West Meon Music Festival 2023

Musical delights at West Meon

There will be plenty of musical treats in store this year at the 14th annual West Meon Music Festival (12th to 15th September) with an award-winning pianist, a group of world-renowned baroque musicians, and two of the UK's most-talented young string players joining the Primrose Piano Quartet for eight concerts over the four days.

Highlights from the festival include piano quartets by Mozart, Schumann and Brahms as well as a rarely-performed piano sextet by Sergei Lyapunov, who fled to Paris after the 1917 Russian revolution, when the quartet will be joined by double bassist Will Duerden and violinist Tom Aldren.

While most concerts are held at West Meon's St John the Evangelist Church, the festival also extends elsewhere into the Meon Valley. Cutting edge baroque quartet Red Priest (named after the original "red priest" - Antonio Vivaldi) have been delighting audiences across the globe since 1997 and will be bringing their unique style of high-energy performances and theatrical presentation to East Meon church on the morning on Saturday 14th September. "Truly Madly Baroque" will explore themes of love, joy and madness. Later in the day the lovely 12th century Church of Our Lady in Warnford is home to a recital by the Primrose's string players of works by Purcell and Mozart. On Sunday morning (15th September) Lithuanian pianist Gabrielé Sutkuté - winner of some 20 international piano competitions - will be performing works by Rameau, Brahms, Debussy and Prokofiev in West Meon, while that afternoon's festival finale sees the Primrose Piano Quartet focussing on "German Romantics" with works by Felix Mendelssohn, his sister Fanny, Emilie Mayer and Robert Schumann. In addition there will be a late-night jazz concert by local band, East of Meon, at West Meon's iconic Thomas Lord pub in aid of Cosham-based The Elizabeth Foundation - the UK's leading charity for pre-school deaf children; the charity uses music as part of its therapy to help them to talk and communicate.

Ticket prices start at £19 and the box office will open at the beginning of June. For full details of all concerts visit www.westmeonmusic.co.uk. The evening concerts are candlelit and include a glass of wine. The morning concerts include coffee & biscuits and the afternoon concerts tea & cake. The Saturday morning concert, Red Priest, Truly Madly Baroque, is at All Saints East Meon, and the Saturday afternoon concert, the Primrose Piano Quartet, Purcell and Mozart, is at the Church of Our Lady, Warnford.

The Primrose Piano Quartet is one the country's leading ensembles and its acclaimed discography includes classical favourites as well as many unjustly neglected works by early twentieth century British composers. Their major commissions include piano quartets written for them by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Anthony Payne. The quartet appears regularly in London at Kings Place and the Conway Hall and has recently toured Denmark, Germany and Bulgaria. The quartet is a leading exponent of historically informed performance and Its latest recording of the complete Brahms piano quartets, made in Vienna on authentic pianos of the period, was highly recommended on Radio 3's "Record Review". A new CD of French nineteenth century works, also using an historic piano, is currently in production.