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Festival endures to celebrate English tradition
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| Musical director Em Marshall with narrator Jeremy Irons |
As the second English Music Festival returns to Oxfordshire, NICOLA LISLE talks to founder and organiser Em MarshallK
Hundreds of artists performing at 19 events in five days at four venues sounds like an organisational nightmare. But for Em Marshall, whose dream of founding an English Music Festival came to fruition 18 months ago, the hard work is worth every moment. It allows her to put the spotlight on to English composers, whom she feels have been unjustly neglected.
"The early 20th century was, I feel, the renaissance of English music," she told me. "We had so much wonderful music, so little of which is heard."
The first English Music Festival took place in October 2006 and Em looks back with a great deal of satisfaction.
"It was a wonderful, wonderful event. The artists really enjoyed it and said how much they wanted to come back and be involved this time, and the response of the audience was absolutely overwhelming. We perhaps didn't get quite as many people as we wanted, but it was a first-time event.
"We hadn't had a budget to do any publicity, so frankly we were amazed at the number of people that did turn up. And they were so positive about it and kept encouraging me to continue."
Continue she did, and the second festival opens next week in Dorchester Abbey, with events also in Sutton Courtenay, Radley and, in a departure, Keble College, Oxford, where there will be a Sunday morning service featuring sacred music by Sullivan.
Prominent artists appearing include pianist David Owen Norris, tenor Ian Partridge, a former New College chorister, and counter-tenor James Bowman.
Featured composers include well-known names such as Handel, Parry, Arne, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Sullivan and Holst, alongside a host of lesser-known names.
So what box of delights does Em have in store?
"We're opening again with the BBC Concert Orchestra, this time with Barry Wordsworth, and they're doing Rawthorne's Practical Cats, which is a wonderfully evocative piece of music, and that's being narrated by Jeremy Irons. They're also doing Bantock's Celtic Symphony, which involves loads of harps, so that's very exciting.
"Then there's a varied range of stuff. We've got the Dufay Collective doing some early medieval music, there's a concert of Arne and Linley with the Cannons Scholars, then we're stretching right through to Dyson and Elgar.
"We've also got four premieres by Benjamin Britten, sung by James Bowman and Andrew Swait, which is going to be exciting, and we've got a young pianist, Panagiotis Trochopoulo, playing some other premieres as well.
"Then there's a lovely programme by the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton, which includes Bliss's Pastoral, which is just a gorgeous piece, so I look forward to hearing that live."
But Em is also keen to encourage new composers, and has commissioned a number of pieces for the final concert, from composers such as Philip Lane, Ronald Corp, Cecilia McDowall, Matthew Curtis and David Owen Norris.
"So there's loads of new music, but it's new music that's very much springing from the English musical tradition, so it's accessible and tuneful."
Inevitably, there are still composers that Em hasn't managed to bring in yet, but hopes to include in future festivals.
"People like Patrick Hadley, Edgar Bainton and Ernest Farrar I'd like to feature. There are just so many of them it's impossible to choose a programme without missing some out. You can't do everything."
I couldn't help wondering why Em had chosen Oxfordshire to host the festival. After all, an English Music Festival could take place anywhere in England.
"I wanted somewhere in the middle-England sort of area because of the rich composer associations, people like Vaughan Williams and Elgar, and also somewhere within easy reach of London. And I know Oxford because I was at university here.
"It's such a beautiful area, and Dorchester Abbey is such a wonderful venue. So it ticked all the boxes, really."
Eighteen months have elapsed between the two festivals - will it now settle down into an annual event?
"We're still playing with the time of year," Em admitted. "We did have a bit of flooding last time, so we thought that May might be safer. If May works out, which I think it will, then I think we will be sticking to May."
So has Em's dream been fulfilled?
"I think for the dream to really come true it would become a sustainable, annual, national festival. But last time was absolutely amazing and I did feel that I'd at least gone a long way down the path of doing what I really wanted to do."
The English Music Festival runs from May 23-27. For details, visit www.englishmusicfestival.org.uk. Book online at www.ticketsoxford.com, or call 01865 305305.
9:57am Thursday 8th May 2008
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