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| Cheltenham Music Festival 2023 |
Established in 1945 in the months following the Second World War, the Cheltenham Music Festival is celebrating 80 years this year. The festival was part of a post-war arts festival movement that also saw the launch of the Festival of Britain and Edinburgh International Festival. This year’s Music Festival runs from 4 to 12 July 2025, but there is also the Jazz Festival (30 April to 5 May), Science Festival (3 to 8 June) and Literature Festival (10 to 19 October).
The Festivals’ parent charity, Cheltenham Festivals – responsible for all four festival and their associated learning and outreach programmes – is celebrating its 80th birthday by pledging to give 80,000 children access to the arts throughout the year. 2025’s Cheltenham Music Festival will focus more than ever on transformative musical experiences, reaching new and bigger audiences, and enthusing and engaging the next generation of children. This year’s programme includes Elgar’s Enigma Variations that featured in those first concerts, plus and Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes which premiered at the first festival, and Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony No. 5 which premiered at the 1961 festival
The season is the first to be programmed by the Music Festival’s new Artistic Director, Jack Bazalgette (co-founder of through the noise).
Alongside the formal concerts there will be two Concerts for Schools, including one specifically designed for pupils with special and educational development needs (SEND) pupils, and a Relaxed Concert for Families with additional needs, all audiences of every age will be made welcome. New for this 80th year is and ensemble formed from existing local groups, the Cheltenham Festival Orchestra, which will perform with tenor James Gilchrist and the Cheltenham Bach Choir, with David Crown conducting in Mozart’s Requiem. And the local South Cotswold Big Sing Group will be taking part in Berlioz’s Te Deum at at Gloucester Cathedral with British Sinfonietta and mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly.
New commissions include a new octet from Deborah Pritchard to be performed on the first day of the festival by Britten Sinfonia alongside Mendelssohn’s Octet, and a new piece by Anna Semple for BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Songs for the Earth, an ensemble led by violinist Bridget O’Donnell and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado, that fuses folk, jazz and classical music will be performing specially written pieces at Cheltenham a part of a meditation on music and nature.
Rising stars performing at the festival include violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason, cellist Hadewych van Gent and guitarist Plínio Fernandes in Bloch and Bach, guitarist Alexandra Whittingham, trumpeter Aaron Akugbo and pianist Zeynep Özsuca. There are recitals from three BBC New Generation Artists – pianist Giorgi Gigashvili, tenor Santiago Sanchez and accordionist Ryan Corbett.
Major names at this year’s festival include Imogen Cooper in Beethoven piano sonatas, Pavel Kolesnikov in Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the Gesualdo Six and the Chelys Consort of Viols in Orlando Gibbons, the Vision Quartet performing Weber, Ravel and Dvorak from memory, plus pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, and baritone Gerald Finley in recital.
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| Relaxed performance – Cheltenham Music Festival 2023 |
Full details from the festival website.
