Festival Week is a new addition to the calendar of annual classical concerts and recitals organised by Music in the Burnhams.
Running from Sunday 19th July to Friday 24th July, the festival will celebrate composer Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885), who was the conductor of the Norwich Festival for over 30 years.
It will officially launch with a Choral Evensong at St Mary’s Church in Burnham Market, on 19th July, at 3pm, featuring choruses and arias from Benedict’s cantata ‘The Legend of St Cecilia’ sung by St Martin’s Voices, the choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, London. This service will be recorded for broadcast as the Daily Service on BBC Radio 4 on St Cecilia’s Day on 22nd November.
Then from 20th to 23rd July, All Saints Church in Burnham Thorpe will host daily lunchtime (1pm) and evening (7.30pm) concerts of chamber music.
A highlight, starting at 5pm on 22nd July, will be a five-hour marathon ‘Monster Concert’ of ballads, arias, poems and instrumental turns modelled on Benedict’s legendary Grand Annual Concerts. Actor Dudley O’Shaughnessy from Netflix series ‘Top Boy’ will recite the poem ‘The Uncle’ by Henry Glassford Bell, a favourite of Benedict’s Monster Concerts.
The London Chamber Orchestra under conductor Christopher Warren-Green will provide the finale on 24th July at 7.30pm.
Sensational young pianist Thomas Kelly, a prize winner at this year’s International Liszt Competition in Utrecht, will be resident throughout the festival.
Other world-class musicians performing include pianists Andrew West, Peter Hewitt and Philip Carli, clarinettists Emma Johnson and John Bradbury, flautist Michael Cox, oboist Gordon Hunt, bassoonist Sarah Burnett, horn player Ben Goldscheider, violinists Ben Holland, David Greed and Robert Gibbs, violist Wenhong Luo, cellist Adrian Bradbury, double bassist Christopher West, the Victoria String Quartet, soprano Milly Forrest and tenors Lawrence Thackeray and Gwilym Bowen.
