The Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts
Founded in 1983 with composer Adrian Williams as artistic director, the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts runs for just under a week at the end of August each year, and promotes thirty or so arts events of which around half are concerts. Although mainly concerned with classical music, the festival programme also includes literary talks, children’s events, composers in conversation, exhibitions, poetry reading and a guided walks. Venues include St Andrews Church in Presteigne, with its exquisite acoustic, and village churches and halls nestling in the beautiful countryside of the surrounding Welsh Marches.
Since 1992 the festival has been under the direction of George Vass and has become well-known for the promotion of contemporary music. Short listed for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in 2003, the festival has an enviable reputation for the performance of new music, having commissioned and premiered some forty new works from composers including Michael Berkeley, Joe Duddell, David Matthews, John McCabe, Cecilia McDowall, Anthony Powers, Hilary Tann, Adrian Williams, Ian Wilson and Hugh Wood. The festival hosts a ‘composer-in-residence’ each year and these have included such luminaries as Judith Weir, Robin Holloway, Paul Patterson, John Joubert and Pēteris Vasks. BBC Radio 3 regularly broadcasts chamber music concerts from the festival and audience figures often reach 80% of all tickets sold.
“The Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts continues to enchant and enrich … Among the many admirable qualities of this annual feast is its fearlessness in programming non-mainstream late 20th- and early 21st-century works, none of them world premieres, thus taking audiences into unfamiliar territory without the critic-luring prestige of a first performance. Thanks to the unfailingly acute ear of Artistic Director George Vass for pieces uniting impeccable quality with engaging accessibility, the results are always magical.”
Paul Conway, Tempo Magazine, January 2006
“I was present at the first performance of this cycle to celebrate what has to be one of the finest Festivals in the country.”
Brian Hick, Musical Opinion, January 2006
“The moment the world premiere of Mnemonic by the thirty-something Joe Duddell wound its way to a consonant close, sighs of delight, mixed perhaps with surprise, rose from the pews of St Andrew’s Church. How could a piece of new music fall so pleasantly on the ears? Pleasure, in fact, seemed a constant factor at the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts … George Vass, its artistic director, programmed the six-day event with benevolent acuity, accenting the contemporary with festival commissions and a composer in residence … yet threading through enough from past times to provide a balanced diet.”
Geoff Brown, The Times, 2 September 2004
For further information about this year’s festival, please follow this link: www.presteignefestival.com
