The English Music Festival takes place at a new venue this year. From 22 to 25 May 2026, Dartington Hall in Devon will host the festival which was founded by Em Marshall-Luck. The festival will be featuring three premieres, works by John Foulds, Edgar Bainton and Alan Rawsthorne.
John Foulds’ Caprice Pompadour and Alan Rawsthorne’s Theme and Variations in A minor, both for violin and piano, will be featured in the recital by Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin) and Peter Cartwright (piano) which also includes music by Howells, Delius and Bliss along with the first professional performance of Four Deceptive Pieces by David Lewiston Sharpe.
John Foulds’ Caprice Pompadour which receives its world premiere, was published in 1916 and is the revision of Foulds’ first publicly performed piece, Rhapsodie nach Heine of 1897. In his unfinished novel Florentine Nights, Heinrich Heine included a passage evoking a phantasmagorical violin recital by Paganini, which Foulds’ rendered into music once again through this sensational work. Alan Rawsthorne’s Theme and Variations in A minor is receiving its UK premiere. The movement comes from the second of Rawsthorne’s two unpublished sonatas (dating from 1933/34), the second movement of which was released as in independent work in 1937.
The festival’s third premiere is Edgar Bainton’s To the Name above Every Name, a setting of the 17th century metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw, and the last of Bainton’s choral works. Bainton completed the vocal score but left it unorchestrated. The work is being performed by the University of Exeter Chapel Choir, conductor Howard Ionascu in a programme that features music by Vaughan Williams, Britten, Elgar, Holst, Dyson, Howells and Robin Milford.
The festival opens with a concert featuring John Andrews conducting the London Mozart Players. Peter Cigleris will be the soloist in Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto and Lucilla Rose Mariotti Banwell is the soloist in Thomas Linley’s Violin Concerto. The concert also includes music by Thomas Pitfield, Delius, Howells and Alan Rawsthorne.
Elsewhere in the festival:
- Ben Goldscheider and Simon Callaghan perform English music for horn and piano including sonatas by Bax, Vaughan Williams (reconstructed by Martin Yates), William Alwyn and York Bowen, along with Huw Watkins’ Lament which was written for Goldscheider
- Violinist Madeleine Mitchell’s London Chamber Ensemble perform string quartets by Alwyn, Howells, Delius and Charles Wood
- Guitarist Fabio Fernandes presents English music for guitar including music by Purcell, Duarte, Ernest Shand, John Gardner, Thomas Pitfield, Josiah Andrew Hudleston, and Bridge
- Tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Nathan Williamson perform songs by Carwithen, Holst, William Busch, Warlock, Crosse, Jeremy Thurlow and Thomas Pitfield
- Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts Dean, baritone Kieran Rayner and pianist Nigel Foster explore the work of Ralph and Ursula Vaughan Williams including settings of her poems by Roderick Williams, Jonathan Dove, Roger Steptoe and Alan Hoddinott, two of Ralph’s setting of her poems along with a selection of his other well-known songs
- Eleanor Grant (soprano and double bass) and Gus McQuade (guitar) present a selection of 20th and 21st century music under the title Seasons change yet we remain.
- Pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi is playing music by John Ireland, Alan Rawsthorne, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Carwithen and a transcription of Elgar’s Organ Sonata
The festival ends with a piano trio made up of Rupert Marshall-Luck, Raphael Wallfisch and Hiroaki Takenouchi in Ireland, Alan Rawsthorne, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and E.J. Moeran.
Full details from the festival website.
