THIS Year’s Machynlleth Festival opens this Sunday, August 22, with the traditional Cymanfa Ganu Welsh hymn singing evening with the Wesley Singers from Llanidloes and tenor soloist Alwyn Evans from Machynlleth.
The evening also features organist Tudur Jones from Tywyn and Llanwnog conductor Bryn Davies.
The festival’s 18 events continue on Monday, August 23, at 1pm with a performance of “Burton”, a one-man performance by Rhodri Miles portraying the actor Richard Burton. Written by Gwynne Edwards of Aberystwyth, and directed by Hugh Thomas, with beautiful women, alcohol, wealth, stage and screen among the threads woven into this sad, happy, exuberant, often hilarious show.
On Monday at 7.30pm the Welsh Composers’ Concert will include new compositions by Mark Bowden, Christopher Painter, Michael Robinson, Huw Watkins, and Andrew Wilson-Dickson. Huw Watkins (piano) is also one of the performers playing with Clara Biss (violin), Robin Michael (cello) and Katie Lockhart (clarinet).
On Tuesday from 1pm there will be the children's concert, “The Wonderful World of Song”, presented by three outstanding young artists, soprano Rhona McKail, baritone Maciek O'Shea, and pianist Annabel Thwaite.
They wil include songs by Schubert, Schumann, Quilter, Britten and storytelling from the stage.
Tuesday at 7.30 pm will feature a choral concert by one of the best loved choirs in Wales, Côr Godre’r Aran.
During the interval Gary Griffiths will be asked to present awards from The Tabernacle Trust’s Educational Foundation to selected young people from the Dyfi Valley as they start their higher education.
Wednesday lunchtime has the 2010 Hallstatt Lecture which will be given by given by celebrated local academic, Professor David Austin, on The Cistercians of Strata Florida: their role in making Welsh identity.
Wednesday night is Jazz Night. At 7.30pm welcome Sarah Jane Morris for an evening of soul, jazz, blues and passionate original song-writing from the remarkable vocal range of Sarah Jane and her four-piece band.
One of Britain's leading violin and piano duos Katharine Gowers on violin and Charles Owen on piano, present a programme to include the sumptuous violin and piano sonatas of César Franck and Leos Janácek next Thursday at 1pm.
On Thursday at 7.30pm the acclaimed pianist Imogen Cooper comes to the festival for the first time in a programme that will include Preludes by Debussy, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke and Schubert’s sublime last Piano Sonata in B flat major.
The soprano Dame Felicity Lott is 2010’s featured artist and on Friday evening at 7.30pm she starts her mini-residency in a recital with the festival’s artistic director, pianist Julius Drake, of Schubert, Wolf, Duparc, R Strauss and Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder.
At noon on Saturday, August 28, the Ailsa Owen Memorial Prize for the People’s Choice will be awarded as part of the 2010 Tabernacle Art Competition.
This year’s theme is “The Love Messenger”, the final part of R Williams Parry’s romantic poem Ode to the Summer. All through the week Caitlin Shepherd’s exhibition “Common Threads” will be on show.
On Saturday at 1pm the brilliant Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva returns to Machynlleth with outstanding musicians from Russia and Latvia, violinist Boris Brovtsyn and the cellist Kristine Blaumane, in a programme devoted to the music of the great French composer Maurice Ravel: Sonatine for piano, Sonata for violin and cello and Trio for violin, cello and piano.
The day continues between 3pm and 5pm leading young voice and piano partnerships work in a Masterclass with one of the foremost sopranos of today, Dame Felicity Lott. soprano Jazimina MacNeil and pianist Deirdre Brenner come from the USA, Runette Botha from South Africa and pianist Seydeh Sanaz Sotoudeh from Iran.
The Elias String Quartet are one of Europe’s best up-and-coming chamber groups and they perform in Machynlleth on Saturday at 7.30pm.
The day’s final event from 10pm features the superb Berlin-based cabaret singer Eva Meier joined by pianist Paul Cibis for a programme entitled “Love, Loss and Laughter” with songs by Weill, Eisler, Hollaender, Spoliansky and Heymann.
Sunday, August 29, is the last day of the festival starting at 11am with Dame Felicity Lott in conversation with opera expert Anthony Whitworth-Jones.
At 1pm Marcus Farnsworth, winner of the 2009 Wigmore Song Competition, is joined by the outstanding pianist Anna Tilbrook in an all-Schumann concert to celebrate the bicentenary of the composer’s birth: Belsazar, Songs Opus 90 and Dichterliebe.
The last concert is at 7.30pm with the Fauré Quartet of Berlin, who are among the world’s most exciting young ensembles, perform in Wales for the first time. In the first half they will play Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A minor and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Piano Quartet No 2 in F minor. The skilfully-chosen festival concludes with Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor Op 25.
Festival events all take place at the Tabernacle, a converted chapel in the heart of Machynlleth.
Full listings for the festival can be found at www.momawales.org.uk with the festival box office open for bookings on 01654 703355.