Petersfield Musical Festival is delighted to be able to stage a full programme of events during March 2022, following the cancellation of last year’s event. Audiences will be delighted to engage once more with live performances and full orchestras as the musical world finally adjusts to normality.
The keynote of the 2022 Festival will be a large-scale choral concert ‘In Praise of Singing on 26th March. Featuring two works exalting the joy of singing it is bound to raise the spirits of singers and audiences alike. The concert showcases Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, an exhilarating cantata which sets Biblical texts on the theme of thanksgiving and the central importance of singing to human existence. The second piece, Jonathan Willcocks’ In Praise of Singing forms an eloquent setting of poetry and the Psalms expressing the same theme. These two choral works are bolstered by two life-affirming orchestral works, Britten’s Soirées Musicales (based on Rossini) and the popular orchestral work, Smetana’s Vlatava from Ma Vlast. Paul Spicer conducts the Basingstoke Symphony Orchestra.
A wide variety of concerts this year will appeal to a diverse range of musical tastes: these include the annual Family Concert and Youth concerts by students drawn from participating local schools and organizations; Meridian Winds; Liss (brass) Band and a series of lunch-time chamber concerts and piano duets in St Peter’s Church including the recent winners of the Michael Hurd Fund for Young Musicians who will be seizing the opportunity to show off their instrumental skills in front of a live audience on 22nd March.
Another highlight promises to be the 18th Century Masters concert on 19th March which features Vivaldi’s timeless and popular Dixit Dominus along with Bach’s buoyant Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F. The concert wraps up with Haydn’s Mariazeller Mass. The singers are accompanied by SouthDowns Camerata and showcases some specialist Baroque instrumental players including trumpet and recorder.
For opera lovers, the ever-inventive Merry Opera Company are staging the much-loved Mikado – but don’t expect a conventional reading of this provocative work!
Full-blooded 19th century romanticism will be the flavour of the Petersfield Orchestra’s programme on 24th March, featuring Schumann, Brahms Symphony No.4 and the sumptuous Saint-Saëns Piano concerto No.2 with acclaimed soloist Valentina Seferinova.
Sarah Hard
