French and Russian theme at Leamington festival

The festival, which runs from Friday May 4 to Tuesday May 8, will be the 23rd such event to be promoted in Leamington and Warwick over the first of the May Bank Holiday weekends since 1990.

For Richard Phillips, the festival’s director, it will be the 97th festival that he has organised over the last 35 years - almost certainly more than anyone else in the UK.

Mr Phillips said: “This is the 23rd festival weekend with a strong theme that I have programmed over the first May Bank Holiday weekend and its popularity continues.

“Our regular audience sees it as the highlight of our year and people come from all over the UK to stay in the Leamington area at a time when the town and its parks look at their best.

“Artists invited to the Festival Weekend are a mix of old friends and then for the first time, mostly young musicians who are tipped to make it to the top.

“This year, we have musicians from Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Sweden taking part.”

This year’s festival will have a French and Russian theme and will feature music from both countries in the hundred years since 1850.

It follows the 2011 Festival which concentrated on German and Czech music of those years. Borodin, Glinka, Mussorgski, Rachmaninov, Rimski-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Chausson, Duparc, Faure, Franck, Ravel and Saint-Saens take over from Brahms, Dvorak, Novak and Strauss who headed the composers last year.

Evening concerts will be given by the Fitzwilliam, Badke and Elias String Quartets, offering both quartets by Borodin, piano quintets by Faure and Franck, played by Simon Crawford-Phillips and Chausson’s Concerto for Violin, Piano and Quartet.

The recently formed Erringden Ensemble, led by Paul Barritt, will play sextets by Rimski-Korsakov, Borodin and Tchaikovsky, his Souvenirs de Florence.

The final concert will be recorded by Radio 3 and given by Ensemble 360 with works by Saint-Saens, Glinka and Rimski-Korsakov, with an interloper, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen whose Wind Quintet is the greatest work for that combination, which seldom features in these Festival Weekends.

The lunchtime concerts will be given by the leading French pianist Jean-Michel Dayez, who will include Mussorgski’s Pictures at an Exhibition, originally written for piano of course, the Erato Piano Trio, bass baritone Jonathan Lemalu who will include Mussorgski’s Songs and Dances of Death and a piano trio from Ensemble 360 with an all Rachmaninov programme, starting with Gemma Rosefield, back in Leamington for the third year running, playing his Cello Sonata in G minor.

There will also be a Family Concert featuring Poulenc’s L’Histoire de Babar, narrated by Hannah Medlam with Jean-Michel Dayez playing the piano.

Bookings can be made at the Bridge House Theatre box office.

Call 776438 or visit www.bridgehousetheatre.co.uk