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2007 Cambridge Summer Music Festival
Sun, 06/05/2007 - 15:43 — Anonymous
Title:
2007 Cambridge Summer Music Festival
For three weeks this summer, Cambridge plays host to some of the world's finest classical musicians, as the Cambridge Summer Music Festival fills the city with ravishing music.
The special magic of live classical music can be heard in over twenty historic and beautiful venues. The music of Sir Edward Elgar provides a golden thread running through the Festival, marking the 150th anniversary of his birth. His great oratorio The Dream of Gerontius provides a fitting climax to the Festival, but smaller-scale works will be performed too, including the luscious String Serenade and his own piano version of the Enigma Variations.
The Festival also celebrates English music spanning four centuries, including the first-ever English song-cycle, John Coprario's Funeral Tears (1607), for voice and lute. There are works by Purcell and Handel from earlier eras, as well as Vaughan Williams, Britten and Tippett, and cutting edge English music by composers such as Thomas Ades.
A striking feature of the Festival is the sheer variety of music on offer, ranging in scope from solo recitals to larger-scale symphonic music, from bawdy tavern songs (Musicians of the Globe), through choral classics to fully staged opera (Stravinsky's Rake's Progress). There are top-class chamber musicians in abundance too - and in various combinations, from duos to quintets.
Further colour is added by influences from abroad, taking in the Russian choral tradition, Balkan dance music, South American guitar music and classical Indian music. Ancient instruments will create their own evocative ambience, with the beguiling tones of the viol, lute, bandora, cittern and theorbo, expertly played by early-music specialists.
The Festival is not just a grown-up affair. There is no shortage of events to keep the children entertained, including traditional pantomime with Chalemina, family picnics with Prime Brass, Paddington Bear's first concert, the Backbeat percussion workshop and the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet, who show what you can do with an acoustic kettle and a quartet of rubber fish... And there will be plenty of opportunity for the kids to take part, too.
Writer: Juliet Abrahamson, Festival Director
To find all Festival events in MTN's event calendar, simply enter ‘Cambridge Summer Music Festival' in the ‘Promoter' category on the search screen and click ‘List events'.
For more on the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, go to: www.cambridgesummermusic.com