Friday 17 March - 7.30 pm: Liss Band and Petersfield Community Choir
These two popular local groups will be bringing a lively programme of brass band music and popular songs.
Saturday 18 March - 7.30 pm Handel Jephtha - Handel’s last oratorio, one of his greatest, and a comparative rarity – so grab the chance to hear it or sing in it! The Festival Chorus will be joined by young soloists and Southern Pro Musica, conducted by Paul Spicer.
Sunday 19 March - 3–4 pm Family Concert – ‘Dancing through time’
Children will love this tour of dance music from pavane to tango, presented by the string players of SouthDowns Camerata and including audience participation.
Monday 20 & Wednesday 22 March - 7pm Youth Concerts - The Festival’s annual sell-out Youth Concerts bring together hundreds of young musicians between 8 and 18, in a collaboration that shows the strength of the music-making in our local schools.
Tuesday 21 March - 1pm (St Peter’s Church) Shostakovich Piano Trio no. 2.
Angela Zanders’ lecture recital will explore the composer’s fraught relationship with the Soviet authorities and include a complete performance of this intense and dramatic work.
Wednesday 22 March - 7.30 pm (St Peter’s Church) - Anemos Wind Ensemble with Karen Kingsley. A programme including magnificent works by Mozart and Poulenc that exploit to the full the colourful combination of wind instruments and piano.
Thursday 23 March - 7.30 pm Petersfield Orchestra - Cordelia Williams, the soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto, is a rising star who has been praised for her ‘consummate artistry’. After the interval, Robin Browning conducts Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations, the first masterpiece of the ‘English musical renaissance’, dedicated to ’my friends pictured within’.
Friday 24 March - 7.30 pm An Evening of Musical Theatre Talent and exuberance overflow in the performances by the GSA Singers from the University of Surrey’s Guildford School of Acting, a 24-strong company of performers selected from the Musical Theatre and Acting courses.
Saturday 25 March - 7.30 pm Stanford, Grieg, Puccini - Paul Spicer and Stephen Scotchmer conduct the Festival Chorus and Basingstoke Symphony Orchestra in a programme of picturesque music from across Europe, with Ed Ballard and Samuel Stopford making their second appearance as soloists.
All concerts to be held in Petersfield Festival Hall unless otherwise stated. For further details and to buy tickets, go to: petersfieldmusicalfestival.org.uk