The 2009 HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival was an incredibly diverse cultural offering, one of the most vibrant and welcoming you could come across anywhere. If you put together the Shower Scene from Psycho, Robert Winston on composers’ mental health, Zadok the Priest with 16 baroque trumpets, the scabrous wit of Kit and the Widow, a fully-staged production of Mozart’s first opera, a major exhibition of comic-artist Gerard Hoffnung 50 years after his death, jazz-infused klezmer from Swiss quintet Kol Simcha, poet Wendy Cope’s new collaboration with composer Roxanna Panufnik and Michael Morpurgo with his Mozart Question, you have a very rich offering indeed.
In 2009 we celebrate our 65 year past, through a fresh look at some of Cheltenham’s illustrious premieres. We celebrate the inspirational brilliance of young performers — from a role-model star like Nicola Benedetti to performances by our Festival Academy and five youth orchestras, no less. We celebrate 250 years of the string quartet — in honour of Haydn — and music by composers with Jewish heritage — in honour of Mendelssohn.
Meurig Bowen