Reviews of 27th Presteigne Festival
27 August - 1 September 2009

The Guardian
31 August 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL
at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Presteigne’s intriguing mix of Georgian houses and artisans offers an ideal background for the festival’s similarly unselfconscious mix of classical and contemporary music. It’s notable that audiences here receive new works with as much enthusiasm – often more – as old ones.

Martin Butler’s Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Strings is a jaunty affair. Lively, insistent rhythms propel its dancing outer sections with unflagging, minimalist energy, while the raw silk of the saxophone’s tone is highlighted in the central cantilena. Only the initial gear change between fast and slow felt awkwardly handled. Amy Dickson, the fluent soloist with artistic director George Vass’s Festival Orchestra, also premiered Steve Martland’s Short Story in the concert with her sax quartet, Zephirus. Martland wittily plays low against high, with bluff and gutsy contributions from the bass saxophone defining the storyline.

But the outstanding contributions to this early part of the festival came from the Carducci Quartet, whose high-octane playing balanced control with devil-may-care spontaneity. They found a compelling emotional intensity in Adrian Williams’s new String Quartet No 4, and, together with tenor James Gilchrist, they brought a tightly focused drama to Huw Watkins’s In my Craft or Sullen Art, a setting of a Dylan Thomas poem first heard two years ago at the Wigmore Hall. Watkins sets the poem twice, in a structure crafted so as to offset austerity with moments of vibrancy. It was realised with considerable insight by Gilchrist and the Carduccis.

Rian Evans
 

The Daily Telegraph
1 September 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL: HAYDN TRIBUTES/CARDUCCI QUARTET
Two magical concerts at the Presteigne Festival were fitting tributes to Haydn’s genius

There have been many musical tributes to the great Joseph Haydn in his 200th anniversary year. But none I’ve seen have been more engaging and affectionate than the ones given in St Andrews Parish Church in the charming old town of Presteigne, as part of the Presteigne Festival. Seven brand-new piano pieces inspired by Haydn were played in honour of composer and pianist John McCabe – 70 this year – whose own recordings of Haydn’s sonatas in the 60s helped to bring these great works out of the shadows.

Haydn is a real ‘composer’s composer’, and several tributes I’ve heard from composers this year have tried to emulate his ingenuity in modernist terms. John Hawkins’ ‘Lost in Translation’ came closest to this abstract play of notes, but most of the pieces actually evoked Haydn’s own style. Hugh Wood described his ‘Haydn Fantasy’ as a ‘pastiche with some non-Haydnesque mistakes’, but of course the mistakes were themselves witty, in a pert neo-classical sort of way – a tone also struck (in very different ways) by David Matthews and James Francis Brown. The other pieces took a completely different tack, placing Haydn-like phrases in soft textures suggesting something far away and long ago. Huw Watkins was the nimble-fingered and musically astute pianist.

Rich though they were, these pieces were only one third of a concert for piano, horn and violin which also contained two recent pieces by Colin Matthews, an almost brand-new Trio by Huw Watkins, and two romantic pieces by Schumann and Brahms. It sounds strenuous, but it’s typical of this excellent festival, which gives the lie to the idea that rural music festivals are bound to be less adventurous than big-city ones. By not pandering to the audience, the festival has gained its loyalty. Many of the faces I saw at this concert were also at the previous one, given by the Carducci String Quartet in the lofty and impressive parish church of Leintwardine.

This contained a slyly affectionate performance of Haydn’s Joke Quartet and a rendition of Bartok’s 4th Quartet that was subtly shaped as well as foot-stampingly rhythmic. But the highlight was undoubtedly the 11th Quartet by David Matthews, played with exquisite attention to detail. This spun a series of increasingly bold variations on one of Beethoven’s piano Bagatelles, each one as vivid and mysterious as a slide in a magic lantern show.

Ivan Hewett

The Birmingham Post
31 August 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ROUND-UP
at St Andrew’s Church, Presteigne

Of the 70-odd pieces programmed during the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts, no fewer than 44 are by living composers, as artistic director George Vass revealed before Thursday evening’s opening concert.

This sums up neatly the ethos of the festival, now in its 27th year, which mixes the new with the well-known, and with the possibly neglected, and which draws a heartening throng of returning audiences, composers and performers. It continues to bring in new visitors, attracted both by the fast-spreading reputation of the event and by the beauty of this lovely Welsh borderland area.

Thursday’s opening concert was itself a microcosm of all these factors. Three of the five works performed were by living composers (two of them present), a fourth was a comparatively rare work by a composer whose spirit is still very much with us (Britten), and the fifth was a well-loved masterpiece by Tchaikovsky, his elegant Serenade for Strings.

The Britten was the Prelude and Fugue for 18-part String Orchestra, resonant with the composer’s hallmarks, and equally resonant in its underpinning pizzicati at the beginning and end, sturdily delivered by the gifted young members of the Presteigne Festival Orchestra under Vass’s efficient direction.

John McCabe’s double violin concerto Les Martinets Noirs teemed and swarmed in this evocation of swifts swooping over the composer’s summer garden. Bustling with lively textures, it emerged like a testosterone-fuelled Lark Ascending, soloists Alexandra Wood and Tom Hankey combining with the orchestra in a brilliant display of orchestral virtuosity.

First of this year’s many premieres was the Concerto for Saxophone and String Orchestra by Martin Butler. The programme-note referred to various influences and homages, but the music in fact spoke for itself, combining rustic, raw sounds with bucolic energy, demanding incredibly detailed differentiation of articulation within the soloist’s figuration, and expecting – and receiving – tensile and pulsating orchestral playing.

Birthday-girl Amy Dickson was the soloist, bringing wonderful phrasing and breath-control to her playing, every utterance expressive and eloquent, her tone even throughout the range of her versatile instrument. George Vass’s conducting was meticulous and attentive.

These three works together testified to a particularly “English” orchestral string sound: strongly rhythmic, deftly detailed, long-limbed lyricism riding over purposeful textures.
Tchaikovsky’s lush sound-world is very different, as is that of Djilile by Australia’sgreatest composer, Peter Sculthorpe.

The grave, respectful beauty of this evocation of aboriginal chant was magical in its extended unfolding, and brought an essence of timelessness to the evening.

On Friday evening a pre-concert conversation with composers Adrian Williams (who has written four) and David Matthews (who has 11 under his belt) attested to the enduring fascination of the string quartet as a compositional medium. During the ensuing programme from the appealing and engaging Carducci Quartet the premiere of Williams’ Fourth Quartet (another Presteigne commission) proved probably one of the most memorable new works of this 27th Festival or indeed any of its predecessors.

It is a work of remarkable emotional profundity (John Joubert, among the greats of composers at Presteigne and indeed everywhere else, summed it up as “confessional”), railing and ruminating, generous in memorable motifs, and having the courage to have at its heart an expression of elegiac regret.

Composers are not meant to write music as communicative as this these days, surely, but I’ so glad Williams does, and the fabulous Carduccis did it proud.

A late-night concert from Amy Dickson’s Zephirus Saxophone Quartet proved largely anodyne in its musical content – only the premiere of Steve Martland’s funky Short Story quickened the juices. This young ensemble also needs urgently to tighten up its platform manner (and you do not fuss with your appearance in front of the audience).

Christopher Morley 

The Birmingham Post
1 September 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL
at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

With old and new music in every concert, and a regular string of first performances, the Presteigne Festival consistently demonstrates that contemporary music need not be feared.

George Vass has developed the happy knack of finding modern composers whose language might occasionally stretch boundaries, but never break them.

Saturday evening’s concert was a case in point, with John McCabe’s orchestral tone-poem Red Leaves offering an evocative sound picture of New England in the fall, its muted horns duetting like stags at bay and autumnal colours full of rich sonorities. Vass’s direction of his alert Festival Orchestra showed an abundance of care and attention.

Somewhat less engaging was the Nocturne for horn and small orchestra by composer-in-residence Huw Watkins. Here the strings provided little more than multi-textured support for soloist Richard Watkins, whose whoops and declamatory flourishes were despatched with considerable panache.

Cecilia McDowall’s Laudate, characterised by lively rhythms and a Spanish-influenced solo part for mezzo-soprano (the lustrously appealing Catherine King) fell even more comfortably on the ear in a commendably delivered performance by the City of Canterbury Chamber Choir, as did their dramatically-charged account of Haydn’s Mass in time of War. On Sunday evening Huw Watkins appeared as pianist in his own Horn Trio. This is a very fine work indeed, exploring thematic ideas with much more intensity than the Nocturne, and in a variety of challenging ways. Performed with brilliant aplomb by the two Watkins (who are not related) and violinist Alexandra Wood, the impact was totally compelling.

The main attraction of this concert, however, was the world premiere of Haydn Fantasies for John McCabe, seven individual piano pieces written to commemorate both the legacy of Haydn and John McCabe’s 70th birthday.

Each composer pays homage to Haydn by quoting extracts from his piano sonatas and imagining what a 21st century Haydn might sound like. In Hugh Wood’s Haydn Fantasy and James Francis Brown’s hilariously ebullient Fantasy Rondo after Haydn it takes the form of straightforward parody.

And there are impressionistic essays by Alan Mills and Matthew Taylor, who in his Adagio alludes to Haydn with a dazzling exploration of keyboard textures. Peter Fribbins’ approach is more subtle and ghostly, while John Hawkins in his Lost in Translation adopts a muscularly rigorous questioning of tonality.

David Matthews’ Menuetto-Scherzando is perhaps the most complete and far-ranging re-invention, and wittily clever too. Next to Brown’s piece, it offered the greatest technical challenge to Huw Watkins, who made the whole set his own with a brilliant display of insightful musicianship, complete understanding – and stunning virtuosity.

David Hart

The Birmingham Post
3 September 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Huw Watkins, this year’s potent force at the Presteigne Festival, made his final appearance on Tuesday in yet another display of virtuosity and versatility.

Haydn provided the traditional struts of the programme – Symphony No 83 (La Poule) and a fetching, if intonation-challenged performance by Gemma Rosefield of the C major Cello Concerto.

But it was Watkins who dominated the evening, first in his own Three Welsh Songs for string orchestra, which George Vass and his talented, ever-willing Festival Orchestra delivered with palpable subtlety and affection, and then as the soloist in a dazzling world premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s Piano Concerto.

Watkins’ re-creations of Welsh folk songs are imaginatively conceived and fascinatingly scored. His treatment of All Through The Night is slyly iconoclastic, cloaking it in unorthodox harmonies and off-kilter arabesques reminiscent of Tippett. The pairing of Watching the wheat and Fair Lisa achieves an elegiac glow with no suggestion of cliché, and the last movement is an involved, entirely original composition derived from a single short phrase.

By contrast Jackson’s concerto has an easy familiarity that makes it seem like an old friend. In the opening movement sparse textures characterise much of the solo part, as well as punchy chords, while at other points the pianist provides rippling accompaniments to elegantly crafted modal woodwind solos. Elsewhere the lush string writing is unashamedly romantic, though never cloying, and there are several passages of joyous melody and rhythmic vitality.

It abounds with tributes (Jackson admits “all music is about other music”) but when it results in such a finely structured work, so full of charm and free of tensions, it hardly matters.

David Hart

The Western Mail
4 September 2009

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Now in its 27th year, the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts ranks among the very best, thanks to the dedication of its director George Vass to the promotion of new music.
For six days, the tiny Welsh town thronged with illustrious names bent on delivering truly adventurous fare. Haydn’s anniversary was acknowledged in direct performances, but there was also an ingenious tribute to one of his leading interpreters, pianist and composer John McCabe, himself celebrating his 70th birthday.

Haydn Fantasies for John McCabe consisted of seven pianistic musings written by seven of Britain’s leading composers and brilliantly played by the Welsh composer/pianist Huw Watkins. Seeing so many major composers lining up for a simultaneous bow on the platform in St Andrew’s Church was unforgettable.

Béla Bartók’s music is not strictly new, but it remains as fresh as anything written since his death in 1945. In their Leintwardine concert, the superb Carducci Quartet offered us Haydn’s Joke Quartet and David Matthew’s Beethoven-inspired String Quartet No 11, before ending with a gripping rendition of Bartók’s Fourth Quartet.

Equally gripping was wonderful violinist Alexandra Wood, whose breathtaking account of Bartók’s immensely difficult Sonata rounded off a splendid solo recital in St Michael’s Church, Discoed, that included an atmospheric depiction of the Australian bush in Peter Sculthorpe’s Irkanda I, and a Partita by this festival’s pivotal figure Huw Watkins.

He displayed his prowess as composer and interpreter throughout, notably when alongside Alexandra Wood and Richard Watkins for a sparkling performance of his Horn Trio, and when accompanying tenor James Gilchrist in a challenging song recital that included his own Auden settings, plus major cycles by Britten, Lennox Berkeley and Robin Holloway.

The final concert by the Festival Orchestra opened with Watkins’ affectingly idiomatic Three Welsh Songs for String Orchestra. After Gemma Rosefield’s wonderful rendering of Haydn’s C major Cello Concerto, Watkins joined the orchestra as soloist in the première of a festival commission: a pretty, witty Piano Concerto by Gabriel Jackson. Vass conducted, and in devising this year’s festival he secured another splendid achievement.

John Rushby-Smith

The Hereford Times
10 September 2009

THE STANDARD IS SET

Now in its 27th year, Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts is essentially a celebration of what is loosely called contemporary music, a term widely meaning music composed in the last 80 years or so.

It is refreshing to be reminded that the period is one of unparalleled richness and can attract packed audiences.

This year a throng of illustrious names gathered in the tiny Welsh border town to offer truly adventurous fare. The festival’s programme paid its obligatory homage to Haydn’s anniversary with performances of six of his works, plus an ingenious tribute to one of his leading interpreters, pianist and composer John McCabe, himself celebrating his 70th birthday.

Recalling a venture in Paris a century ago, Haydn Fantasies for John McCabe comprised seven short piano pieces written by seven of Britain’s leading composers, brilliantly played by Welsh composer/pianist Huw Watkins.

The image of nine major composers taking a simultaneous bow on the platform in the beautiful St Andrew’s Church will endure, as will that of a little girl bobbing in delightful time to the whirling saxophones of the Zephirus quartet during their entertaining family concert.

Béla Bartók is not strictly a contemporary composer, but his music remains as freshly modern as anything written since his death in 1945. This was impressively demonstrated by the superb Carducci Quartet, whose Leintwardine concert gave us Haydn’s Joke Quartet and David Matthews’s thoughtful, Beethoven-inspired String Quartet No 11 before ending with a gripping rendition of Bartók’s Fourth Quartet.

Equally entertaining was the wonderful violinist Alexandra Wood. Her breathtaking account of Bartók’s immensely difficult Sonata rounded off her splendid solo recital in the lovely St Michael’s Church, Discoed. Beginning with Bach, it included Peter Sculthorpe’s Irkanda I ­– a glorious tweeting and growling depiction of the Australian bush – and a telling Partita by the pivotal figure in this year’s festival, Huw Watkins.

Watkins displayed his prowess as composer and interpreter throughout the six days, such as when he joined Alexandra Wood and Richard Watkins for a sparkling performance of his Horn Trio, or when he accompanied tenor James Gilchrist in a challenging song recital that comprised his own Auden settings, groups by Britten, Sally Beamish and Nicola LeFanu, Lennox Berkeley’s gorgeous Chinese Songs, and Robin Holloway’s profound cycle This is Just to Say.

The final concert by the Festival Orchestra opened with Huw Watkins’s atmospheric Three Welsh Songs for String Orchestra, and after Gemma Rosefield’s wonderful rendering of Haydn’s C major Cello Concerto, he joined the orchestra as soloist in the premiere of a festival commission: a pretty, witty and bright Piano Concerto by Gabriel Jackson.

The concert was conducted by George Vass, who deserves unstinting praise for another major achievement. Forget Berlin, Salzburg, the Proms, Edinburgh – Presteigne is where it’s at. Thank you, George.

John Rushby-Smith

Reviews of 26th Presteigne Festival
August 2008

The Times
26 August 2008

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL
at St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

The best thing about Presteigne is the silence. This may seem a churlish response to a festival that offers five days of intensive music-making. But the deep quietness of this Welsh border town is the perfect context for concentrated and undistracted listening - and you certainly need to concentrate.

The festival began with a long and demanding programme performed with alacrity by the Presteigne Festival Orchestra conducted by the festival's artistic director, George Vass. Presteigne is loyal to its own particular circle of favoured composers, and this concert showcased the year's first festival premiere and commission: a picturesque suite called Lost Lanes - Shadow Groves, by James Francis Brown. Gently contrasted pastorals were separated by cadenza-like interludes that showed off the solo prowess of the clarinettist Catriona Scott.

The new work was complemented by Bartok's Romanian Folkdances and Rudolf Barshai's arrangement for string orchestra of Shostakovich's Tenth String Quartet. And there were also two woefully overextended works, Peteris Vasks's Viatore and Joe Duddell's Snowblind. Duddell is this year's composer in residence, and his Parallel Lines, a more rigorous and nicely teasing work, was played by the pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and the percussionist Colin Currie at the end of a thrilling late-night recital by Currie. At the heart of this was a nine-drum thunderstorm of a piece by Per Norgard called Fire over Water, and Louis Andriessen's Woodpecker for marimba and wood-blocks, played by Currie with exuberant virtuosity.

Michael Berkeley is this year's featured composer. His Persistent Memory, an engaging little six-minute musical drama for violin and piano, inspired by a three-note motif in Debussy's Violin Sonata, was played by Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Helen Reid in their enterprising afternoon recital.

But the most substantial concert featured the Dante Quartet, framing the premiere of Matthew Taylor's String Quartet No 5 with some rather rough-hewn Haydn and Janácek. Clearly, all rehearsal time had been spent on the Taylor - justifiably so, for this was an outstandingly imaginative and accomplished single-movement work, travelling from a highly-charged cross-etching of ideas to a mesmeric lullaby in 15 beguiling minutes.

Hilary Finch 

The Guardian
27 August 2008

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

After celebrating their 25th anniversary last year with a record 26 new works, Presteigne manages only six this time, though for most festivals that would be more than enough. First was James Frances Brown's Lost Lanes - Shadow Groves, for clarinet and string orchestra, inspired by memories of a childhood in Norfolk. The piece was constructed in four movements, named Broad Sky, Dark Lane, Around the Church and The Far Grove, but the most engaging music came in the solo clarinet's three linking interludes. They showed Catriona Scott's expressive playing to greatest advantage, and Brown's ideas were more tightly focused here than in the rhapsodic excess of the main movements. Those seemed to represent an exercise in nostalgia that, however deeply felt, sounded dated.

Snowblind, for solo percussionist and ensemble, by Joe Duddell, Presteigne's composer-in-residence, had a far greater immediacy. This work, predating his 2003 percussion concerto Ruby by a year, emphasises the melodic and harmonic capabilities of tuned percussion rather than the purely rhythmic. In the expert hands of Colin Currie there was an unerring sense both of Duddell's intrinsic musicality and of intimate, understated theatricality. The closing section of the central Lento movement, with the metallic ring of crotales giving a sparkling aura to the vibraphone tone, was beautifully judged.

Brown and Duddell's pieces were framed by performances of Bartok, Vasks and Shostakovich, with the Festival Orchestra conducted by artistic director George Vass. Vasks' Viatore was a happy reminder of his successful residency in 2006, but it was Rudolph Barshai's arrangement of Shostakovich's Quartet in A flat, Op 118, as a symphony that allowed the players to gel as a unit.

Rian Evans 

The Guardian
30 August 2008

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA/VASS

The ancient Welsh cantref of Maelienydd, which included Presteigne, was one of major strategic importance in the middle ages. For composer Adrian Williams, Maelienydd was a logical title for his new work, given both the growing significance of the festival he founded in 1983 and the influence of the wonderful, if sometimes desolate, surrounding landscape on him as an artist.

His piece, scored for strings and wind quintet and played well by the Presteigne Festival Orchestra under George Vass, was this year's final commission. It began with the chirrupings of wind instruments, suggesting birdsong, and then developed into more fully articulated outbursts of melody. Curiously, Williams' emphatic statement, forming the work's climactic point, did not seem to be the logical outcome of what had gone before. But with the return of melancholy and the high violin harmonics came a calming resolution.

By his own admission, Joe Duddell's titles tend to be random, and his new piano trio is named Nightswimming, after the REM song. In the premiere, given by the Kungsbacka Trio, the piano writing was more convincing than that for violin or cello, and it was only the frisson Simon Crawford-Phillips brought to the figurations in the upper register that approached a tingle factor.

Flautist Adam Walker stood out as the young artist to watch in this festival. Together with harpist Sally Pryce, Walker's fluently expressive tone added a gloss to the rerun of Duddell's 2004 Presteigne commission, Mnemonic. And, at their morning recital in Kinnerton, Walker and Pryce performed with vibrant energy in the premiere of David Bruce's Gigue, and with a dark intensity in Michael Berkeley's Last Breath.

Rian Evans 

The Birmingham Post
23 August 2008

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Chatting with me before Thursday's opening concert of the Presteigne Festival (now proudly in its 26th year), this year's composer-in-residence, Joe Duddell, described it as "the best festival in the country".

And many obviously agree with him. I overheard comments galore about the unique atmosphere artistic director George Vass has created in this pretty town, and every year there are familiar returning faces and eager new ones.

Part of the secret is the commitment of performers who obviously enjoy coming, and the enthusiasm of busy composers in sharing their own music with that of their colleagues.

And another aspect is the attractive programming: amazingly on Thursday Bartok's Romanian Folkdances, deliciously beefy yet refined from Vass's expert Presteigne Festival Orchestra, was the oldest piece on offer.

The newest was the premiere of Lost Lanes - Shadow Groves by James Francis Brown, a seamless four-movement concerto for clarinet and strings firmly in the English pastoral tradition, full of memorable nuggets, and performed with awesome stamina and subtle dynamic control by its dedicatee, the sympathetic Catriona Scott.

Duddell himself was represented by his compelling Snowblind, a concerto for tuned percussion, full of telling harmonic implications, and deftly, magically delivered by Colin Currie, alert and responsive to the attentive conducting of Vass - himself a gifted percussionist.

Presteigne returned to one of its most recent composers-in-residence, Latvian Peteris Vasks, for Viatore, a hypnotic, clearly-defined structure alternating between lulling sequences and glittering patterings, but one which summoned memories of Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead.

Barshai's string orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich's Quartet No 10 made a deeply satisfying conclusion.

Christopher Morley 

The Birmingham Post
27 August 2008

KUNGSBACKA PIANO TRIO AT PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL

The title is borrowed from a 1992 song by the rock band R.E.M., although Duddell doesn't make it clear if his music is based on the song (which apparently is about skinny dipping.) It might well be, as Duddell's Nightswimming is, like many rock compositions, little more than gradually unfolding variations on a simple chord pattern.

Nevertheless, it provides 15 minutes of easily assimilated music, without actually falling into the category of easy-listening. Textures and rhythmic patterns are explored in interesting ways, and the climactic final section is well developed before a somewhat clichéd back-to-the-beginning coda.

Duddell describes Nightswimming as "playful", which might explain its lack of harmonic variety and reliance on rhetorical note spinning.

The splendid Kungsbacka Trio certainly entered into the spirit of the piece: pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips mustered a wealth of meaning from his endless broken chords, while violinist Malin Broman and cellist Jesper Svedberg gave expressive depth and breadth to this (let's be honest) shallow music.

Beethoven and Schubert gave them much more to work with. Beethoven's Kakadu Variations, with Crawford-Phillips' fully nourished tone matched by the creamy sensitivity of his string colleagues, showed perfectly (others please note) how to make a trite tune into something delightfully entertaining, but it was their immaculately shaped reading of Schubert's joyous Piano Trio in B flat, D898 that brought the best out of these fine players, with smiling phrases, lyrical wistfulness and gutsy freshness present in full measure. A lovely interpretation and delicious performance.

David Hart 

The Birmingham Post
28 August 2008

KUNGSBACKA TRIO/ PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

It's not just Olympians coming in with new world records this month. Last year the Presteigne Festival entertained an astonishing 83% average attendance. This year it has played to an amazing 86% of capacity. Artistic director George Vass must be doing something right.

And one thing where he certainly has the Midas touch is in the engagement of young artists, present in this charming Welsh town not just for one-off concerts but for a whole sequence of events.

Among these is the Kungsbacka Trio, whom I caught on Tuesday afternoon in a brilliantly constructed programme of piano trios by Haydn, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Shostakovich.

Turnage's A Short Procession; A Fast Stomp began with a patiently-built threnody and ended with a decidedly Stravinskian ragtime explosion which somewhat outstayed its welcome.

That could never be said of Shostakovich's tragic E minor Trio, bleak even for this tortured composer, and searingly delivered by these passionate young players.

The evening's Festival Finale reunited several of the composers who have enriched programmes here in the past, beginning with The Romance of the Rose by festival president Michael Berkeley. An early piece, perhaps more fulsome and filmic than more recent works, it was gloriously rendered by Vass's Presteigne Festival Orchestra, with outstanding horns.

Vice-president Adrian Williams contributed a new commission: Maelienydd, landscape music at its most communicative, as open-air as anything by Copland, and strongly structured. And the horns again were superb.

Composer-in-residence Joe Duddell heard a gratifying second performance of his Mnemonic, a chamber concerto for flute and harp which would make an ideal foil for Mozart's famous example. Proudly tonal, Duddell's piece is perfectly attuned to the character of these instruments, and was affectionately performed by flautist Adam Walker and harpist Sally Pryce.

Gillian Keith brought gentle charisma to her creamy, articulate delivery of the soprano solos in Finzi's Dies Natalis, Vass drawing from his strings all the piercing wonderment of this visionary score.

And the oldest piece in the programme, Britten's precocious Sinfonietta, weighty and sonorous in a manner uncharacteristic of his subsequent style, made a satisfying conclusion to what George Vass described as his "happiest festival, delivered by the greatest band in the world."

Christopher Morley 

The Hereford Times
4 September 2008

PRESTEIGNE PULLS IN CROWDS WITH A PACKED PROGRAMME
This year's Presteigne Festival was a resounding success with audience capacity running at 85%.

George Vass, the festival director, devised a full schedule of concerts, talks and exhibitions, which felt like a month's worth of events condensed into just six days.

Audiences sometimes had to manage to get to three different concerts in three different locations, all within a few hours.

The festival programme interwove a number of themes. Michael Berkeley reached 60 and there was a survey of his music from the 1970s to the present day.

It was fascinating to observe the development and refinement of a distinctive voice.

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen brought a film and several chamber works.

It is now 50 years since the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams and he was represented by his violin concerto as well as his second string quartet and some choral songs. The high point of this Vaughan Williams commemoration was a talk by Stephen Johnson re-assessing the composer as a genuine revolutionary in 20th century music. Johnson spoke with a captivating eloquence and passion.

The young composer Joe Duddell was featured several times, including a newly commissioned piece. His music has a cogency and warmth which spoke to audiences.

George Vass has a remarkable gift for finding and bringing forward young soloists. 2008 produced a rich crop - the clarinet player Catriona Scott, the violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, the harp and flute duo of Sally Pryce and Adam Walker.

The pianist Helen Reid played a wide repertoire, memorable partnering the Canadian soprano Gillian Keith in a selection of songs from Messiaen's Poemes pour Mi, the Kungsbacka Trio and the Dante Quartet played two dark masterpieces by Shostakovich with a real intensity. The Festival Orchestra responded enthusiastically to George Vass as conductor, ending the final concert with a fizzing performance of the Britten Sinfonietta.

The Presteigne Festival takes its responsibilities to the music of our time seriously. It never takes the easy option of pretty music in pretty places.

Of the specially commissioned pieces, the strongest impression was made by the orchestral work Maelienydd by Adrian Williams. Yet a vein of rather cosy 'anti-modernism' runs through so much of the contemporary repertoire. Of course audiences must not be alienated, but they are often very ready to respond to challenge and discovery. The festival needs a wider spectrum of new music.

With that qualification, we can look forward eagerly to the 2009 festival.

Barrie Gavin 

Reviews of the 25th Anniversary Festival
22-28 August 2007

The Guardian
28 August 2007

PRESTEIGNE PREMIERES
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Sunshine added a glow to Presteigne's 25th-anniversary celebrations. For some festivals, the Australian theme - honouring artist Sidney Nolan, their first president - might have sufficed. Not for Presteigne. Its irrepressible artistic director, George Vass, went several better by commissioning 16 new pieces, showing commitment with a vengeance.

Young lions were well represented. David Knott's Hover for clarinet and piano combined a natural cut and thrust with glittering poise; John Hymas's Caprice for solo soprano saxophone artfully mixed capriciousness with contemplation, while the early austerity of Huw Watkins' Prelude for solo cello was countered by its soaring flight into ecstatic harmonics. Meanwhile, Joe Duddell's Four (mere) Bagatelles had a wonderful clarity and assurance, expressed most tellingly in the chords of the third bagatelle, which reached a positively serene acquiescence.

There were new works from an older generation, too. Michael Berkeley's Second Still Life for oboe and harp had an unexpected calm. Hilary Tann's Shakkei for oboe and small orchestra was strongest when articulating a nostalgia ostensibly for her native Wales but perhaps also now for her adopted America. David Matthews' Venus and Adonis, for sweetly seductive violin and forceful piano, replicated the success of his recent Proms symphony, with the Welsh folk-song Mae 'Nghariad Ii'n Fenws (My Love's a Venus) emerging as the ultimate distillation and resolution of all that had transpired.

The music of composer-in-residence Peter Sculthorpe radiated its own fiery glow. Cellist Alice Neary and saxophonist Amy Dickson, in particular, did him proud, underlining the vibrancy of this rather remarkable event.

Rian Evans 

The Times
29 August 2007

PRESTEIGNE FESTIVAL
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Recent rain made the Welsh border country look particularly green and pleasant over the weekend. The weather's been good for composers, too: for the 25th edition of Presteigne's delightful Festival of Music and the Arts, its artistic director and conductor George Vass was able to commission 14 world premieres: almost one for every concert.

Admittedly they weren't the size of giants. But when four minutes bring such concentrated thought as Joseph Phibbs's Agea, who's measuring? The French players of the Psophos Quartet, probably the best young string group in Europe, attacked this miniature fantasy on three notes with the same passion, faultless intonation, and ensemble precision we heard in Schumann, Beethoven and Dutilleux.

Gabriel Jackson's String Quartet No 3, Llanandras Melodies, also unveiled by Psophos, whipped an invented folk tune through another four-minute kaleidoscope. Easy listening? And why not? Simplicity doesn't have to equal triviality. Michael Berkeley proved this with his seven-minute Second Still Life, a spare but haunting piece for oboe and harp. This was beautifully delivered by the harpist Lucy Wakeford and oboist Virginia Shaw (eloquent too in the unduly tricky metres of Hilary Tann's Shakkei).

Next to some of these chiselled sounds, David Matthews's 12-minute Adonis seemed of almost romantic opulence. A musical recreation of the Greek myth, the performance needed better balanced sound between Adonis's stand-in (Gretel Dowdeswell, piano) and the Venus of Sara Trickey’s violin. But nothing dampened the resourceful use of a Welsh folksong, flowering in full at the end, or the flexible pleasures of Matthews's style.

Other agreeable Presteigne memories? The vim and polish of the ad hoc Presteigne Festival Orchestra, drawn from students. Young voices to watch out for, such as Charlotte Mobbs and Lucie Spickova, bouncing through a Haydn mass with the City of Canterbury Chamber Choir. Cecilia McDowall's moving motet Ave Maris Stella, written in 9/11's shadow. And the sun, every day.

Geoff Brown 

The Birmingham Post
28 August 2007

MUSIC TO FEED THE SOUL AS FESTIVAL LIVES UP TO TOP BILLING
St Andrew's Church, Presteigne

Sleepy Radnorshire probably had a first on Thursday when the current Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts got underway to the earthy sounds of a didgeridoo announcing the start of the evening's concert.

There is certainly a strong Australian theme to this year's festival, but nothing could have sounded more English than the opening work, Hugh Wood's Divertimento for String Orchestra.

With an attractive bracing pastoralism which makes it a bedfellow of similar pieces by Tippett, Lennox Berkeley and the rest (there is even a spectacularly Elgarian descending seventh motif), it made a splendid launch to the line-up of no fewer than 25 festival commissions this year, each one marking one year of the festival's existence.

Biting in attack, an amazingly assured performance by the Presteigne Festival Orchestra once again testified to the remarkable results conductor and festival director George Vass obtains from his gifted young players in minimal rehearsal time.

Wood was in the audience, just one of a whole clutch of composers who flock to Presteigne for their performances. Another was Huw Watkins, here fulfilling the role of pianist in Mozart's A major Concerto K414, affectionate and analytical with a composer's ear, but a major composing presence later in the long weekend.

The brilliant young Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson was soloist in Richard Rodney Bennett's Seven Country Dances, her flowing phrasing drawing a striking range of tones and colours. Vass's buoyant account of Haydn's Mercury Symphony was an appetising taster for Presteigne's Haydn bicentenary celebrations in 2009.

Watkins was the hardworking and accomplished pianist in Friday afternoon's recital. Framed by substantial Brahms works -- Sara Trickey the violinist in a surging, ardent C minor Scherzo, Catriona Scott the clarinettist in a richly lyrical E-flat Sonata -- there were no fewer than four contemporary works, each with its composer in evidence.

David Knott's Hover for clarinet and piano sounded perhaps more French than Welsh, despite being conceived as a commission celebrating the beauty of the Welsh countryside. Huw Watkins' Dream chilled with frozen violin sounds, a clarinet stretched to its extremities, the piano reinforcing the phantasmagorical atmosphere, and Hugh Wood's Poem for Violin and Piano took us up into the stratosphere with an air of quiet mystery.

But it was From Nourlangie by the veteran Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe which made the deepest impression. With a wonderful build-up of effect from the clarinet, violin and piano trio, this North Australian land- and seascape was so timelessly evocative that I just didn't want it to end.

There was more wonderful Sculthorpe in Friday evening's very special concert from the exciting young Psophos Quartet, when his String Quartet No.8, again proudly Australian in its content, gripped a packed audience.

Outer movements largely for solo cello use its capacity for multitexturing to evoke the didgeridoo (that instrument again), crystalline upper strings provide glacial harmonics, and funky percussive string patternings bring an Indonesian feel to central movements. Sculthorpe planted a kiss on both cheeks of these remarkable demoiselles at the end, and who could blame him?

Also present was the likeable Joe Duddell, here for the premiere of his Four (mere) Bagatelles. These endearing miniatures pay deliberate homage to role-models, so we delight in lovely dancing Tippettian rhythms, spot a tune from Stravinsky's Symphony in C, and bask in the lush gentleness of the third movement -- drawn from the Debussy Quartet, of which the Psophos players went on to give a crisply contoured reading which grew in conviction as the work itself does through its movements.

Amy Dickson's late-night concert demonstrated again how much this gifted player is at one with her instrument.

After hearing her give the premiere of the saxophone version of his Songs of Sea and Sky, with its release into sweet lyricism, Peter Sculthorpe told me how the experience has inspired him to make it the basis of a complete concerto for her.

Local composer John Hymas heard the premiere of his Caprice, his lightness of touch suggesting an urban sophistication a la Poulenc belying its apparent "noble savage" inspiration.

Much rougher and visceral was Mark-Anthony Turnage's Two Elegies Framing a Shout, Dickson and pianist Catherine Milledge heroically combining in this harrowing and taxing musical experience.

Saturday afternoon's Psophos concert was a fascinating object-lesson in technique serving content instead of merely being on display for its own sake.

Henri Dutilleux's Ainsi la Nuit explores every facet of string technique during its brilliantly-structured, inevitable progress. Gabriel Jackson's String Quartet No.3, Llanandras Melodies(named for this Welsh festival which commissioned this premiere), is an unflashy compendium of compositional procedures as it journeys through highly-attractive quasi-folktunes. But coming in at barely five minutes, it's over before it's started.

The Presteigne Festival has a unique capacity for bringing composers, critics and a trusting audience together (often coming together in the welcoming Radnorshire Arms), and Saturday's full-house evening concert was a triumphant example of how irresistibly it reaches out to everyone.

Given in memory of Joan Hughes, a stalwart festival presence, it brought more evocative Sculthorpe, the premiere of Hilary Tann's Shakkei for oboe and orchestra, a convincing meeting of soundworlds and cultures, with soloist Virginia Shaw shaping a beautifully produced line, and more mouthwatering Haydn in the Missa Sancti Nicolai.

But it was Cecilia McDowall's Ave Maris Stella, a favourite of Joan's, which set the seal, the stylish City of Canterbury Chamber Choir, soprano Charlotte Mobbs, and the PFO responding under Vass's supple direction to all the music's warmth of heart.

Christopher Morley 

The Birmingham Post
30 August, 2007

FESTIVAL FINALE MAKES AUDIENCE MARVEL AT YOUNG TALENT

On Monday, for example, Britten and Schumann framed little-known Donald Tovey with two world premières based on Welsh folksongs - a logical and symmetrical package. The first of these, Peter Fribbins' Fantasia on Bugail Yr Hafod, sympathetically realised by violist Sarah-Jane Bradley and pianist Gretel Dowdeswell, came over as a slight, often gently magical work.

Cecilia McDowall's Y Deryn Pur, scored for the same forces as Britten's Phantasy Quartet (Virginia Shaw the expressively plangent oboist in both) was much more substantial, elegiac and evocative of landscape and birdsong, in an unaffected style that charmingly spoke from the heart.

Later in the evening George Vass presided over a concert subtitled The Genius of Percy Grainger. Although very enjoyable, some might have hesitated to describe the assorted folksong arrangements and instrumental pieces we heard as works of genius. Still, they were decently played by the Presteigne Festival Orchestra and elegantly sung by the City of Canterbury Chamber Choir; and the unnamed tenor soloist in Brigg Fair was super.

A particular bonus was the chance to hear Walter Leigh's Harpsichord Concertino, a delightfully unassuming example of English reserve mixed with quiet virtuosity. Carole Cerasi played it with limpid fluency, and also gave the première of Geraint Lewis's Symphony for harpsichord, a five-minute solo piece that began like William Byrd and degenerated into flourishes of silly modernism.

Gretel Dowdeswell's piano recital on Tuesday offered greater rewards. Again, symmetry was to the fore, with Beethoven sonatas - the E minor, Op 90 and Op 81a "Les Adieux" - framing two gorgeous pieces by Festival composer-in-residence Peter Sculthorpe, and another world première, Lynne Plowman's ripplingly tuneful Lullaby for Ianto, popped in the middle.

Dowdeswell invested her Beethoven with an almost Schubertian lyricism, broken-chord figuration as delicately fingered as a song accompaniment, and perfectly moulded phrasing. Sculthorpe's Nocturnal was also completely riveting and tantalizingly atmospheric, in places sounding like moonlight glistening on a tropical pool.

There was even more fascinating Sculthorpe on Tuesday evening. Alice Neary, so richly effective in Tovey's Elegiac Variations the day before, here gave a stunning account of Sculthorpe's Cello Dreaming, her solo part singing over the complex string accompaniment and exotic percussion (beautifully fashioned by Vass and his PFO) in a glorious threnody, at other times keening like a bird (wonderful control of harmonics) and even imitating a didgeridoo.

Less aurally intriguing perhaps, but equally approachable, was David Matthews' Aubade. As a companion-piece to the Sculthorpe (symmetry yet again) it shared similar qualities, notably its meltingly beautiful string writing, luminous sonorities, mewing birdsong, and some excruciatingly difficult instrumental parts, especially for the horns, happily well accomplished here.

The two mainstream works in this Festival Finale (actually Walton's Sonata for string orchestra is not something ensembles face on a regular basis) again made one marvel at how much George Vass accomplishes in such a short time with his young players. True, there were one or two hairy moments in the Sonata, but it was an exhilarating reading, especially in the scintillating scherzo and glowingly broody Lento.

Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante offered somewhat safer territory (Vass seemed positively benign in his direction) and this lovely work displayed considerable zest and elegance, especially from soloists Sara Trickey and Sarah-Jane Bradley, whose playing quite bubbled with galant sweetness. Lovely stuff and an obvious audience favourite.

David Hart 

The Hereford Times
30 August, 2007

SCULTHORPE SHINES IN FESTIVAL'S SILVER YEAR

Now in his late 70s, he looks back for his 'epiphany' to the moment when, at Oxford University on a scholarship, he was told by his tutor, who was then writing the very early music volume of the 'definitive' Oxford History of Music, that Australian aboriginal music was 'of no importance'. 'Well', thought Sculthorpe, 'it may not be important to you, but it's important to me.'

In the half century since then he has drawn consistently on the traditions of aboriginal music, both in detail and in general outline: he feels that landscape has a crucial effect on all artists and that the flatness of Australia is reflected in his own works, which make much of drones and repetitions. At the same time, he told me he doesn't believe in 'an Australian sound', and the truth of this is borne out in the strong personal voice that comes through his music. Like him, it is warm and direct, muscular and alive, sharply focussed but never rudely overbearing. The great thing for any artist, he believes, is 'to find out who you are'. I know I speak for the enthusiastic audiences for his music last week when I say that now we too know who he is, and feel grateful and privileged for the opportunity. For those who weren't there, the record catalogue awaits your attention.

Roger Nichols 

The Hereford Times
6 September, 2007

A PERFECT MIX OF OLD AND NEW AT PRESTEIGNE 2007

As director of the Festival, George Vass said in his charming speech on the final night, an 80% audience rating this year proves that he also is doing something right. To some extent this success is due to a policy of non-ghettoisation. The programme mentioned above was only one of many that mixed old and new, so that concerts took on the flavour of good meals, with spice and sugar complementing each other.

Among the challenges this year were the 15 newly commissioned works (one for each year of George's tenure), and these, while inevitably of varying impact, contained some treasures. For me, Michael Berkeley's Second Still Life for oboe and harp was one such, hiding its technical assurance beneath an unpretentious surface; Christopher Lyndon-Gee's Over Litton also had a great feeling of place and space. Hugh Wood's Divertimento for string orchestra got the whole festival off to a cheerful start, while not attempting the lyrical flights that distinguish David Matthew's Adonis for violin and piano, a piece of rapturous beauty that held the audience spellbound.

Beyond music there was an entertaining yet thought-provoking recitation of poems by Jo Shapcott and Simon Mundy, and Barrie Gavin's expertly fashioned documentary film on Percy Grainger - as he warned us, by no means all high jinks and jollity, rather a searing portrait of a tortured soul.

But at the centre of it all was the music of Peter Sculthorpe, one of George Vass's more inspired choices, and Sculthorpe's wonderful Cello Dreaming (one of the composer's own favourites) summed up the strong yet deeply reflective nature of his music. Copies of the CD vanished from the table within minutes.

Next year, Vaughan Williams and Michael Berkeley, with some Messiaen. I don't quite see how George Vass will improve on this year, but I'm certainly not betting against the possibility.

Roger Nichols

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