For the second consecutive year in June, we were delighted at CommunicationsPoint to be heavily involved in the promotion of the annual Farley Music Festival in Wiltshire. It is one of the most prestigious classical music festivals in the South of England.
In 2017, we managed to help the Festival achieve a record year for attendances, and this year that figure was smashed! I am very grateful to Farley Music Festival Chairman Michael Regan for the following very kind words:
“I would like to thank you at CommunicationsPoint very much indeed for all your efforts to ensure that the 2018 Farley Music Festival was such a resounding success. We had record numbers overall during the week, with each concert being attended by audiences in excess of 100 people.”
Festival concerts took place in the historic surroundings of the iconic, Wren-style All Saints’ Church in the picturesque Wiltshire village of Farley, seven miles east of Salisbury. The proceeds from record ticket sales went to the upkeep of All Saints’.
The quality of the internationally acclaimed young performers and their concerts were, as ever, outstanding.
For example, the opening night saw a magnificent performance by Retorica, the acclaimed violin duo of Harriet McKenzie and Philippa Mo, who met at London’s Royal Academy of Music. They formed Retorica in 2010 to explore music for two violins. Since then, they have performed all over the world – including in China, Germany, Japan, and at the Barbican Centre in London.
The following night’s concert (on Wednesday, 20 June) was given by a rising young pianist and Royal Academy of Music scholarship student Ariel Lanyi, who is making a big international name for himself. He performs regularly on Israeli radio and television, and has given numerous recitals in London, Paris, Rome, Prague, and Belfast. Born in 1997, Ariel has an unusually mature instinct for the classical style (a challenge for any pianist). In his Farley concert programme, he superbly contrasted Mozart’s tragic Adagio in B Minor, K.540, with the sunniest of Schubert’s sonatas: The Sonata in D Major, D 850.
On the Thursday, multi-award winning Hungarian-American pianist Julia Hamos – who had travelled from New York, gave her recital. In the ‘Big Apple’, she studied with the great Beethoven interpreter Richard Goode. Julia’s Farley concert programme featured Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A Major, op.101; Schumann’s witty and touching Davidsbündlertänze, op.6; and J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Sharp Major, BWV 848, and Prelude and Fugue in C Sharp Minor, BWV 849.
Following her triumph in delighting and thrilling Farley Music Festival audiences two years ago, the distinguished French pianist Isabelle Oehmichen made a welcome return to Farley to give the Friday evening concert. A pupil of the legendary Georges Cziffra, Isabelle is now one of the world’s foremost Liszt specialists. At Farley, she performed Liszt’s Cantique d’amour, as well as three of his realisations of songs by Schumann, Schubert and Wagner. Her excellent recital also included Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, K.397/385g, and Sonata in C Major, K.330; as well as Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, pp.27, No.1; and Debussy’s Reflets dans l’Eau and the sparkling L’Isle Joyeuse.
The final concert on the Saturday evening was given over to Sapori Vocali (Vocal Flavours), who presented ‘A Night at the Opera’, a delightful taste of opera favourites in an intimate and informal setting. Founded by Alexandra Frazer, a former pupil of Salisbury’s Godolphin School who graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in 2016, this talented group of young artists presented a programme of enchanting arias and charming ensembles by the well-loved composers, from Handel to Humperdinck and Rameau to Rossini.
Sapori Vocali is a performing arts company that organises small local concerts and shows in village halls around Britain. The company’s aim is to showcase emerging classical artists through providing platforms on which musicians can perform and demonstrate their training and talent.
On Sunday, 24 June, Farley Music Festival 2018 closed with the traditional Festival Evensong. This year, the theme was the Psalms of David, preceded by a Festival innovation: a Farley Music Festival and ‘Multitude of Voyces’ (MOV) partnership project – a workshop for church-music singers from the Salisbury area. The workshop explored the Devotional Psalms of Richard Allison, published in 1599.
Big congratulations go to all the Farley Music Festival organisers; and CommunicationsPoint looks forward very much to a record-breaking 2019 Farley Music Festival! (www.farleymusic.co.uk).
