Cheltenham Music Festival


The Cheltenham Music Festival is a British music festival, held annually in Cheltenham in the summer months since 1945. The festival is renowned for premieres of contemporary music – in its early days especially British music – hosting over 250 music premieres as of July 2004. The name was changed to the Cheltenham International Music Festival in 1974, and back to the Cheltenham Music Festival in 2005.
WWW cheltenhamfestivals.com/m...𝕏 CheltMusicFest

History

The first annual Cheltenham Music Festival was inaugurated in 1945, run by the Cheltenham Corporation and taking place over three evenings in mid-June. From the start it was intended as an event to highlight new British music. The London Philharmonic Orchestra was engaged with conductor Basil Cameron, alongside three composer-conductors: Benjamin Britten, William Walton and Arthur Bliss.
In 1948 the Hallé Orchestra under John Barbirolli became the resident orchestra for the next 15 years. Barbirolli was less comfortable with new repertoire; he described Peter Racine Fricker's First Symphony as "Frickery trickery" and asked Richard Arnell to cut twenty minutes from his Third Symphony. This led overall to the presentation of safer choices and less challenging music, creating tension with sponsors such as the BBC and the Arts Council. To address this, George Weldon was appointed associate conductor and the Composers' Guild and the Society for the Promotion of New Music were brought in to recommend new works.
In the first 25 years of the festival, the most performed British composers were Britten, Alan Rawsthorne, Lennox Berkeley Walton, Arnold Bax and Bliss. Bliss became president of the Festival in 1962. The Festival soon established the practice of commissioning substantial works, which led to the concept of the "Cheltenham Symphony" and the "Cheltenham Concerto" – terms sometimes used disparagingly.
John Manduell was appointed as the first Programme Director for the 1969 the festival, overseeing 25 seasons until 1994 and commissioning some 250 new works. These included Lennox Berkeley's Antiphon, the 1983 Elegy and Scherzo Alla Marcia for strings by Gordon Crosse and Another Dream Carousel for string orchestra by Anthony Gilbert.

Cheltenham Symphonies (1945–1964)

Cheltenham Concertos (1945–1962)

Artistic directors