2020 – the Virtual Festival

We were delighted to launch our Virtual Festival on a personal note, with a message plus a little Chopin from our Artistic Director Wu Qian – click here to view – along with an introductory playlist here including virtuoso lutenist Paula Chateauneuf who was due to perform on our opening night at West Horsley Place, a little Beethoven from the Sitkovetsky Trio, and Liszt’s gorgeous Sonetto 104 del Petrarca performed by Qian.

For 8, 14 and 16 May, we provided a series of Virtual Insight Talks commissioned from long-time friend of the Festival Sandy Burnett, sharing his fascinating guide to the composers and artists we would have been looking forward to in the 2020 concerts. Links to each of Sandy’s talks and an accompanying Spotify playlist are given on this page and we hope that these, together with our 2020 Programme Booklet which is available here, will provide you with all you need to create your own virtual concert at home. 

• 16 May – Festival Finale – In the last of his three online talks, available here, Sandy Burnett shares his own inimitable insights into the programme of Elgar, Mozart, Purcell and Schubert, and you can find the accompanying Spotify playlist of all the works due to have been performed here.
  

For a glimpse of the English Chamber Orchestra in action, here is some footage of the players rehearsing the fourth movement from Schubert’s 5th Symphony in Italy a few years ago – and here is a little Schubert from Adam Walker too! 

• 14 May – Modigliani Quartet at the vineyard – view Sandy’s talk here and hear the playlist of the complete concert here.

Sandy’s talk focuses this time on one particularly fascinating work in the programme – Debussy’s ground-breaking String Quartet – and we have a clip of the Modiglianis performing part of this very work which you can view here.

For those of you not yet familiar with this renowned quartet, you might like to watch this short video here, filmed during a tour of the US in 2018, which gives a great introduction to this wonderfully vibrant group of musicians.

• 8 May – The Lyrical Cello, Gary Hoffman, cello and Wu Qian, piano – view Sandy’s talk here and hear the playlist of the complete concert here.

The playlist for The Lyrical Cello concert features Mischa Maisky and Mstislav Rostropovich as well as Gary himself and if you’d like to see as well as hear Gary in action, click here for a video clip of Gary performing the 3rd and 4th movements of Beethoven’s Third Cello Sonata with Ilan Rechtman.

In addition, we have another musical offering to share – click here to watch the gorgeous performance given back in 2017 at Denbies by Alexander Sitkovetsky, So-Ock Kim, Philip Dukes, Isang Enders and Gary Hoffman of Schubert’s String Quintet – the perfect music for a sunny spring day and surely one of the most exquisite slow movements ever written..!

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