The 31st festival ended just over two weeks ago – the orchestras, choirs, chamber groups, singers, jazz and rock bands have all left and Aldborough has returned to bucolic peace.
In August, we will begin work on the first draft for another festival, but before that, let’s revisit some of the memorable experiences of June…
Thursday 12 June
The festival opened with a return visit from the richly talented young string players of Fantasia Orchestra, fresh from a BBC Proms debut and in the company of one of the world’s leading violinists, Tamsin Waley-Cohen.
Their performance of serenades by Elgar and Dvořák caught the sense of awakening summer perfectly, and the Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending with Tamsin Waley-Cohen elevated this audience favourite to something far more touching and spellbinding, the solo violin wending its way to hushed pianissimos at the very top of the range.
While the performers raced back to London to avoid the post-midnight curfew, the rest of us headed to the SHED for the first of four post-concert parties. We were entertained by some extraordinary close-up magic from Oliver Parker, who astonished guests with his ability to move cards and coins seemingly through thin air!
Friday 13 June
The following day we decamped to the atmospheric setting of the Old Hall, North Deighton, one of our favourite venues, for a day of jazz. Thande Gumede’s morning concert fused Jazz, Gospel, Zulu and Xhosa music, and featured his distinctive baritone-to-falsetto voice. Combined with the virtuosity of his bassist and pianist and his brilliant audience rapport, this made for a completely unique concert experience!
In the evening, we witnessed what surely must be one of the finest jazz gigs the festival has staged, the sell-out appearance of Jacqui Dankworth and her trio. The beauty of her voice and the control she was able to muster, was expertly supported by the tightest of ensemble playing from her trio, and produced some real emotional moments, among them a moving performance of Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns.
Saturday 14 June
We returned to the festival’s central venue, St Andrew’s Church, for the annual opera performance, of Donizetti’s ‘Elixir of Love’. While the staging was very simple, it was effective and communicated the story well, and the cast and players gave us a musical performance at the very highest level. So often, touring opera companies have to compromise heavily on artistic quality or repertoire to balance budgets, so this was a rare achievement. Outstanding among the cast were Galina Averina as Adina, Xavier Hetherington as Nemorino and Timothy Nelson as Belcore, with superb comic acting from Alex Jones as the doctor Dulcamara.
The reviewer in The Reviews Hub, giving it 5 stars, felt that
“good as the previous years’ [Aldborough opera] offerings have been, this superb performance by Wild Arts surpassed them all.”
Read the full review [here].
Sunday 15 & Monday 16 June
The New Voices Singing Competition, growing in stature every year, returned for its third instalment. We received a call at 9am from Sholto Kynoch, one of the distinguished judges – he had been taken ill and would be unable to travel to Aldborough. While we certainly missed Sholto’s expertise in song and lieder (he was the founder of the country’s largest song festival, Oxford Song), our other guest judges, the peerless baritone Sir Thomas Allen and the pioneering conductor Dame Jane Glover, could not have been more positive or generous with their time and expertise, and it was a memorable year for this competition.
For two days the church and the SHED resonated to the sounds of singers and pianists rehearsing, and their nervous energy was palpable. The final produced our youngest winner to date, the 24-year-old Scottish soprano Rachel Munro (pictured left), with her pianist Jia Ning Ng, whose programme included a showstopping aria from Handel’s Semele, In Darkness Deep. They were awarded the Seastock Prize of £5000 by Laura Canning, the General Director of Opera North. Second prize, the £1500 Yorkshire Music Future Fund Prize, went to another Scottish soprano, Nikki Martin, a born stage performer who gave us a programme featuring elves, goblins and witches with her pianist Esther Ersfeld. The Audience Prize went to a third soprano, Caroline Taylor, and her pianist Sebastian Issler.
Last year’s returning winners, mezzo soprano Judith Le Breuilly and pianist George Ireland, gave an extraordinarily poised and thoughtfully assembled programme of songs from across Europe on the theme of flowers and gardens. There was a tangible sense of mutual support and community throughout the competition, with judges, finalists and even most of the semi-finalists that did not make the final mingling in the SHED after the awards.
L-R: Sir Thomas Allen, Laura Canning, Jia Ning Ng (pianist), Rachel Munro (soprano), Dame Jane Glover, Robert Ogden & Sir Andrew Lawson-Tancred
Tuesday 17 June
There was a dream pairing of great musicians in St Andrew’s at the Tuesday evening concert: one of the world’s leading French horn players, Ben Goldscheider, performed a programme including Mozart’s Horn Quintet in E flat with the Heath Quartet, one of a series of world-beating quartets (others include the Elias, Sorrel and Navarra) to come out of the late Christopher Rowland’s string quartet programme at the Royal Northern College of Music in the early 2000s. Other items in the programme were the much-loved Horn Quintet in C minor by York Bowen, and a new piece by UK-based Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga, The Shining Gate of Morpheus, which radiated clarity and dreamlike wonder.
Wednesday 18 June
One of the festival’s founding missions is to offer performing opportunities to young and emergent talent, and alongside the Competition, there is the annual Young Artist Showcase. This presents teenaged performers from Yorkshire with the golden opportunity of a festival platform. This year’s programme was the most varied yet, with the Iqbal brothers of Riyaz performing an improvised Indian classical raga, drummer Thomas Heath playing the fiendishly difficult Duke Ellington number Caravan, saxophonist Bethany Clarkson giving a remarkably mature performance of a full sonata by Lawson Lunde and young baritone William Johnson, about to embark on vocal studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, moving the audience with a touching Where’er you walk from Handel’s Semele. Special thanks must go to pianist William Dore, who accompanied two of the four young performers.
That evening, the veteran political commentator Matthew Parris regaled the audience with tales from his spells in the Foreign Office, as Margaret Thatcher’s correspondence clerk and as a columnist and sketch writer at the Times. He told us his proudest moment was a marathon time of just 2 hours 32 minutes 1985, a record for a parliamentarian that still stands today! Following the talk, Matthew headed to the SHED, where the conversation continued, fueled by Helen Tesseyman and her team’s wonderful catering!
Thursday 19 June
The splendid Grade I listed Farnley Hall near Otley was the setting for a performance by the Asteria Trio, whose harpist Megan Humphries hails from Harrogate. The beautiful, French-accented programme, which included works by Debussy, Ravel, and the famous virtuoso Flute Concertino by Chaminade, resonated powerfully in the warm acoustic.
That evening Aldborough welcomed two luminaries of the music world, mezzo soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and pianist Dame Imogen Cooper, who was making a welcome return to the festival.
The programme, supported by a bequest from the late Olav Arnold, was a journey through Germany and France, and included Schumann’s cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, alongside works by Brahms, Wolf and Duparc. The recital included a heartfelt tribute of Schubert’s Allegretto in C minor by Imogen to her mentor and friend Alfred Brendel, who had died the previous week. According to the 5 star review in MusicOMH,
” …this was an absolutely cracking concert, featuring two of today’s finest artists in a partnership made in heaven”.
Read the full review [here].
Afterwards in the SHED, festival team member Luca Trentini-Dowell serenaded us with Rachmaninoff, urged on with enthusiasm by Dame Imogen herself!
Friday 20 June
The final performance in St Andrew’s Church was the return of the Armonico Consort for a memorable and moving choral concert. The first half featured some of the greatest works of the renaissance from England, Holland, Germany and Spain, the centrepiece Alonso Lobo’s stunningly beautiful Versa est in Luctum. The choir made ample use of St Andrew’s space, with a sung procession.
After the interval, Rachmaninoff’s quasi-orchestral but deeply felt Vespers sounded incredible in the space, the full range of the human voice exploited by these talented singers. Following the performance, the team took down the stage and technical equipment in the church in readiness for the Last Night concert in the company of Killerz and Reef Hound!
Saturday 21 June
The final day, Saturday 21 June, the team were in the grounds of Aldborough Manor, preparing for a crowd of twelve hundred people for the Killerz, the UK’s leading tribute to…The Killers.
Once all the signage, safety fences and of course the stage and lighting were installed the team had a final lunch in the Grantham Arms. While there were some nerve-wracking bouts of drizzle earlier on, the weather held for the evening, and the capacity crowd enjoyed sets by Pearl Natasha, a hugely talented soul singer, rock covers band Reef Hound and the Killerz, with an orchestrated fireworks display crowning the evening. The video below captures some of the fantastic atmosphere!
Next year’s festival takes place between 18 and 27 June 2026.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Yours,
Rob & Rachael