EDWARD STOURTON

Tuesday 18 July 12.30pm – 1.30pm

Buxton Opera House £15

Confessions

Edward Stourton regularly presents BBC Radio Four programmes such as The World at One, The World This Weekend, Sunday and Analysis. He has been a foreign correspondent for Channel Four, ITN and the BBC, and for ten years he was one of the main presenters of the Today programme. During his forty-year career the world has changed, and so has he. Brought face to face with the author of his obituary and his own inevitable mortality, Stourton is prompted to reflect on the life he has led and the events, from the end of Empire to #metoo, that have shaped him.

Sacha Rattle And Peter Donohoe

Clarinet And Piano

Tuesday 18 July 3pm – 5pm (including interval) St John’s Church £30, Balcony £25

‘The lyrical romanticism of Brahms and Berg’

R Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op. 73

A Berg Piano Sonata, Op. 1

J Brahms Clarinet Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1

W Lutosławski Dance Preludes

A Berg 4 Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5

J Brahms Clarinet Sonata in E flat, Op. 120 No. 2

The idea for this programme came out of the wonderful juxtaposition of late Brahms and early Berg. One forgets how close they were in time, Brahms’s Op. 120 Sonatas written only 16 years before Berg’s Op. 1. Both composers seem to find the essence of romanticism even in such different styles, composing so that no note is superfluous, and each with a quintessential meaning. Schumann’s song-like Fantasy Pieces and Lutosławski’s folk-inspired Dance Preludes round out the programme.

Tuesday 18 July

Sara Wheeler

Tuesday 18 July 4pm – 5pm

Pavilion Arts Centre £12

Glowing Still: A Woman’s Life on the Road

Sara Wheeler is one of Britain’s foremost travel writers. Glowing Still is the story of her travelling life in a notoriously testosteroneladen field. Recalling happy days on India’s Puri Express; an Antarctic lavatory through which a seal popped up; and the louche life of a Parisian shopgirl. When corralling reindeer with the Sami in Arctic Sweden and towing her baby on a sledge, a helpful herdsman advised her to put foil down her bra to facilitate nursing. But advancing years usher in unheralded freedoms, and journey’s end finds Wheeler at peace among Zanzibar dhows, contemplating our connection with other lives and the irreplaceable value that travel brings.

THE

Jonathan Kennedy

Wednesday 19 July 10am – 11am

Pavilion Arts Centre £12

Pathogenesis: How Infectious Diseases Shaped Human History

Dr Jonathan Kennedy argues that germs have done more to shape humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo Sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam. The latest science reveals that infectious diseases are not just something that happens to us, but a fundamental part of who we are. We have been thinking about the survival of the fi ttest all wrong: evolution is not simply about human strength and intelligence, but about how we live and thrive in a world dominated by microbes.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Wednesday 19 July 11.15am – 12.15pm

St John’s Church £25, Balcony £20

M Bonis Soir et Matin for piano trio

L Boulanger, C Debussy, M Ravel and C Saint-Saëns A selection of salon pieces

R Hahn Piano Quintet in F sharp minor

Founded in 2017 and directed by husband and wife Tom Poster, piano, and Elena Urioste, violin, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was appointed associate ensemble at Wigmore Hall, London, in 2020. The group’s flexible membership enables it to perform a wide-ranging repertoire. Its three recordings, to date, are devoted to, respectively, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and American music, with works by Amy Beach, Florence Price and Samuel Barber.

This all-French programme transports us to the elegant salons of Paris.