News

Bonhams Valuation Day - Bledington Village Hall
Friday November 5th 2010

Simon Davies, the Senior Valuer for Bonhams Auctioneers and Valuers will be at Bledington Village Hall on 5th November from 10am to 3pm. Simon will be joined by Philip Scott, Head of the Bonham's Music Department.  Valuations cost £2 per item. 

Refreshments will be available.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Posted 8.3.10

Festival Success in 2009

All are agreed that 2009 yet again surpassed all previous years for concert attendance, for variety of performers and for the general ‘feel-good’ factor.

As expected the Pavão Quartet (shown right with Festival Organiser Rodney Beacham) set the Festival off on a perfect note with a wonderful presentation in the village primary school, using their new stage for the first time, followed by a very well-received evening concert. This was attended by, amongst others, Jeremy Pound of BBC Music Magazine who was enthusiastic about the future of the Festival and in particular, its tenth year in 2010.

Local schools once again enjoyed a treat on the second day with Percussion workshops by Dewi Ellis Jones (shown above). They were overwhelmed by the variety of instruments and the power of the tam-tam and had a lesson in how to hold the mallets to play the marimba and vibraphone.



An enthusiastic and interested audience attended the evening recital and marvelled at the dexterity and speed of playing on the snare drum and the gentle, soothing music of the marimba.

The final day brought Thomas Trotter and Crispian Steele-Perkins to play to a packed church. Some visitors even came from Birmingham to see them a second time having already attended their concert in Birmingham Town Hall!

People who had been disappointed in obtaining tickets for the evening joined the children from the school for their shortened presentation in the afternoon.

The evening concert provided everything from Handel’s Water Music played on a hose pipe to beautiful performances of music by Mendelssohn, Haydn, Leroy Anderson and Ligeti.

All our performers generously wrote in the Church Visitors Book of their enjoyment playing in Bledington, the welcome and hospitality they had received and the beauty of the surroundings. We look forward to 2010!

Posted 12.6.09

Review by the Gloucestershire Echo

Bledington Festival: Pavao - St Leonard's Church, Bledington
Wednesday 3rd June 2009
Crackerjack rating: 8 / 10

This month most musical events in Gloucestershire take place away from the urban centres in picturesque Cotswold villages, such as Bledington, whose annual mini-festival is now in its ninth year.

Mozart's familiar Divertimento in D, K136 is ideal music for a summer's evening, and the young all-female string quartet Pavao, who had played for local schoolchildren in the afternoon, gave a crisp, polished performance of this work.

Pavao are keen advocates of Bax's music and this was evident from their committed playing of his First String Quartet. Although composed at the end of World War I, the opening movement of this work is a cheerful, melodious affair, and the musicians handled the abrupt changes of tempo with great skill.

The lush sounding slow movement is sombre in tone with an eerie central passage which seemed to evoke the ghosts of the fallen.
The Quartet gave a profoundly moving performance of this movement before striking out on the frenzied dance-like finale which blended Russian folk rhythms with an Irish melody.

The second half of the concert was lighter in mood and included Astor Piazzolla's zany Four, for Tango which demanded some unusual playing techniques from the players.

Carlo Martelli's clever arrangements of popular songs went down particularly well with the audience, who spotted quotations from other works. Debussy's Clair de Lune made an appearance in Moon River and as A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square you could hear A Lark Ascending.

The Bledington Festival ends on Thursday with a performance of music for trumpet and organ by Crispian Steele-Perkins and Thomas Trotter.

Roger Jones

Festival Vice President Releases New Recording

Catrin Finch, the acclaimed harpist and Vice President of the Bledington Music Festival, has released a new CD on Deutsche Grammophon featuring her own arrangement for harp of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. A successsful UK tour supported the release.

Posted 19.2.09