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The Wihan Quartet will appear at Swiss Cottage Library ahead of the opening of this year’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival
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A little four play ahead of the festival’s opening notes
PREVIEW: HAMPSTEAD AND
HIGHGATE FESTIVAL
FOR the past nine years, the Hampstead and Highgate Festival has provided dozens of excellent concerts featuring some of the best musicians in the world and is perhaps the leading local music festival in London.
This year looks set to be no different. It will feature works from the early Renaissance to contemporary jazz.
“If it’s in the festival, it’s because it is something that is going on around here,” Helen Lawrence, one of the trustees of the festival, tells me.
The event officially begins on Wednesday but there is an extra special free preview event at the Swiss Cottage Library where people can meet the celebrated Wihan Quartet, who will be performing at St John-at-Hampstead next Friday.
But the first main event is the gala concert on Wednesday which sees the return of the great pianist John Lill – a regular at the festival – performing alongside the Hampstead Voices and the Hampstead and Highgate Festival Orchestra, conducted by the festival’s artistic director George Vass.
The programme includes Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A, K414, Haydn’s Symphony No 31 in D ‘Hornsignal’ and the world premiere of Hugh Wood’s Divertimento for String Orchestra – a piece commissioned by this festival and the Presteigne Festival in Wales.
Helen adds that commissioning a work is very much part of the festival’s lifeblood and, “as composers have always lived around here, it is part of the fabric”.
Before the opening concert, it might be worth popping to the Everyman Cinema where there is a presentation of Theogonies: Dances with Sculptures at 5pm.
It looks a fascinating programme – a short film featuring dances inspired by sculptures by George Kyriacou, directed by Kenneth Archer (for more information ring 0870 066 4777).
The festival features concerts that will surely appeal to everyone.
There looks to be a very appealing early music event with Althea Ifeka on oboe and Katharine May on harpsichord, playing Handel’s Sonata in F, Op 1 No5, Byrd’s Callino Casturame and Edmund Rubbra’s Passacaglia sopra Plusieurs Regrets.
There is jazz with vocalist Cleveland Watkiss, an expert in improvisation, counterpoint and harmony – all from his own mouth – working with young singers from the WAC Performing Arts and Media College on May 12 at Hampstead Town Hall.
The always excellent Highgate Choral Society is performing at St Joseph’s Church, Highgate Hill on May 12 and will be joined by soloists including soprano Marianne Cotterill, mezzo-soprano Yvonne Fontane, tenor Nathan Vale and baritone Ronald Nairne to present Haydn’s Nelson Mass, the Mass in D Minor and Highgate resident Paul Patterson’s Stabat Mater.
And next Monday there is a children’s event, Focus on Youth, which sees choirs from Brookfield Primary School, Channing Junior School, Highgate School and St Michael’s Primary School performing Prokofiev’s wonderful Peter and the Wolf.
There are poetry evenings and talks, as well as walks in the area. However, I am sorry to break the news that viewings of the night skies from the observatory are already fully booked due to such high demand.
“We are getting a great response with this festival,” says Helen.
“It is absolutely fantastic because this is such a big part of the whole community, a real festival of the arts.’ |
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