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| Mitchell’s Fold – Mike Ashton |
This year’s Ludlow English Song Weekend not only celebrates Gerald Finzi, marking 70 years since his death, but celebrates 25 years of the festival itself. The festival is from 10 to 12 April 2026 with events in St Laurence’s Church and Ludlow Assembly Rooms. The event is very much a passion project for founder and artistic director, pianist Iain Burnside.
Burnside and baritone Roderick Williams open the festival with Eight Haiku which mixes songs written for Williams by American composer Libby Larsen with music by Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven and Britten. This is the first time the programme has been performed since its premiere in Minnesota last year, and the concert is the first of three appearances Williams makes in Ludlow for the festival.
The music of Gerald Finzi is celebrated across the Saturday concerts. In the morning, mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, tenor James Way, bass-baritone Ossian Huskinson and Iain Burnside join actor Alex Jennings for an exploration of Thomas Hardy’s life including Finzi’s settings of the poet, then in the afternoon pianist Ian Tindale curates an exploration of the 1930s, mixing Finzi with contemporaries such as Gershwin and Shostakovich performed by mezzo-sopranos Bethany Horak-Hallett and Lily Mo Browne, and baritone James Atkinson.
Early evening, tenors Adrian Thompson, Robin Tritschler and Francis Melville perform Finzi’s A Young Man’s Exhortation setting poems by Thomas Hardy whilst actress Joanne Scanlan reads poems by women poets which respond, affectionately and acerbically, to Hardy’s sometimes uncomfortable opinions. Then the Finzi day concludes with a portrait of the composer and his friends where Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside are joined by soprano Ailish Tynan and bass Matthew Rose.
Sunday is a celebration of Shakespeare. Iain Burnside is joined by actor Richard Goulding and sopranos Jennifer France and Manon Ogwen Parry, mezzo-sopranos Katie Bray, Lily Mo Browne and Anita Monserrat, tenors Adrian Thompson and James Way and bass Matthew Rose, for songs from Haydn to Berlioz, Poulenc to Shostakovich. Then it is the turn of British composers including Finzi Parry, Tippett, Dring and many more, plus, all sixteen of the weekend’s singers come together for a special performance of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music.
Full details from the festival website.
