival. We can bepleased too that we supported, financially, the commissionof a piano work from Jonathan Dove and played with zestand virtuosity by Melvyn Tan in his excellent recital. Takinginto account our further contributions to the educationalwork and the programme book, Friends can be assured thatour increased financial contribution of £11,500 to the 2016Festival budget was well deployed by Festival Director,Meurig Bowen and enabled him to plan elements that mightnot otherwise have been possible.So I thank all our Friends for their continued support and

it was pleasing to welcome a good number of you to ourlunch during the Festival. If you approve of what we do andenjoy the unique benefits of membership such as theforthcoming events detailed in this Newsletter, then pleaseencourage others to join us. The stronger we are the morewe can enable the Festival to do.We are very pleased to wecome as new members Thoss

and Mary Shearer who joined shortly after the MusicFestival.

Graham Lockwood

18173 CMFS newsletter August 16 8pp.qxp_August 2004 Newsletter 11/08/2016 13:55

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Making the Festival's Presence feltAll four festivals run by Cheltenham Festivals are investingfor the future by ensuring that Festival activity extends wellbeyond the main venues and thereby creating greaterawareness of each festival and the range of its offering. TheAround Town initiative this year has enabled the MusicFestival in particular to increase its reach and impact. Withits core ticketed programme taking place in over 15 venuesaround Cheltenham and the county, it has always beenharder for the Music Festival to trumpet its existence to awider, non-ticket buying community without the help of thehigh profile centralised tented sites that the Jazz, Scienceand Literature festival have to announce themselves.Our Music Festival this year had two free stages in

Imperial Gardens and Cambray Place and these delivered awide range of music on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 July –ranging from choirs and brass bands to flamenco, Tibetanmonks, jazz combos and a stunning Balkan-gypsy band –and there were additionally pop-up performers on the HighStreet and Prom, including a Gifford's Circus violin-playingrope-walker and a very eye-catching piano-bike.This weekend activity was complemented by the

festival’s Piano Trail, which ran from 1-17 July in a widerange of locations around town. As a visual arts tribute toErik Satie, whose 150th birthday year was marked widelyin the main programme, this collection of piano-inspiredartworks and installations enabled the Music Festival todevelop fruitful relationships with a wide range of creativeand hosting partners. They ranged from GCHQ and SafranLanding Systems – both of whom contributed ingeniouslyto the Trail – the Wilson Art Gallery, Waterstones,Cavendish House, Regent Arcade and a number of othershops and cafes. Niki Whitfield, who runs CheltenhamOpen Studios and is superbly well connected in the localvisual arts world, worked closely with me on the Trail andshould be widely congratulated for delivering such a widelyengaged-with project.

On the final weekend, a little piece of CheltenhamFestivals history was made when its longest-ever event wasmounted – a performance of Erik Satie’s 1893 piece ofproto-conceptual art, Vexations. Starting at midday onFriday 15 July in St Paul’s Church, it ran non-stop until8.58 the next morning, a total of 20 hours 58 minutes. Atotal of 60 pianists took part, coming from all around thecountry, and performing for slots ranging from 5 minutes to3 hours. Megan Watt, Administration Assistant atCheltenham Festivals, was in charge of Vexations andbrilliantly co-ordinated the seamless relay of pianistsalongside our student volunteers – who kept the ‘score’going on the screen, counting down the repetitions from840 to zero. I was one of four people who stayed overnightin the church to witness this rather extraordinary event(from the comfort of a sleeping bag). Alexis Paterson wasanother!

The festival’s Satie/Piano focus – described in theSunday Times as ‘ingeniously programmed’ – generated afantastic range of local and national media. TheGloucestershire Echo loved the Piano Trail, as did SocialMedia, and Vexations made it to a prime-time slot on Radio4’s Today programme. There were big features on Satie inthe Guardian, Times and Daily Telegraph. There was also aCheltenham feature on Vexations, featuring impressionistand Satie-fan Alistair McGowan, on BBC1’s The One Showon Monday 1 August.With so much emphasis on the keyboard this year the

Festival Society support for the keyboard strand of theFestival was much appreciated as were its contributions tothe education strand and the very informative programmebook which was priced this year to give remarkably goodvalue.

Meurig Bowen, Director


As ever, a host of workshops, events and activitiesintroduced hundreds of local pupils and their teachers [justover 2,500] to music in the run up to and during this year’sFestival. From playing violin with Nicola Benedetti andlearning about how a piano works, to enjoying vibrant livemusic and trying out a range of musical instruments, theopportunities were varied and rich in equal measure. Oneparticularly special event at the Town Hall on Friday 15thJuly was the launch concert for our new outreachprogramme, Musicate.

A response to reports that primary school teachers oftenlack confidence in approaching music teaching, and musicprovision is generally poor in Primary Schools, Musicateaims to inspire children to love and critically engage withmusic, and develop audience members and performers ofthe future at the same time. Musicate will achieve thisthrough equipping teachers with the skills and confidenceto deliver an enriched music curriculum.The Musicate programme is a long-term initiative, and

is designed to engage increasing numbers of teachers inprimary schools across Gloucestershire. Over the course ofthe coming school year, 12 teachers from six primaryschools will collaborate with three trainers and six

musicians from Birmingham Conservatoire in order todevelop their music teaching skills and resources; thetrainers will also mentor the musicians and support theirpersonal development.The programme will include four teacher training days,

a public engagement training weekend for the musicians,sharing sessions for the teachers and musicians, 30 co-produced music sessions including live music in theschools, and will culminate in a showcase concert at the2017 Music Festival. The young musicians will also benefitthrough the opportunity to programme, perform in andcompère three school concerts over the year, developingessential skills for their future careers in music.Musicate launched at the Festival with a fantastic and

interactive concert. Pupils and teachers from Blockley,Heron, Isbourne Valley, Lakefield, Linden and St ThomasMore primary schools experienced a wonderfully variedprogramme of live music from Ross Brown’s brass quintet,pianist Anne Lovett, a jazz quintet comprising musiciansfrom the John Wilson Orchestra, and bassoonist and pianistLuke Crookes and Rebecca Nash – two of the Musicatetrainers.Towards the end of the concert the lights were dimmed,

the education team donned sparkly jackets, and a glitter-ball shed light over the watching children. Names werepicked out of a sparkly top hat to allocate the musician whowould work with them over the next year, to hugeexcitement from the schools and the musicians alike! Theparty atmosphere continued to the end; everyone - the brassplayers, young musicians, Anne, Luke and Rebecca, the sixteachers and six pupils, and the education team - remainedon stage and accompanied the jazz quintet’s final piece witha variety of hand percussion while the audience clapped,cheered and danced in the aisles.This year’s pairing of musicians and schools is:Blockley Primary with violinist Jessica HeynesHeron Primary with jazz pianist Charlie BatesIsbourne Valley Primary with percussionist GeorgeKirkhamLakefield Primary with pianist Chloe KnibbsLinden Primary with saxophonist Nick BrownAt Thomas More Primary with tuba player Ben Jones

Support for Musicate has come from The LeverhulmeTrust, The Colwinston Charitable Trust, The John ArmitageCharitable Trust, Make Music Gloucestershire, Phil &Jennifer Stapleton, and an anonymous donor. We areextremely excited to be starting this unique initiative inearnest when the school year begins in September, and welook forward to reporting back to CMFS about the impactand success of Musicate.

Philippa Claridge, Education Officer

The Festival Reaches Out

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Many years ago I read a book entitled "The Invention ofTradition" dealing inter alia with the tradition that each ofthe ancient Scottish Highland clans had its own distinctTartan patterns. But such evidence as was available in theform of paintings was that no such tradition had everexisted. Indeed, several paintings showed more than onepattern worn by the same person, and none of them of anypattern ascribed to such person's allegiance. They had allbeen invented by Edinburgh kilt-makers at around the timeof the Royal visit to The Scottish capital in the 1830s andsince.But we now have, on our doorstep, a new, very welcome

tradition in the Festival concert week-ends preceding theCheltenham Music Festival at Syde Tithe Barn. This yearwe had a Mini Schubertiade, centred again on the CarducciString Quartet, involving String Quartets, with the originalLied, Lieder, lectures, the Trout Piano Quintet, Die SchöneMüllerin song cycle and ending with the Octet for stringsand winds, plus excellent meals and drink in a marquee,generally excellent performances, except for [in myopinion] over-heavy piano accompaniment and over-loudrendering [in my opinion, not agreed by others] of thesongs, to the point that the texts were incomprehensible.Schubert's lovely Octet which we heard was, like his StringQuintet and some other works, just a bit too long.The Festival proper followed a few days later. There

was far too much for me to attend and quite a number ofoverlaps, so, as usual, I got to all the morning chamberconcerts in the Pump Room (generally just as Meurig wasfinishing his introduction) and a number of other afternoonor/and evening concerts. The latter included the fascinatingand entertaining session by Oz Clark and the Armonicoperiod instrument group with counter tenor and soprano,extolling the quality of Churchdown Beer and severalunusual wines, all of which we were able to sample – andbuy.At the Town Hall I saw Evelyn Glennie thrashing

around on snare drums in front of an orchestra, then, a littlemore musically, with the superb Swedish trombonist,Christian Lindberg. After the interval the Orchestra of StJohn's, Smith Square gave a competent performance ofBeethoven's Fourth Symphony.Also at the Town Hall we had superb performances by

the RLPO (new to me, as was their conductor, VasilyPetrenko) performances of Elgar, Rachmaninov and –equally fine – Korngold's Violin Concerto with NicolaBenedetti, who was back two evenings later with her pianotrio playing Schubert, Brahms and a work written for themby Mark-Anthony Turnage. These were lovelyperformances by the Trio (though better suited, of course tothe Pump Room) with a lesson by their cellist to virtuallyall the other microphone-users throughout the Festival onhow to make their outpourings intelligible. A BBC teamwere almost the worst of them, outshone only by the young

man introducing his completion of the Howells' CelloConcerto, but neither of them was helped by theinappropriate acoustics of the Cathedral Chapterhouse andNave, respectively.I missed, somehow, James MacMillan's Seven Angels at

Tewkesbury and the Alehouse Sessions in the Pillar Room,both of which had been on my wish-list, but both reportedby my other half as being superb. I missed Quenington onceagain, this time due to a lunch of our small sub-committeeof the Aquarius Group! Nothing will stop me next year!But I compensated by going to Winchombe for a recital

by the fine Florin Ensemble, a string trio, an unusualcombination playing an interesting new piece by HughWood and Mozart's K563 Divertimento. This was wellworth the journey.The Pump Room morning chamber concerts were all at

least good, particularly Christian Lindberg with pianistRoland Pöntinen which included one new work by RolandPöntinen plus fine arrangements of other works. Thesewere the recital of Satie and contemporaries for piano fourhands (two players at the same piano) by Pascal Rogé andhis wife, pianists Melvin Tan (bubbly as ever, with a newpiece by Jonathan Dove) and Janina Fialkowska (Chopin),an interesting circumnavigation navigation of the globe byFrancis Drake by the Fretwork [string] Ensemble, theSitkovetsky Piano Trio, the Doric Quartet, and the BBCNew Generation Artists, Armida and Quatuor van Kuijk,performing separately, then together with the MendelssohnOctet, a popular End of Festival work, not as two separateunits, but as eight individuals all playing different parts andcrying with joy when they all finish at the same time.The Festival also included an interesting presentation by

two distinguished scientists of the hypothesis that anenormous volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1816 had sodisturbed the world's atmosphere as to cause widespreadpsychological depression affecting, inter alia, the moods ofcomposers. This, they suggested, explained the miserabletone of Schubert's two song cycles. This was all veryinteresting, but my view is that he was so affected by theknowledge that the syphilis which had acquired hadabsolutely barred him from any hope of marriage. The twosong cycles, both based on poems by Wilhelm Müllerconveyed his moods as the disease progressed, andexplained his statement to von Spaun, when inviting him tohear Winterreise, that these songs meant more to him thananything else which he had written.

Richard Smith

Schubertiade at Syde –a Perfect Prelude to the Festival


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This year 14 of the 16 tickets I bought related to chambermusic performances (including solo piano and song). Theexceptions were the Gloucester Cathedral orchestral concertand Claire Martin’s ‘Hollywood Romance’ at CheltenhamLadies' College. Obviously most of these were Pittvillemorning concerts, but I did also go to Winchcombe andQuenington as well as to the Benedetti Trio's Town Hallconcert and two evening concerts at Pittville.

For me, a significant feature of the last two Festivalswas that in each of them there was a concert which was sooutstanding - Steven Osborne (2014) and Arcanto Quartet(2015) - that it put all the others in the shade, particularly asthey both came very early in the Festival. Not so this time –I thought that the overall standard was consistently veryhigh, but with nothing really standing out above the others. Pascal and Ami Rogé’s delightful recital of French

music, coupled with a beautiful sunny morning, got us off toa perfect start, and the Doric Quartet were very convincing(in spite of the medical emergency in the 2nd half). Icouldn’t understand why so few people came to ChristianLindberg’s hugely entertaining trombone recital; perhapsthey were waiting for the Benedetti Trio’s concert thatevening. I thought that they played very well, especially theBrahms, but somehow it seems a little sad (though I fullyunderstand the reasons) that their popularity requires themto perform chamber music in the Town Hall, which is reallynot suitable for it,

Melvyn Tan’s recital was excellent with JonathanDove’s new piece very approachable and enjoyable. I dofeel, however, that the Liszt Sonata is one of those pieceswhich should never be followed by an encore – but we gotone here. The afternoon concerts at Winchcombe andQuenington were both very enjoyable.

I thought the Song Recital on Tuesday evening wasexcellent. I am a regular attender at the Oxford LiederFestival and have become a great admirer of SholtoKynoch’s abilities both as an accompanist and concertplanner, and he certainly didn’t let us down here. TheSitkovetsky Trio, the following morning, gave fineperformances of both Mendelssohn Trios.

I thought that the first New Generation Artists’ concert,while obviously not helped by the enforced change inpianist, was the least convincing I attended this year. Eventhe original published programme had a very ‘bitty’ look toit, and the enforced changes simply emphasised that feeling:none of the pieces performed seemed to relate to each other- even though the performances were fine. However theother two NGA concerts more than made up for that –ending up with a splendid rendition of the MendelssohnOctet.The Fidelio Trio’s concert was very poorly attended (it

was obviously not a good idea to programme it at the sametime as the John Wilson Orchestra!) but contained someexcellent performances – especially of the trio arrangementof Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The newer pieces were allinteresting but the Hellawell could have been much moreconvincing if we had been able to hear the words of thespeaker more clearly – the ‘preview’ of two of themovements, which I heard on Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ theprevious evening, had a much better voice/music balance.Overall, although I missed some of the more

‘experimental’ concerts, I was very happy with much of thenew music I heard at this year’s Festival – I would happilygo to repeat performances of the pieces by ChristianLindberg, Dove, Turnage and Hugh Wood.

It was a very appropriate idea for this Festival to stagethe first public performance in Gloucester Cathedral,of the‘completed’ Howells' Cello Concerto but, though it got avery committed performance, I can’t convince myself(having also heard the CD recording a number of times) thatit is a particularly important work – the thematic materialjust isn’t strong enough. However we did get a wonderfulperformance of Vaughan William’s Tallis Fantasia in thebuilding where it had its premiere in 1910.All in all, it was a pretty good Festival for me!.

Alan Clark(Further reviews of the Festival can be found in the July

2016 archives of www.seenandheard-international.com,pp 8-14)

The View from Birmingham


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An Appropriate DateFollowing the news of our disconnection from the EU, theloss and potential loss of the leaders of the two mainparliamentary parties and several ISIS attacks in Europe itwas appropriate that the performance of James MacMillan’sSeven Angels, a beautiful vision of the Apocalypse, was

performed on the 13th of July. Using the choir and biblicalinstruments to portray the end of the world and the comingof the New Jerusalem. it was a very moving performance.

Val French

A Deliberate Mistake?The Cheltenham Music Festival presents us with someinteresting and worthwhile music, while the Festival Guideprovides facta which add to our knowledge. But this year wehave heard the most astonishingmusic, astonishing becauseit was written before the composer was born.

According to page 81 of the Guide Nikolai Budashkin was

born in 1990 and died in 1988. Not only was he a genius inthe womb, but if we give him the benefit of the doubt andreverse the dates, he died aged 2. A genius indeed! Beat that,Mozart!

Anne Dunn

Filming Intrudes on FestivalThis was a very good Festival with quality playing fromMelvyn Tan, Janina Fiaskowska, the Sitkovetsky Trio andthe Quatuor van Kuijk among the highlights. AlexeiGrynyuk should be asked back to do a solo recital and soshould Christian Ihle Hadland who was here two years ago.Meurig surely spends the year going round with a shrimpingnet scooping up the best. The Satie Vexations was a goodidea and something similar should be tried next year.

However.......filming at next year's Festival needs to besorted out. It is very distracting having someone wanderingabout and the light from camera screens is noticeable. Ifartists want to be filmed with an audience perhaps theyshould pay us to be there!

AH & NF

CMFS EventsEvents are arranged for Friends throughout each year andsome are only available to Friends and their guests. Suchoccasions also provide opportunities to recruit new Friendsand to raise funds for the Society to enable it to providesustained financial support to the Musical Festival. Theprice of each such event is therefore pitched at a level thatgives good value for such unique occasions but alsoprovides a margin for a contribution to funds.

Monday 19 September 2016 at 6.00 p.m.Richard Blackford in conversation with Christopher Cookfollowed by drinks and canapes

The New Club 2 Montpellier Parade, Cheltenham, GL501UD.

Richard Blackford is well known in Cheltenham both as acomposer and as a former Chairman of the CheltenhamMusic Festival Committee. The premiere of his GreatAnimal Orchestra Symphony was during the 2014 MusicFestival. Topics likely to be covered in the interview includehis approach to composing a new choral opera, a recentcomposition for piano and his decision to become a maturePhD student at Bristol University.

For catering purposes admission will be by ticketspurchased in advance at £15 each. An application form isenclosed with this Newsletter.

Saturday 21 January 2017 at 3.00 pmRecital by Sarah Connolly accompanied by JosephMiddleton

The Ballroom, Boddington Manor, near Cheltenham

We are delighted that the internationally acclaimed singerSarah Connolly has agreed to give a recital especially for usin the above unique setting. Make a note of the date now –more details and application forms will be with the nextNewsletter.

Coming in early 2017A talk and teaAnna Beer will give a talk on her recently published book:Sounds and Sweet Airs – The Forgotten Women ofClassical MusicAnna Beer is a cultural historian, and a Visiting Fellow atthe University of Oxford.Details to follow later


Other Dates for your diarySaturday September 17th at 7.30Holst Birthday ConcertSt Andrew's Church, Montpellier.Cheltenham Chamber Orchestra,Alissa Firsova ConductorHolst: St Paul's Suite; Double Violin ConcertoRavel: Tombeau de Couperin; PavaneHaydn Symphony No 99

Tickets will be available in early August from the museum(Mon to Wed 9-5, but phone first to ensure someone isthere). Friends/concessions £15; Child/student £7 (but freewith paying adult); Others £17

Tickets purchased in advance will entitle you to a free copyof the concert programme.

There are, of course, plenty of other musical events thisautumn. The Cheltenham Concert Series at the Town Hallbegins on September 20th with a visit by the RoyalPhilharmonic Orchestra conducted by Matthew Halls. TheOrchestra of the Swan (conductor: David Curtis) follow onOctober 19th and then the Oxford Philharmonia onNovember 17th with their conductor Mario Papadopoulos.

Those of you who enjoyed (or missed) the Quatuor vanKuijk or Clare Hammond at the Cheltenham Music Festivalwill be able to hear them at two recitals organised by theCheltenham Music Society on November 17th andDecember 7th respectively. The season opens with theHenschel Quartet on October 18th. All three recitals takeplace at Pittville Pump Room. Season tickets are availableuntil 30 August, and tickets for individual concerts will beon sale at the Town Hall from 31 August.

The first of the new series of Cheltenham ContemporaryConcerts will be given on 30 October at Dean Close Schoolby the Pomegranate Piano Trio, playing music bycontemporary British composers including Sally Beamish,James MacMillan and Judith Weir.

Some people who have problems in attending eveningconcerts will welcome a new initiative by Gloucester MusicSociety who are scheduling all their events for 3pm onSaturday afternoons in the Chapter House of GloucesterCathedral. The first of these is on October 1st and willfeature the Primrose Piano Quartet. Those who attendedthe Fidelio Trio's recital at the Music Festival will bedelighted that they will performing in Gloucester on 6thNovember. Another trio, the Belriska, will be coming toGloucester on November 26th.

Cheltenham Opera SocietyThere are some events in the Cheltenham Opera Societyprogramme for 2016-2017 to which CMFS members areinvited.Autumn 2016Macbeth (Verdi) at the WNO in Cardiff.We have reserved tickets for Macbeth (Verdi) in Cardiff at7.15 pm on Saturday 24 September.Simon Reeswill come and tell us about Macbeth at 7.00 pmon Monday 5 September at St Andrew’s Church. CMFSmembers are invited to come free of charge. I will havedinner with Simon at 5.30 pm before his talk, at Tarragon inMontpellier Street. If you would like to join us please let meknow.

In October in Malvern ETO will be performing Ulysses’Homecoming (Monteverdi),La Calisto (Cavalli) and Xerxes (Handel). As La Calistowill be new to most of you and Ulysses’ Homecoming willbe new to some, I will talk about these two operas at 2.30pm on Sunday 2 October at St Andrew’s Church, with teain the interval.I will show extracts from dvds of the operas and we shouldhave some previews of the productions from ETO which wecan show as well. Xerxes is more familiar. It will be the

same production as ETO performed a few years ago, set onan airfield during the Battle of Britain. As a reminder,I will play Xerxes’ well-known aria “Ombra mai fu” – neverwas nature’s own shade more beloved or sweetly treasuredthan thine – sung to a plane tree (plane tree, aeroplane,mmm!).CMFS members are invited to come free of charge.

DVD of The Nose (Shostakovich)As a number of you expressed your disappointment aboutthe cancellation of the trip to see The Nose at the RoyalOpera House, we are going to show a dvd of The Nose at7.00 pm on Monday 14 November at St Andrew’s Church.The only dvd I could find is of a production at the MoscowChamber Opera Theatre in 1974, supervised byShostakovich himself. The sound track is from a studiorecording in 1970. The performance and the sound track arenot always fully in sync, which adds an element ofsurrealism not altogether out of keeping with the opera.Actually it is hardly noticeable and it is a marvellousproduction. There will be refreshments in the interval and itwill end about 9.15 pm. CMFS members are invited to comefree of charge.

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Cheltenham Music Festival Society CommitteeCharity No 281044

Chairman: Mr Graham Lockwood. Tel: 01242 524814; [email protected] Secretary: Miss Mary E Mackenzie. Tel: 01386 710517; [email protected], Rivendell, Hill Lane,Elmley Castle, Pershore WR10 3HUHonorary Treasurer & Membership Secretary:Mrs Jennifer Stapleton. Tel: 01242 692764; [email protected],17 Montpellier Terrace, CheltenhamGL50 1UXNewsletter: Mr Roger Jones. Tel: 01242 515533; [email protected] , 43 Arle Road, Cheltenham GL51 8JYWebsite Manager: Dr Peter Young. Tel: 01242 520459; [email protected] Members:Mr Christopher Cook: 0207 289 8794; Dr Anne Dunn: 01242 580337; Mrs Frances Gabriel: 01242 234766; Mrs GinaWilson: 01242 580333

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Festive Evening and DVD of The Cunning Little VixenOn Monday 12 December we will have our FestiveEvening, when we will show a dvd of The Cunning LittleVixen (Janacek), the 1995 Theatre Musical de Parisproduction with Thomas Allen as The Forester, Eva Jenis asThe Vixen and Sarah Connolly as The Innkeeper’s Wife,The Cock and The Jay, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.The production won the 1995 Grand Prix de la Critique forbest opera production.There will be wine and mince pies in the interval and it willend about 9.30 pm.CMFS members are invited to come on payment of an entryfee of £5.

Spring 2017DVD of War and Peace (Prokofiev)On a Sunday afternoon at the end of January or thebeginning of February we will show a dvd of War andPeace, one of the great operas of the twentieth century – the1991 Kirov Opera production with Yelena Prochina asNatasha Rostova, Alexander Gergalov as Prince AndreiBolkonsky, Gegam Gregoriam as Count Pierre Bezukhov,Olga Borodina as Helene Bezhukova, Nicolai Othotnikov asField-Marshall Prince Mikhail Kutuzov and Vassily Gerreloas Napoleon Bonaparte, conducted by Valery Gergiev. Witha running time of just over 4 hours, it will start at 1.45 pm,with a short break after an hour and an interval for tea at3.45 pm. There will be another short break after just over anhour and it will end about 6.50 pm. CMFS members areinvited to come on payment of an entry fee of £5.

Der Rosenkavalier (Simon Rees talk)I will invite Simon Rees to come in February tell us aboutDer Rosenkavalier, which we will be going to see in Cardiffin June. CMFS members are invited to come free of charge.

Partenope (Handel) at the ENO in LondonWe have reserved tickets for Partenope at 7.00 pm onMonday 20 March at the London Coliseum. It is a revivalof the Olivier award-winning production which got ravereviews when first performed a few years ago. The castincludes Sarah Tynan, Patricia Bardon, James Laing andRobert Murray, conductor Christian Curnyn. There is a pre-performance talk from 5.00 to 5.45 pm but I can’t reservetickets for that until I confirm the numbers in the autumn.Booking forms will be sent out in September, or later ifENO agrees. It will be a mid-day departure fromCheltenham.This is a joint trip for members of the Opera Society andMusic Festival Society.

WNO: Der Rosenkavalier (Richard Strauss)We have reserved tickets for Der Rosenkavalier in Cardiffat 6.00 pm on Saturday 3 June, with Rebecca Evans as TheMarschallin, Lucia Cervoni as Octavian, Brindley Sherrattas Baron Ochs and Louise Alder as Sophie, conductorTomas Hanus. It is a new production by Olivia Fuchs.This will be a joint trip for members of the Opera Societyand the Music Festival Society. Your contact is RobertPadgett, 01242 571802, [email protected]

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