Music 2017 & 2018 by Martin Randall Travel

M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L A RT • A R C H I T E C T U R E • G A S T R ONO M Y • A R C H A E OLO G Y • H I S TORY • M U S I C

MUSIC 2017 & 2018 Tours for small groups | Music Festivals | Chamber Music Weekends | London Days

Matching music and place Our festivals in 2017 & 2018 2017

2018

A Festival of Music in Florence 13–18 March 2017

Music in The Cotswolds May 2018

A Festival of Music in Franconia 25 August–1 September 2018

Toledo: A Festival of Spanish Music 20–25 May 2017

Prague: A Festival of Music June 2018

The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford 24–28 September 2018

The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus 6–13 July 2017 The Danube Festival 20–27 August 2017 The Johann Sebastian Bach Journey 4–10 September 2017

The Rhine Valley Music Festival 20–27 June 2018 The Danube Festival 21–28 July 2018

A Festival of Music in Bologna October 2018

Please contact us to register your interest in any of our music festivals in 2018.

Vivaldi in Venice 6–11 November 2017 Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com

Contents Recently-launched music tours The Ryedale Festival................................4 The Sibelius Festival................................5 The Beaune Music Festival.....................6 Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival.............8 Strauss in Leipzig.....................................9 Monteverdi at La Fenice.......................10 Trasimeno Music Festival.....................11 Opera in Oslo.........................................12 The Bergen Festival................................13 Drottningholm & Confidencen...........15 The Lucerne Festival..............................16 Music tours & events by date: 2017......17 London Days London Choral Day...............................18 Handel in London..................................19 Music in 2018: a preview.......................20 Booking details Booking form..........................................21 Booking Conditions; Fitness................23 Making a booking..................................24

Front cover illustration: Bavarian cartoon of 1900; this page: Vienna, Karlskirche, early-20th-century etching; back cover: Rhine Maidens, lithograph by Henri Fantin-Latour, 1886.

M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L A R T • A R C H I T E C T U R E • G A S T R O N O M Y • A R C H A E O L O G Y • H I S T O R Y • M U S I C • L I T E R AT U R E

Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London, United Kingdom W4 4GF T 020 8742 3355 F 020 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com

Dear traveller and music lover, All our 2017 musical events get a mention in this brochure, the first time we have published a music-only supplement for many years. The mentions range from full-length descriptions with full details – tours we have not published before – to a minimal appearance in the date list. Many of our 2017 music tours have been published in full in our 2017: Second Edition brochure, and dedicated brochures are available for the festivals and events that we ourselves create. Full details of all of them are also on our website of course, but please do not hesitate to ask us if you want to know more. Details of our 2018 music tours and festivals will be released throughout the coming year. We are the UK’s largest provider of holidays with music, and our own-brand festivals remain unique in their scope and musical quality. I hope you will be able to join us this year for one or more of these very special experiences. With best wishes,

Martin Randall January 2017

We are the leading provider of cultural tours Martin Randall Travel has the widest range of tours and events offered by any cultural travel organiser, as well as the largest number. We operate in over fifty countries. We enrich lives Our aim is to provide the circumstances which lead to a deeper understanding of a place or subject matter, and an enhanced appreciation of the culture of civilizations around the world. The best lecturers Expert speakers are a key ingredient. Selected with great care, they not only have deep knowledge of their subject but also the ability to convey their learning to educated lay people.

Inspired itineraries Assiduous research and reconnaissance underlie our itineraries, which are imaginatively conceived, meticulously planned – and original. Due attention is given to practical as well as academic matters to ensure a smoothrunning experience. Special arrangements All our events include ingredients which are not available to the general public such as out-of-hours opening or access to private properties. Some events consist entirely of these special experiences. Travel in comfort Most of the hotels we use are 4- or 5–star, we only use full service airlines, and the restaurants we choose are among the best in the region. While our itineraries are full, they are not rushed.

ABTA No.Y6050

Additional tour staff Our tours are accompanied by a trained tour manager, sometimes a member of our full–time staff. In many parts of the world local guides feature with varying degrees of prominence. Care for our clients We aim for faultless administration from your first encounter with us to the end of the holiday, and beyond. In three successive years, 2014, 2015 and 2016, we won the British Travel Award for Best Small Holiday Company for Customer Service. We aim for excellence In 2015 and 2016 we also won the British Travel Award for Best Special Interest Holiday Company, yet we ‘have a habit of divine discontent with our performance’: complacency does not corrode our desire to strive ever to be the best.

5085

Directors: Martin Randall (Chief Executive), Fiona Urquhart (Chief Operating Officer), Sir Vernon Ellis (Chairman), Ian Hutchinson, Neil Taylor, William Burton Registered office: Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London W4 4GF. Registered Company no. 2314294 England. VAT no. 527758803

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Ryedale Festival Music & walking in North Yorkshire The enthusiastic and loyal audience is largely local, but visitors from further afield are immediately charmed by the warmth of welcome and the prevailing spirit of goodwill. An essentially rural event touches the peaks of civilized existence; genuine community involvement enables a relatively small regional festival to be of national significance.

Itinerary Day 1. The coach leaves York Station at 1.30pm and drives the 29 miles to Helmsley. The base for all six nights, Helmsley is a busy little country town, largely Georgian in the centre. Time to settle in, a talk, dinner. In the evening drive to Castle Howard for a Triple Concert, with the audience rotating around three spaces to hear three contrasting performances (programmes to be announced). Long Gallery, the Royal Northern Sinfonia; Chapel, artist to be announced; Great Hall, Choir of York Minster. Day 2. Drive up to the North York Moors for a five-mile walk along mostly flat terrain on the top of Sutton Bank escarpment, along the Cleveland Way and Sneck Yate Bank with spectacular views to York and the distant Pennines. Evening concert: the Carducci Quartet, programme to be announced.

19–25 July 2017 (md 405) 7 days • £2,490 (Including tickets to 8 performances) Lecturer: Professor John Bryan Tour manager: Imogen Walford Eight concerts in historic buildings scattered across a lovely stretch of Yorkshire countryside. Four walks of up to five miles, from one hour to four, through a wonderful variety of landscapes, heather moorland to shaded little valleys. Performers in 2017 include Sir John Tomlinson, Christopher Glynn, the Carducci Quartet, Elias Quartet and Sally Beamish, Llŷr Williams, Pavel Kolesnikov, the Choir of York Minster and the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Visits to market towns, attractive villages, mediaeval churches and country houses.

ENGLAND 4

The River Rye rises in the Cleveland Hills and passes through rugged wooded valleys before emerging into the open rolling landscapes north-east of York. Here clusters of broadleaves and ancient hedges punctuate fields of arable and grazing, for this is prime farming country. The market towns and villages of the region – of chalky limestone, or ochre sandstone, or brown brick – are of a muted loveliness, and

seem not much changed for decades. Substantial Georgian mansions abound, as do mediaeval and Victorian churches, and there is a handful of major stately homes, all reflecting centuries of agricultural prosperity. The North Yorkshire Moors are adjacent; they contain 30% of Britain’s heather moor, and at their edges are some exceptionally pretty valleys, steep-sided and variegated with woodland, dry-stone walls and pasturage. To the south-west rise the Howardian Hills, lowland undulations at their most magisterial, the site of great estates and noble veteran trees. This all makes for excellent walking country, and when timed to coincide with the Ryedale Festival there emerges the possibility of a magnificent addition to our series of tours combining country walks with concerts of classical music. Founded in 1981, the Ryedale Festival has steadily grown, latterly under the enlightened and imaginative curatorship of Christopher Glynn, into one of the most alluring in the country. Established artists mix with young discoveries, core repertoire with unusual and imaginative programming. Mostly the programme consists of chamber music and song, appropriate to the small scale of most of the venues – beautiful and often remote parish churches, civic halls and theatres, country house saloons and chapels.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Day 3. Drive to Pickering (25 mins) to catch a heritage train, maybe steam, on the North Yorks Moors Railway to the charming village of Goathland (‘Aidensfield’; ‘Hogsmead’) to start a five-mile circular walk, taking in the waterfall at Mallyan Spout. Some medium ascents and more gradual descents over undulating countryside. Return to Helmsley for a little free time. Late in the afternoon drive to Scarborough for dinner and a concert at the Grand Hall: Orchestra of Opera North, Aleksandar Marković (conductor), Pavel Kolesnikov (piano). Humperdinck, Overture to Hansel & Gretel; Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique. Day 4. A morning lecture and coffee concert: Chloe Hanslip (violin), Danny Driver (piano), cellist to be announced. Schubert, Trio in E flat. After some free time for lunch walk from Helmsley to Rievaulx Abbey. A fairly gentle three-mile walk through pasture and woodland alongside the River Rye. Rieveaulx Abbey is a mediaeval Cistercian foundation whose famous ruins are splendidly preserved. Walk back to Helmsley. There is no concert this evening and dinner is independent. Day 5. A wonderful 5-mile walk which starts in the village of Rosedale Abbey and follows a shaded beck through a succession of little fields, steadily climbing to open moorland. Sheep and cattle, game birds and raptors, the views ranging from picturesque to panoramic, 4½ hours, including picnic lunch. Return to

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Sibelius Festival Celebrating Finland’s centenary Helmsley. Evening concerts: 8.00pm concert from Sir John Tomlinson (bass), Christopher Glynn (piano), Schubert, Swansong; Wotan’s Ring. 9.30pm candlelit concert, Elias Quartet & Sally Beamish, Mozart, Quartet in G minor.

dominance and emerged as an independent nation in 1917. One hundred years on, 2017 marks Finland’s centenary and the International Sibelius Festival forms a key part of the celebrations. The Lahti Symphony Orchestra, directed by Dima Slobodeniouk, are joined by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, historically one of Sibelius’s greatest champions outside Finland, in a carefully constructed programme which includes Symphonies 2 and 5, Spring Song, En saga, The Wood-Nymph, Press Celebrations Music alongside other orchestral and chamber works. The small lakeside city of Lahti has hosted the festival annually since 2000 with performances taking place in the stunning timber concert hall, renowned for both design and acoustics. Our four nights there are preceded by a night in Helsinki, staying at Sibelius’s preferred Hotel Kamp, in order to set the National Romantic scene.

Day 6. A morning lecture and coffee concert: Llŷr Williams, Schubert, Impromptus; Sonata No.19 in C minor. Free afternoon, to rest, explore Helmsley or do a waymarked walk into the countryside. In the evening, a 7.00pm double concert at Sledmere house and church. House: Elias Quartet, Schubert, String Quintet in C. Church: to be announced. Day 7. The coach arrives at York Station around 11.00am. As an optional extra we recommend depositing luggage and exploring York. Please note that full details are not yet available for the Ryedale Festival so there may be some changes to the itinerary and concert programmes.

Lecturer Professor John Bryan. Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield. Regular contributor to BBC Radio 3’s early music programmes and artistic adviser to York Early Music Festival.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,490. Single occupancy: £2,860. Included: tickets to 8 performances, costing c. £240; hotel ccommodation; private coach; breakfasts, 4 dinners/ suppers, 2 lunches (one a picnic), with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer and tour manager. Accommodation: Black Swan, Helmsley AA**** (blackswan-helmsley.co.uk): an old stone building fronts the main square but most of the bedrooms are in a new wing behind, parallel to well-tended gardens. Décor and furnishings are agreeable; good restaurant. How strenuous? This is a walking tour, with four country walks of between one and four hours, between two and five miles. Some of the terrain is moderately steep, with cumulative elevation gain of up to 150 metres. Participants must be used to regular country walking with significant uphill element. Average distance by coach per day: 47 miles. Combine this tour with: The Beaune Music Festival, 13–17 July 2017 (page 6); Verona Opera, 13–17 July 2017; Literature & Walking in the Lake District, 10–14 July 2017 (contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com). Illustration, left: Rievaulx Abbey, aquatint 1820; above right: Jean Sibelius, 20th-century etching.

29 August–3 September 2017 (md 584) 6 days • £2,530 (Including tickets to 4 performances) Lecturer: Stephen Johnson

Day 1: London to Helsinki. Fly at c. 10.15 a.m. from London Heathrow to Helsinki (Finnair). Begin with a walk through the Neo-Classical heart of the city: the Esplanade, Senate Square, cathedral and Market Square.

The world-famous Lahti Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk are joined by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Santtu-Matias Rouvali to commemorate Jean Sibelius and ‘Finland 100’.

Day 2: Helsinki, Lahti. Lecture on the evening performance. The morning walk includes the art nouveau railway station by Eliel Saarinen and the Ateneum, Finland’s foremost art museum, with a collection of brilliant National Romantic pictures. Afternoon drive to Lahti, a pleasant if unspectacular town with attractive waterfront and adjoining parkland. Time to settle into the hotel before the evening performance. Concert at the Sibelius Hall with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk (conductor), Johanna Rusanen (soprano), Vile Rusanen (baritone), YL Male Voice Choir: Six songs for male voice choir, Rakastava, Veljeni vierailla mailla, Kullervo.

Among the works performed: the Second and Fifth Symphonies, Press Celebrations Music, Spring Song, En saga and The Wood-Nymph. Talks on the music by Stephen Johnson, presenter for BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music. Begin in Helsinki with a night at the Hotel Kamp before moving to the lakeside town of Lahti for four nights. Concerts are interspersed with visits associated with Sibelius and National Romanticism, led by local guides. Sibelius’s compositions are among the greatest and most universally appreciated achievements of western music. While displaying a range of stylistic influences, they are nevertheless highly original and distinctive, and are rooted in a passion for nature and a sense of the endurance of the human spirit. Sibelius was also one of the most placespecific of composers. His main literary influences were Nordic, particularly the Kalevala, the great Finnish national epic, and the landscapes which moved him so intensely are the forests and lakes of central Finland. He lived through and gave expression to the period of National Romanticism when Finland rebelled against Russian political and cultural

Day 3: Hämeenlinna, Lahti. Drive through birch forests to Hämeenlinna, one of the oldest settlements in Finland and birthplace of Sibelius. Visit the Sibelius Museum in the composer’s childhood home and the 13thcentury Häme Castle. Return to Lahti for a lecture. Evening concert at the Sibelius Hall with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk: Lemminkäinen, Luonnotar. Day 4: Lake Vesijärvi, Vääksy, Lahti. A guided tour of the City Hall designed by Saarinen (1912), then sail by steamboat from Lahti across Lake Vesijärvi, a delightful cruise through peaceful lakeland scenery. Disembark along the Vääksy Canal in the region where Sibelius spent a few summers with his family in the 1890s. Lunch here before driving back to Lahti. Some free time before the lecture. Evening concert

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

ENGLAND, FINLAND

Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.

Itinerary

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Sibelius Festival continued

The Beaune Music Festival Music, history & wine in Burgundy

with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor): The WoodNymph, En Saga, Symphony No.5. Day 5: Lahti. Morning visit to the Church of the Cross, the last work (1976) by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Continue to the Sibelius Hall for a private guided tour (subject to confirmation). Late afternoon concert with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk: Press Celebrations Music, Symphony No.2. Day 6: Lahti, Järvenpää. At Järvenpää visit Ainola, Sibelius’s lakeside home from 1903 until his death in 1957, unchanged and preserved as a museum; his grave is also here. Fly from Helsinki, arrive Heathrow c. 6.00 p.m.

Lecturer

13–17 July 2017 (md 398) 5 days • £2,560 (Including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Prof. Richard Langham Smith Three concerts in historic venues featuring Christophe Rousset, William Christie, Andreas Scholl and Accademia Bizantina. Four nights in the delightful small city of Beaune with guided visits, wine tastings and Michelin-starred meals. Lectures by Professor Richard Langham-Smith. This tour can be combined with our music festival: The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus, 6–13 July 2017 – please visit www.martinrandall.com for full details or contact us.

Stephen Johnson. Broadcaster, writer, lecturer and composer. A regular presenter for BBC Radio 3’s Discovering Music, he has also been a critic and journalist for the The Independent, The Guardian and Gramophone and lectured at Exeter University. Stephen has loved Sibelius’ music since childhood and has written, broadcast and lectured about him more than any other composer, with the possible exceptions of Beethoven and Bruckner.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,530 or £2,330 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,760 or £2,560 without flights. Included: tickets (first category) to 4 performances, costing c. £200; flights (economy class) with Finnair (aircraft: Airbus A350-900); private coach; boat trip; hotel accommodation; breakfasts, 4 dinners and 1 lunch with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer and tour manager; visits led by local guides. Accommodation. Hotel Kämp, Helsinki (hotelkamp.com): elegant 5-star hotel in Art Deco style. Solo Sokos Hotel Lahden Seurahuone, Lahti (sokoshotels.fi): modern 4-star hotel in the commercial heart of town with bar and bistro. Contemporary, if smallish, bedrooms (mostly with shower only). Single rooms throughout are doubles for sole use.

FINLAND, FRANCE 6

How strenuous? Walking and standing in museums is required. Average distance by coach per day: 69 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Danube Festival, 20–27 August 2017; The Johann Sebastian Bach Journey, 4–10 September 2017.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Now in its 35th year and established as one of the major French Music Festivals, the Beaune International Festival of Baroque and Romantic Opera centres on the open-air courtyard of the well-known fifteenth-century Hospices de Beaune, celebrated not only for its multicoloured roof of glazed tiles and for its annual auction of fine Burgundies, but also for its infirmary where music was sung to the sick lying in their carved wooden beds: a kind of Music Therapy avant l’heure. The first spectacle in our visit appropriately begins with a central work by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687). Lully was a violinist, a dancer and a prolific composer who became an all-powerful musical figure in France under the reign of the Sun King: other composers had to receive his approval before they could have their works published. He was responsible for

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

a crucial new genre which would profoundly influence all future opera: the Tragédie en musique for which his collaborator was Philippe Quinault. Alceste, adapted from Eurypides, is perhaps the most important of these early tragédies lyriques. First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1674, its popularity ensured that it was revived until well into the eighteenth century. Its choruses, Airs, ensembles and dances all make for a performance demonstrating the captivating variety of a grand spectacle composed in a great century for the arts. The magnificent Basilica of Notre-Dame hosts a concert of Sacred Music by Lully’s illustrious successor, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) who was less centred on opera but more on oratorio and sacred music. He was a master harmonist who had studied in Italy with Carissimi and returned to Paris to serve

various illustrious patrons and also the church of St. Louis, principal Parisian church of the Jesuits. His sacred music displays extraordinary diversity, from traditional settings of motets to mini-dramatic oratorios such as the heartrending ‘Denial of St. Peter’ (Le reniement de St. Pierre), included in this programme. Our visit ends with a recital from the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl, arguably the finest to emerge in the last twenty years. He will sing with the Italian Accademia Bizantina, an orchestra renowned for bringing a new spirit into modern performances of Baroque Music. He will include music by Purcell and sing some of the many operatic arias composed by Handel, so brilliantly suited to this unique voice. In addition to three performances, which begin at 9.00pm, there is time to explore the gastronomic and artistic delights of Beaune and Burgundy.

Itinerary Day 1. Take the Eurostar at c. 10.30am from London St Pancras to Paris. Coach transfer between stations to continue by TGV (highspeed train) to Dijon. Drive from here to Beaune where all four nights are spent. (Participants travelling on The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus take a TGV train from Lyon to Beaune.) Dinner is in the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Loiseau des Vignes. Day 2: Beaune. A morning walk with a local guide takes in the concert venues. The stalwart Romanesque church of Notre-Dame has fine tapestries while the 15th-century Hospices de Beaune houses Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgement. Afternoon tasting at Bouchard Père et Fils, one of the oldest wine estates in Burgundy occupying an impressive site in the 15th-century Château de Beaune. Evening opera (concert version) in the courtyard of the Hospices de Beaune: Alceste (Jean-Baptiste Lully) with the choir of Namur and the orchestra of Les Talens Lyriques directed by Christophe Rousset. Day 3: Meursault, Beaune. Morning lecture followed by a tasting at the prestigious Château de Meursault and lunch in the pretty town square. Free afternoon in Beaune, perhaps to visit the wine museum or the Dalineum, with over 150 of Dalí’s works. Evening concert in the Basilique Notre Dame: Oratorios & Motets by Charpentier including The Denial of St Peter. Performed by the choir and orchestra of Les Arts Florissants, directed by William Christie.

Day 5. Mid-morning coach transfer to Dijon for the TGV to Paris. Drive to the Gare du Nord for the Eurostar to London St Pancras arriving at c. 5.45pm.

Lecturer Professor Richard Langham Smith. Music historian, broadcaster and writer specialising in early music and 19th/20th-century French music. He is Research Professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1993 he was admitted as a Chevalier to the ‘Ordre des arts et des lettres’ for services to French Music, and was awarded an FRCM in 2016. His new edition of Bizet’s Carmen is currently much in demand.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,560 or £2,370 without Eurostar and TGV. Single occupancy: £2,860 or £2,670 without Eurostar and TGV. (Price if combining with The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus. Two sharing: £2,450. Single occupancy: £2,750. The cost of travel from and to London is included in the festival price, unless you are making your own arrangements.) Included: tickets (top-category) to 3 performances, costing c. £225; return rail travel (1st class, Standard Premier) by Eurostar from London to Paris and TGV from Paris to Dijon; private coach; hotel accommodation; breakfasts, 1 lunch and 3 dinners with wine; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer and tour manager. Music: open-air performances planned for the Hospices move to the basilica in inclement weather. Further details on soloists are due to be released in February 2017 – please see our website for updates or contact us. Accommodation. Hôtel le Cep, Beaune (hotelcep-beaune.com): 4-star hotel, housed in two 16th-century mansions, and located in the heart of Beaune. Rooms are decorated in a traditional style. Single rooms are doubles for sole use. How strenuous? Visits require a fair amount of walking and standing around. Burgundy is very hot in July. There are some late nights but starts are leisurely. You need to be able to lift your luggage on and off the train. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus, 6–13 July 2017 (please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com). Illustration: Beaune, Hôtel-Dieu, engraving 1887.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

FRANCE

Day 4: Dijon. Excursion to Burgundy’s capital, one of the most attractive of French cities with many fine buildings from 11th to 18th centuries. St Bénigne has an ambitious early Romanesque crypt while the palace of the Valois dukes now houses a museum with extensive collections of work from the period of their rule (1364–1477). Evening recital at the Basilique Notre Dame:

Andreas Scholl (counter-tenor) performs a selection of arias from operas and oratorios by Handel, Bach and Purcell, accompanied by the Accademia Bizantina.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival Music in Germany’s historic spa town Day 2: Baden Baden. Walking tour of BadenBaden, pass the Kurhaus, the social centre and concert hall built in the 1820s, and visit the Brahms residence. Free afternoon and early dinner. Piano recital with Sir András Schiff: Bach, Capriccio in B flat BWV 992; Bartók, ‘Mikrokosmos’; Bach, Four Duets BWV 802–805; Bartók, Sonata 1926 BB 88; Janáček, Im Nebel; Schumann, Fantasy in C, Op.17. Day 3: Rastatt. Rastatt is a classic 18th-century court town built afresh to glorify its absolutist ruler, in this case, the Margrave of Baden. The city palace is of appropriate magnificence, while, on the outskirts, Schloss Favorite is a marvellously preserved retreat from the formality of court life. Evening concert with Diana Damrau (soprano), Nicolas Testé (bassbaritone), Prague Philharmonia, Emmanuel Villaume (conductor): music from operas by Verdi, Meyerbeer and Massenet.

31 May–6 June 2017 (md 320) 7 days • £3,080 (Including tickets to 6 performances) Lecturer: Professor Stephen Walsh Elegant, salubrious spa town with charming old centre and a ribbon of parks, host to one of Europe’s finest music festivals. Six concerts with music ranging from Bach on piano to Wagner’s Das Rheingold, from a Mozart string quartet to Massenet arias. Artists include András Schiff, Diana Damrau, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Daniil Trifonov.

GERMANY 8

Baden-Baden is in many ways the typical German spa town, and it remains one of the most elegant and beautifully situated, on the fringes of the Black Forest and a few miles from the Rhine. The Romans, needless to say, made good use of its twenty-nine hot water springs, whose renewed popularity from the beginning of the nineteenth century transformed this by then unimportant little town into one of the most fashionable resorts in Europe. Because of its illustrious clientele, it became known as ‘Europe’s summer capital’. Queen Victoria and Wilhelm I of Prussia were patrons, as were members of the Russian imperial family. For the great Russian novelists, and upper-class Russians in general, it was archetypal. Turgenev set his novel Smoke here, and Dostoyevsky, a compulsive gambler, spent time (and alas money) at the casino here, though the Roulettenburg of his novella The Gambler is Wiesbaden.

Baden-Baden’s connection with music is more respectable but no less diverse. Berlioz visited often, and Brahms made prolonged sojourns here (his apartment is now a museum). Nowadays its concert and operatic life, among the richest in Germany, revolves mainly around the great Festspielhaus, a converted Imperial railway station, and reputedly the largest concert venue in the country, but there are also performances in the charming 1820s Kurhaus. The Whitsun Festival embodies something of this variety, from the intimacy of the Armida Quartet playing Mozart, Bach and Mendelssohn, to the epic grandeur of Wagner’s Rheingold, in concert performance, and with much else in between. The town stretches along the narrow valley of the River Oos, which is bordered by a succession of parks and gardens, luxury hotels, bath complexes and cultural institutions. The heart of the old town is a delightful net of Biedermeier and older streets winding up the hillside. Among its attractions are the recently opened Fabergé Museum, the State Art Gallery (Kunsthalle) and the Museum Frieder Burda, built by Richard Meier for one of Germany’s most extensive collections of modern art. Our programme includes excursions to a spectacular array of Baroque palaces and retreats in the vicinity.

Itinerary Day 1: London to Baden Baden. Fly at c. 3.30pm from London Heathrow to Stuttgart (British Airways) and drive to Baden-Baden. Dinner and first of six nights here.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Day 4: Baden Baden. Apart from the usual daily lecture, today is free for independent exploration of Baden-Baden or for relaxation before the evening opera. Das Rheingold (semistaged) with the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Hengelbrock (conductor), Michael Volle (Wotan), Katarina Karnéus (Fricka), Johannes Martin Kränzle (Alberich), Daniel Behle (Loge), Gabriele Scherer (Freia), Lothar Odinius (Froh), Markus Eiche (Donner), Nadine Weissmann (Erda), Elmar Gilbertsson (Mime), Christof Fischesser (Fasolt), Lars Woldt (Fafner), Mirella Hagen (Woglinde), Julia Rutigliano (Wellgunde), Anna Lapkovskaja (Floßhilde). Day 5: Bruchsal. Schloss Bruchsal is the splendid Baroque palace and garden of the Archibishops of Speyer, built over 26 years with frequent changes of architect and plan. At its core is the famous staircase designed by Balthasar Neumann. Free afternoon in Baden-Baden. Evening concert with Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet (conductor), Handel: Water Music, Suites I, II & III; Concerti Grossi, Op.3 and excerpts from Nos.4 and 5; Music for the Royal Fireworks. Day 6: Baden Baden. Morning concert with the Armida Quartet: Mozart, Adagio & Fugue, K.546; Bach, Nos.1, 4, 11 from ‘The Art of Fugue’; Mendelssohn, String Quartet No.6 in F minor, Op.80. In the afternoon there is a guided tour of Baden-Baden’s magnificent casino. Evening concert with Mutter’s Virtuosi, Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), Daniil Trifonov (piano): Vivaldi, ‘The Four Seasons’; Schubert, Trio in E, D897 and ‘Trout’ Quintet, D667. Day 7: Stuttgart. Mon Repos is a hunting lodge beside a lake near Stuttgart, built 1760 and exhibiting both Rococo and Neo-Classical styles. The Stuttgart Staatsgalerie, a landmark building by James Stirling, has one of the better art collections in Germany. Fly from Stuttgart and return to Heathrow c. 7.45pm.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Strauss in Leipzig Arabella, Salome, Die Frau ohne Schatten

The Ring in Dresden

16–19 June 2017 (md 335) 4 days • £1,810 (including tickets to 3 performances) Lecturer: Barry Millington Three of Richard Strauss’s most opulent scores played by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Stay in the city’s best 5-star hotel. Talks on the operas by Barry Millington, chief music critic for London’s Evening Standard and editor of The Wagner Journal.

28 January–5 February 2018 Lecturers: Barry Millington & Dr Jarl Kremeier Please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com First category tickets to Christian Thieleman and Willy Decker’s renowned production at the Semperoper, one of the world’s most beautiful theatres. Talks by Barry Millington, editor of The Wagner Journal; walks to see the fine 18th- & 19th-century architecture and outstanding art collections from art historian Dr Jarl Kremeier. Rebuilding and restoration has wrought wonders in this once shattered city.

Lecturer Professor Stephen Walsh is the author of a major biography of Stravinsky, and, most recently Musorgsky & his Circle. He was for many years deputy music critic for The Observer.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,080 or £2,940 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,220 or £3,080 without flights. Included: tickets to 6 performances (top category), costing c. £475; flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Airbus 320); private coach; accommodation; breakfasts, 4 dinners, 1 lunch, wine; all admissions; tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer and tour manager. Accommodation. Radisson Blu Badischer Hof (hotel-badischerhof-badenbaden.com): 4-star spa hotel in a former monastery.

Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Baden-Baden, watercolour c. 1910.

For a full description, please contact us or visit www.martinrandall.com – or see page 101 of our 2017 2nd edition brochure. The opportunity to experience three of Richard Strauss’s most opulent scores played by the legendary Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – an ensemble Strauss himself regularly conducted in his earlier years – under the Strauss specialist Ulf Schirmer, is not one to be missed. The operas straddle various periods of Strauss’s life, enabling us to witness the stylistic progression from the expressionistic Salome (1906–8), through the symbolic complexity of Die Frau ohne Schatten (1914–18) to the good-humoured lyricism of Arabella (1930–32). Setting the text of Oscar Wilde’s notorious play about Herod’s daughter who, having danced for the king, demands of him the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter, Salome is a mesmerising study in obsession. But Wilde’s purple poetry draws a comparably glittering, kaleidoscopic score from Strauss, providing one of the great roles for his favourite soprano voice. The Swedish soprano Elisabet Strid, who takes the role of Salome, has been receiving much acclaim for her Strauss and Wagner roles in recent years. Die Frau ohne Schatten, to a text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, has a reputation for inscrutable symbolism, but unfairly so: essentially it is a hymn to the sanctity of marriage, dealing with such issues as love, fidelity, childlessness and emotional fulfilment in gloriously passionate and lyrical music. This production has a particularly strong cast in the four major roles: Simone Schneider (Empress), Jennifer Wilson (Dyer’s Wife), Burkhard Fritz (Emperor) and Franz Grundheber (Barak). With Arabella, Hofmannsthal provided Strauss with a more straightforward love story involving ordinary human beings. The result is enchanting, while the heroine’s second-act love duet with Mandryka contains some of his most radiant music. The Californian soprano Betsy Horne sings Arabella, with the Finnish bassbaritone Tuomas Pursio as Mandryka. The musical history of Leipzig encompasses not only Strauss but also Wagner, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Robert and Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Mahler. Morning walks and

Lecturer Barry Millington. Writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is founder/editor of The Wagner Journal and Chief Critic for the Evening Standard. He has also acted as dramaturgical adviser at opera houses internationally.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,810 or £1,630 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,990 or £1,810 without flights. Included: tickets (first category) to 3 performances, costing c. £215; flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Airbus A320); private coach; hotel accommodation; breakfasts, 1 lunch, 2 dinners with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer and a tour manager. Accommodation. Hotel Fürstenhof (hotelfuerstenhofleipzig.com): the finest hotel in the city. How strenuous? Participants are expected to walk (20 minutes) to and from the opera house. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

GERMANY

How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking. Average distance by coach per day: 34 miles.

visits investigate this heritage, and also take in the art and architecture of the city. Leipzig is now, again, a handsome and lively city, following an almost miraculous transformation during the 1990s and beyond. Cleaning, restoration and rebuilding went hand in hand with the emergence of cafés, smart shops and good restaurants. There are excellent museums, including the Fine Arts Museum in spectacular new premises, the radically refurbished Museum of Musical Instruments and the Bach Museum.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Monteverdi at La Fenice Three operas in Venice, with the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

15–19 June 2017 (ed 341) 5 days • £3,570 (Including tickets to 3 performances) Celebrates the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi, organised in partnership with the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras. Top-category tickets to performances of all three surviving operas, performed by an international cast with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Entry to a 2-day symposium at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and in La Fenice’s Sale Apollinee. A private post-concert reception with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the soloists. One year’s membership to Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras and its associated benefits. The tour is led by an experienced MRT tour manager. There is no lecturer.

ITALY

Shakespeare and Caravaggio, and as a musical dramatist he ranks in the highest level of the pantheon of greats, alongside Handel, Mozart and Verdi. In 1612 Claudio Monteverdi became maestro di cappella at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, one of the most prestigious musical appointments in Europe. He then spent the remaining thirty years of his life based there. There is a special frisson arising from hearing music in the place for which it was written – especially when that place is the most beautiful city on Earth and the performers are the finest specialist interpreters. In 2017 the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will celebrate the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi with an ambitious international tour of his three surviving operas – L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and L’Incoronazione di Poppea, in concert performances directed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Elsa Rooke. In these performances the orchestra, composed of Monteverdi’s exotic and beautifully crafted period instruments, will take centre-stage and thus form a central part in the story-telling process. Their interaction with the singers will lead us into a world of love, loss, anger, hope and desolation. The operas narrate three individual tales of ancient Greece and Rome, moving from innocence to experience and finally corruption. However, the uniting subtext of all of Monteverdi’s surviving musical dramas is the full unchanging gamut of human emotions – bewildering, passionate, uncomfortable and sometimes uncontrollable. It is Monteverdi’s talent for communicating emotion, and using this as the driving force in his operas, that makes them so powerfully appealing to today’s audiences. This is a unique opportunity to see the trilogy of surviving operas performed in Venice at the Teatro La Fenice. The tour also includes a two-day Monteverdi symposium organised by the Fondazione Cini’s Institute of Music and the Study Centre for Documentary Research into European Theatre and Opera. The symposium takes place at the Fondazione Cini and in the Sale Apollinee (Apollonian rooms) at La Fenice, featuring lectures and debates on his Venetian operas (Poppea and Ulisse) with world-class Monteverdi scholars, and a private reception with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the soloists.

As the outstanding madrigalist and a creator of monumental church music, Claudio Monteverdi enjoys an illustrious place in the history of music. But by virtue of being the first truly great composer working in the fledgling genre of opera, he is propelled into pole position. Although not the inventor of the musico-dramatic form, his L’Orfeo (1607) is the earliest opera that continues to be performed regularly around the world, and it can be argued that it is the first ‘fable in music’ to reveal the emotional, lyrical, musical and dramatic capabilities of the genre. Monteverdi raised opera from its infancy to its first flowers of maturity. The chiaroscuro depth and artistic qualities of his achievements are entirely comparable to his contemporaries

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 1.00pm (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Venice. Cross the lagoon by motoscafo (water taxi) to the hotel. Day 2. Cross the bacino by vaporetto to the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which houses Palladio’s beautiful church of the same name. All-day symposium at the Fondazione Giorgio

Cini, an impressive cultural centre founded by Vittorio Cini to restore the island (destroyed after years of military occupation) and to reintegrate it into the life of Venice. The morning focuses on L’Incoronazione di Poppea, including insights into both the music and the libretto by Busenello, with contributions from scholars Ellen Rosand, Mario Infelise, Jean-François Lattarico, Maria Martino and Hendrik Schulze. In the afternoon we look at reading and performing Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, with talks from Stefano La Via, Nicola Usula, Wendy Heller, Guillaume Bernardi and Magnus Schneider. Evening performance of L’Orfeo at Teatro La Fenice. Day 3. This morning the symposium moves to the breath-taking Sale Apollinee at Teatro La Fenice. The discussion centres on productions of Monteverdi operas, past and present, featuring input from Anna Tedesco, Mauro Calcagno, Jane Glover and Elsa Rooke (director of the performances on this tour). Afternoon performance of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at Teatro La Fenice. Post-performance reception with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the soloists. Day 4. In the morning, the option to visit the incomparably beautiful Doge’s Palace with pink Gothic revetment and rich Renaissance interiors. Afternoon performance of L’Incoronazione di Poppea at Teatro La Fenice. Day 5. Free morning. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving c. 4.45pm.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,570 or £3,430 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,170 or £4,030 without flights. Included: tickets to 3 performances (top category); flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Airbus 319); water-taxi and porterage between airport and hotel; vaporetto pass; accommodation; breakfasts, 2 dinners with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; the services of the tour manager. The price also includes one year’s membership to the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras at Brahms level, with its associated benefits (see www. monteverdi.co.uk for more details). Accommodation. Westin Europa & Regina (westineuropareginavenice.com): elegant, historic 5-star hotel on the Grand Canal. Limited rooms with views of the Grand Canal are available on request and for a supplement. How strenuous? The nature of Venice means that the city is more often than not traversed on foot. Although part of her charm, there is quite a lot of walking, on the flat and over bridges. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: watercolour by M. Menpes, publ. 1904.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Trasimeno Music Festival Angela Hewitt & friends in Umbria 27 June–5 July 2017 (md 374) 9 days • £3,670 (Including tickets to 7 performances) Lecturers: Professor Geoffrey Norris & Dr R. T. Cobianchi The thirteenth anniversary of the festival created by pianist Angela Hewitt, who appears in six of the seven performances. Other artists include conductor Sir Richard Norrington, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, The Orlando Consort and Canadian pianists Janina Fialkowska, Jon Kimura Parker and Charles Richard-Hamelin. Led by musicologist Professor Geoffrey Norris, and art historian Dr R. T. Cobianchi. Seven concerts in beautiful settings, among others a castle near Lake Trasimeno, the Basilica di San Pietro in Perugia and the Teatro Signorelli in Cortona. Based in Perugia, one of the largest and loveliest of Italian hill towns. One of the most acclaimed pianists of today, Angela Hewitt inaugurated her own music festival in the heart of Italy in 2005. She bought land overlooking Lake Trasimeno, and built a house as a retreat from her gruelling concert tours. The idea of a festival in the vicinity emerged and with characteristic energy Hewitt made it a reality, charming local officials into giving the necessary permissions and enlisting their enthusiastic support. For her festival, she gathers around her artists of international standing, and as they make music together the atmosphere created is one of complete enjoyment for performers and audience alike. Our group stays in a comfortable 5-star hotel in the centre of Perugia. There are excursions to such significant towns as Cortona, Assisi and Gubbio, and by boat on Lake Trasimeno itself. Concerts take place in the courtyard of the castle belonging to the Knights of Malta in nearby Magione, as well as in the Basilica di San Pietro in Perugia, the Teatro Signorelli in Cortona and the Chiesa di San Francesco in Trevi.

Day 3: Assisi. Visit Assisi, one of the most evocative of Italian towns, with its austere mediaeval streets and world-class paintings. In San Francesco, mother church of the Franciscan Order, is one of the greatest assemblages of mediaeval fresco painting, including the controversial cycle of the Life of St Francis. Gala dinner in Magione, often hosted personally by Angela Hewitt. Evening recital at the Castle of the Knights of Malta, Magione with Angela Hewitt (piano): Bach, Fantasy in C minor, BWV 906; Aria Variata ‘alla Maniera Italiana’, BWV 989; Partita No.3 in A minor, BWV 827; Sonata in D minor, BWV 964; Capriccio in E, BWV 993; Fantasia and Fugue in A minor, BWV 904. Day 4: Isola Maggiore. Take a boat trip on Lake Trasimeno to visit Isola Maggiore and its church with 14th- and 15th-century frescoes. Evening concert at the Castle of the Knights of Malta, Magione with Angela Hewitt (piano), Brooklyn Rider (string quartet): Bach, Partita No.6 in E minor, BWV 830; Beethoven, Piano Sonata in E, Op.109; Colin Jacobsen, Beloved, do not let me be discouraged; Beethoven, String Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op.95 (‘Serioso’). Day 5: Gubbio. Drive to Gubbio, one of the most delightful mediaeval towns in Italy. Its streetscape and buildings are remarkably wellpreserved. The noble 14th-century town hall has a good picture collection and the Palazzo

Ducale, built for Federico da Montefeltro, has an impressive inner courtyard. Evening recital at the Teatro Morlacchi, Perugia with the four pianists Janina Fialkowska, Angela Hewitt, Jon Kimura Parker, Charles Richard-Hamelin: A special concert to mark July 1st, Canada’s official 150th birthday. Programme to be confirmed, made up of solos, duos, and arrangements for four pianos. Day 6: Perugia. A morning in Perugia. Visit two merchants’ halls, one with frescoes by native artist Perugino. Evening concert at the Chiesa di San Francesco, Trevi with The Orlando Consort: Programme includes music by Johannes Ciconia, Guillaume Dufay, Loyset Compère, Antoine Brumel and Josquin Desprez. Day 7: Cortona. Free morning in Perugia. In the afternoon, drive around Lake Trasimeno to the charming Tuscan hill town of Cortona. See the high quality collection of Renaissance art in the Museo Diocesano and the Gothic altarpiece in San Domenico. Gala dinner in Cortona. Evening concert at Teatro Signorelli, Cortona with Angela Hewitt (piano), Andrea Oliva (flute), Alessandro Carbonare (clarinet) and other musicians to be announced: Bach, Trio Sonata from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079; Mozart, ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio in E flat, K.498; Bach, Sonata for flute and Perugia, Arco d’Augusto, wood engraving c. 1880.

Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Rome Fiumicino and drive to Perugia.

ITALY

Day 2: Perugia. There are major works of art and architecture to see in Perugia including the mediaeval town hall housing the National Gallery of Umbria. Concert at the Basilica di San Pietro: Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Sir Roger Norrington (conductor), Angela Hewitt (piano): Mozart, Overture to ‘Don Giovanni’; Mozart, Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466; Beethoven, Symphony No.3 in E flat (‘Eroica’).

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Trasimeno Music Festival continued

Opera in Oslo Fidelio & Pelléas et Mélisande Itinerary

keyboard in E flat, BWV 1031; Mozart, Clarinet Quintet in A, K.581.

Day 1. Fly at c. 10.30am from London Heathrow to Oslo (SAS). A late-afternoon walk takes in the Royal Palace, University, Parliament and the new waterfront developments of the Aker Brygge, among them Renzo Piano’s contemporary art gallery.

Day 8: Montefalco. Visit Montefalco, a delightful hilltop community with magnificent views of the valley below and hills around. In the deconsecrated church of S. Francesco are frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. Evening recital at the Castle of the Knights of Malta, Magione with Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano), Angela Hewitt (piano): programme to be confirmed.

Day 2. A lecture on this evening’s performance precedes a walk to the National Gallery, a fine collection of Norwegian art including a room dedicated to Edvard Munch. Free afternoon. 7.00pm opera: Fidelio (Beethoven) (concert version): Karl-Heinz Steffens (conductor), Henrik Engelsviken (Florestan), Ludvig Lindström (Don Fernando), Elisabeth Teige (Leonore), Vera Talerko (Marzelline), Jens-Erik Aasbø (Rocco), Ole Jørgen Kristiansen (Don Pizzarro), Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy (Jaquion), Orchestra of Den Norske Opera.

Day 9. Drive to Rome Fiumicino airport and fly to London Heathrow, arriving c. 5.00pm.

Lecturers Professor Geoffrey Norris. Writer, and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3. For many years he was Chief Music Critic of The Daily Telegraph. He is Emeritus Professor at the Rachmaninoff Music Academy in Russia and his publications include Rachmaninoff and contributions to the New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians. Dr R. T. Cobianchi. Art historian and lecturer. He completed his PhD at Warwick University, was a Rome Scholar at the British School in Rome and was fellow of both the Biblioteca Hertziana, Rome, and Villa I Tatti, Florence. His research includes iconography and patronage of the late Middle Ages to the Baroque.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,670 or £3,480 without flights. Single occupancy: £4,060 or £3,870 without flights. Included: 7 concert tickets, costing c. £500; flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Airbus 321); private coach; hotel accommodation; breakfasts; 2 lunches (including one picnic), 8 dinners with wine (two are gala dinners with all festival participants, often hosted by Angela Hewitt); all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturers. Accommodation. Hotel Sina Brufani Palace, Perugia (brufanipalace.com): grand 5-star hotel 5 minutes’ walk from the main square. Situated on the edge of the hill-top historical centre with spectacular views over the countryside. Good restaurant; small indoor pool; roof terrace.

ITALY, NORWAY 12

How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking, much of it on roughly paved and often steep streets and in hot weather conditions. There are late nights throughout the tour, and most mornings start at 9.30 and 10.00am. Average distance by coach per day: c. 72 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with: Connoisseur’s Vienna, 19–25 June 2017, or The Rhône: Bacchus & Orpheus, 6–13 July 2017 (please contact us for full details or visit www.martinrandall.com).

5–8 April 2017 (md 208) 4 days • £2,070 Lecturer: Dr Michael Downes Two performances at Oslo’s dazzling new Opera House: Fidelio (Beethoven) and Pelléas et Mélisande (Debussy). Talks by Dr Michael Downes, director of music at the University of St Andrews. See the city’s art and architecture with Oslobased art historian Dr Frank Høifødt. Norway’s capital has long been one of Europe’s most civilized and elegant cities. Recently it has also come to be regarded as one of the most exciting for new architecture and cultural activity. Snøhetta’s astonishing Opera House, completed in 2008, led the way for a programme of regeneration that has transformed the former industrial waterfront into a sequence of popular public spaces. These twenty-firstcentury additions are well balanced by the wide streets and spacious squares of the Oslo of Ibsen and Munch, with their excellent galleries and museums, theatres and cafés. On consecutive evenings we see Norwegian National Opera’s concert version of Beethoven’s Fidelio followed by a fully-staged performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Two lecturers attend the tour: Dr Michael Downes, Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, introduces the performances, while Dr Frank Høifødt, an Oslo-based art historian and expert on Munch, joins us for the architectural walks and museum visits.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Day 3. Morning lecture. Return to the opera house for a private tour. Free afternoon. 6.00pm opera: Pelléas et Mélisande (Debussy), Karl-Heinz Steffens (conductor), Simon Stone (director), Espen Langvik (Pelléas), Paul Gay (Golaud), Ingeborg Gillebo (Mélisande), Anders Lorentzson (Arkel), Randi Stene (Genoveva), Orchestra of Den Norske Opera. Day 4. Visit the magnificent Viking Ship Museum on Bygdøy (Museum Island). Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 4.30pm.

Lecturer Dr Michael Downes. Director of Music at the University of St Andrews. He is a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and his publications include a study of British composer Jonathan Harvey. He has lectured for companies including the Royal Opera and Glyndebourne.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,070 or £1,900 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,290 or £2,120 without flights. Included: tickets (top category) for 2 performances; flights (Euro Traveller) with SAS (Boeing 737); private coach; hotel accommodation; breakfasts and all 3 dinners with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the two lecturers. Accommodation. Hotel Continental (hotelcontinental.no): family-run 5-star hotel in the heart of the city. How strenuous? You should be able to cope with everyday walking and stairclimbing. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Photograph, above: Oslo Opera House ©Erik Berg, Den Norske Opera & Ballett.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Bergen Festival Music & art in the western fjords 29 May–2 June 2017 (md 318) 5 days • £2,520 (Including tickets to 6 performances) Lecturer: Prof. Richard Langham Smith Six concerts with wide-ranging programmes performed by world-class artists including Roderick Williams, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir and Lang Lang. Bergen is the perfect festival venue: compact, historic and in the beautiful setting of Norway’s western fjords. Our hotel is in the Bryggen, the mediaeval merchants’ quarter on the waterfront. Daily talks on the music by expert Professor Richard Langham Smith, some gentle excursions, as well as time to relax. Bergen is an historic port of considerable appeal in the beautiful setting of Norway’s western fjords. Its mediaeval quarter is well preserved and the colourful houses around the harbour – interspersed with hostelries – have a unique attraction. Apart from its excellent art museum (including works by Edvard

Munch) and its Hanseatic Museum, it also has an unparalleled musical tradition, spurred on by its most famous offspring – Edvard Grieg – but in fact extending further back into the nineteenth century. Its musical reputation has been well protected and extended, not only through the excellent reputation of the Bergen Philharmonic, often receiving accolades for its imaginative recordings, but also through its annual festival: the Edinburgh of Norway it has been called. The festival mixes theatre, ballet and fringe spectacle of all kinds but its focus is classical music. Boasting several excellent venues, it hosts international artists of the highest calibre. This year’s festival has enormous variety, mixing well-known classics with Grieg and a celebration of the music of Finland. We start with a concert of French Chamber music in the Håkonshallen (including the Ravel Piano Trio) followed by a concert in a wonderful modern hall, built next to Grieg’s country residence and looking out (as Grieg did) onto a lake. This celebrates the music of Finland in its centenary year – Sibelius songs and a Quartet movement, as well a piece by Kaija Saariaho, a prolific Finnish female composer whose music

has a particularly passionate appeal. A highlight of this year’s festival is a semistaged performance of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, highly appropriate to this working seaside setting. While the singers are English (including some very celebrated names such as Roderick Williams, Matthew Best and James Gilchrist), the spectacle will be underpinned by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and its excellent choir. Always imaginative, their choral forces will also bring new light to Handel’s Messiah in a theatrical production by video artist Netia Jones, performed in the National Theatre. We return to the Troldsalen for more Grieg, including the Holberg Suite performed by the 1B1 string ensemble who will repeat the Saariaho Terra Memoria in its full-string version. The finale will be the exuberant pianist Lang Lang, playing a concert of French and Spanish music, ending with a transcription of Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance along with the Liszt Sonata. Illustration: Norwegian landscape, after an early20th-century painting.

NORWAY Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Bergen Festival continued

Afternoon recital in the Troldsalen, Troldhaugen: 1B1 Ensemble with Sonoko Miriam Welde (violin): Britten, Prelude and Fugue, Op.29; Tchaikovsky, ‘Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher’, Op.42; Schnittke, Concerto Grosso No.1; Shostakovich, Chamber Symphony Op.110. Return to Bergen for dinner. Evening concert at the Grieghallen with Lang Lang (piano): Debussy, Ballad, L.70; Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178; Albeniz, excerpts from Suite Española, Op.47; Granados, excerpts from Goyescas, Op.11; Falla, Danza Ritual del Fuego. Day 5: Bergen to London. Guided visit of the excellent Bergen Art Museum, a collection particularly strong on Edvard Munch and modern art, after which the day is free. Fly to London Gatwick, arriving at c. 8.15pm.

Practicalities Itinerary Day 1: London to Bergen. Fly at c. 10.45am from London Heathrow to Bergen (Norwegian Air). Transfer to the hotel in the Bryggen. Lecture and dinner before the evening concert at the Håkonshallen with Mathias Kjøller (clarinet), Chloe Hanslip (violin), Andreas Brantelid (cello), Mariana Shirinyan (piano): Debussy, first rhapsody; Ravel, piano trio in A minor; Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time.

opera at the Grieghallen: Peter Grimes (Britten) (semi-staged), Ed Gardner (conductor), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuart Skelton (Peter Grimes), Giselle Allen (Ellen Orford), Annika Schlicht (Auntie), Ida Falk Winland (first niece), Vibeke Kristensen (second niece), Roderick Williams (Balstrode), Catheryn Wyn-Rogers (Mrs Sedley), Matthew Best (Swallow), Marcus Farnsworth (Ned Keene), Colin Judson (Bob Boles), James Gilchrist (Rev. Horace Adams), Barnaby Rea (Hobson).

NORWAY

Day 2: Bergen, Troldhaugen. A morning lecture followed by an optional walk with the tour leaders through the historic Bryggen. In the early afternoon, drive to Troldhaugen, the summer home of Edvard Grieg. His villa remains much as he left it, his Steinway in the drawing room among memorabilia and photos. There is also the hut where he composed overlooking the lake, his tomb chiselled into the rock, a small museum and the Troldsalen (concert hall). Afternoon concert in the Troldsalen with the Nordlyd Kvartett, Lydia Hoen Tjore (soprano) and Ingrid Andsens (piano): Sibelius, ‘Spring is Flying’, Op.13 No.4; ‘The Diamond on the March Snow’, Op.36 No.6; ‘The Girl Returned from Meeting her Lover’ Op.37 No.5; ‘Black Roses’, Op.36 No.1; ‘Voces Intimae’, Op.56; Saariaho, ‘Terra Memoria’. Return to Bergen for dinner before an evening

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Day 3: Lysøen, Bergen. In the morning, a private boat from Lysekloster to the island of Lysøen, bought by the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull in the 1870s and where he created his fairy-tale villa and romantic garden. There is a private guided tour after which return to Bergen for a lecture and some free time in the city. Evening concert at the National Theatre: Handel, Messiah with the Baroque Soloists, Bjarte Eike (conductor), Edvard Grieg Choir, Michael McCarthy (choir master), Malin Christensson (soprano), Renata Pokupic (mezzo-soprano), Pierre Derhet (tenor), Igor Bakan (bass). Day 4: Troldhaugen, Bergen. Morning lecture and some free time. Afternoon visit to the Fantoft stave church, a meticulous reconstruction following a fire in 1992. It has been rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire.

Price, per person. Two sharing: £2,520 or £2,360 without flights. Single occupancy: £2,770 or £2,610 without flights. Included: tickets (top category where applicable; some concerts have unreserved seating) for 6 performances, costing c. £270; flight (economy class) with Norwegian Air (aircraft: Boeing 738); private coach; boat trip; hotel accommodation; breakfasts, 1 light lunch and 3 dinners (including one light dinner) with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; the services of the lecturer. Accommodation. Radisson Blu Royal. (radissonblu.com): 4-star hotel in the picturesque Bryggen. The traditional exterior reveals a contemporary interior with brightly furnished bedrooms and a sequence of openplan public spaces. Although on the waterfront, bedrooms do not have sea views. Rooms for single occupancy are standard category rooms. To upgrade to a business room – £160 for the duration of the tour – please contact us. How strenuous? Participants need to be able to manage everyday walking and stairclimbing without difficulty. We walk to most concerts and there are boats and coaches to board. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Illustration: Bergen, wood engraving c. 1880.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

Drottningholm & Confidencen Orpheus & Euridice, Così fan Tutte 11–14 August 2017 (md 456) 4 days • £1,180 (Including tickets to 2 performances) Lecturer: Ian Page Two operas in two historic theatres: Gluck’s Orpheus & Euridice and Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. Led by Ian Page, conductor and artistic director of Classical Opera, and an expert on Mozart. Some free time around the performances and lectures to see some of the magnificent museums and art collections. Very few theatres survive unchanged from the eighteenth century. Only the Drottningholm Court Theatre survives without having needed modern restoration or refurbishment, with the original stage machinery and scenery intact, and as home of a living operatic tradition of international renown. Built in 1766 for Queen Luisa Ulriki of Sweden as part of a marvellous ensemble of palace, park and lake outside Stockholm, the theatre enjoyed its heyday during the reign of her son Gustav III. But after his death in 1792, it ceased to be used and was virtually forgotten for over a century. Performances recommenced in 1922, and subsequently an annual festival developed which specialises, appropriately enough, in Baroque and Classical repertoire. The opera for 2017 is Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. Drottningholm is not the only eighteenthcentury theatre in Stockholm’s watery environs. Confidencen, the theatre built in 1752 at Ulriksdal, is also part of a palace complex in a beautiful lakeside setting and, again like Drottningholm, a long period of neglect preceded its revival. But the festival here is of much more recent origin and as yet is little known outside Sweden. Artistically, it has to be said, it sets its sights lower, but productions have become increasingly accomplished. Gluck’s Orpheus & Euridice is on in 2017, performed by candlelight with Baroque instruments, costumes and machinery. The tour is based in Stockholm, a city with many architectural and artistic riches spread across the archipelago where the waters of Lake Mäleren meet the Baltic. There is quite a lot of free time to explore the city independently.

Itinerary

Day 2: Stockholm. Morning lecture, and guided tour of the old town centre. Free afternoon; recommended is the display of prehistoric gold

Day 3: Drottningholm. After a morning lecture, travel by boat from the centre of Stockholm to Drottningholm Palace, summer residence of the Swedish royal family since the 17th century; splendid interiors, wonderful gardens, landscaped park, exquisite Chinoiserie pavilion and theatre museum. Late afternoon opera at Drottningholm Slottsteater: Così fan Tutte (Mozart), Marc Minkowski (conductor), Ivan Alexandre (director), Ana Maria Labin (Fiordiligi), Serena Malfi (Dorabella), Robert Gleadow (Guglielmo), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (Ferrando), Giulia Semenzato (Despina), JeanSébastian Bou (Don Alfonso). Day 4: Stockholm. Optional morning visit to the museum of the Wasa, the royal flagship which sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. Fly to London Heathrow, arriving at c. 5.30pm. Illustration: Orpheus & Eurydice, engraving c. 1880 (detail) after the painting by G.F. Watts (1817–1904).

Lecturer Ian Page. Conductor and Artistic Director of Classical Opera, who appear regularly at Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,180 or £1,040 without flights. Single occupancy: £1,410 or £1,270 without flights. Included: tickets for 2 performances (not yet confirmed); flights (economy class) with British Airways (Airbus A319 & A320); coach or boat for excursions; hotel accommodation; breakfasts and 3 dinners with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; the services of the lecturer. Accommodation. Hilton Stockholm Slussen (hilton.com): 4-star hotel on the waterfront of the Södermalm district of Stockholm. How strenuous? You must be fit enough to cope with walking around the city and stair climbing. Average coach travel per day: 12 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

SWEDEN

Day 1: Stockholm. Fly at c. 9.15am from London Heathrow to Stockholm (British Airways). Drive to the Ulriksdal Palace, built in the 17th century on the banks of the Edsviken in Solna as a country retreat. Time to settle into the hotel before an introductory talk and dinner.

artefacts at the Museum of Antiquities, or the Museum of Modern Art. Opera at Confidencen Theatre: Orpheus & Euridice (Gluck), Arnold Östman (conductor) (full cast to be announced).

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Recently launched tours

The Lucerne Festival Walking & music in Switzerland Day 4. A walk near the Sarner lake in the morning and into the afternoon with a stop for lunch along the way. Return to Lucerne by train mid-afternoon. The rest of the afternoon is free. Evening concert at the KKL with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, François-Xavier Roth (conductor), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin): Haydn, Symphony in E flat, Hob.I:22 ‘The Philosopher’; Bartók, Violin Concerto No.2; ‘Dance Suite’; Haydn, Symphony in D, Hob.I:96 ‘The Miracle’. Day 5. All-day excursion to Mount Rigi, traversing lake Lucerne by boat and taking the funicular to the start of the walk. Lunch on the mountainside with a majestic 360° panorama of the Swiss plateau before returning to Lucerne. Evening concert with Filarmonica della Scala, Riccardo Chailly (conductor), Leonidas Kavakos (violin): Brahms, Violin Concerto in D, Op.77; Respighi, ‘Fontane di Roma’, ‘Pini di Roma’. Day 6. Drive to Zurich Airport for the return flight to London Heathrow, arriving c. 2.00pm.

20–25 August 2017 (md 499) 6 days • £3,240 (Including ticket to 5 performances) Lecturer: Professor Stephen Walsh A summer music festival of the first rank in the loveliest of Swiss cities. Performers in 2017 include Maurizio Pollini (piano), the Monteverdi Choir with Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor) and Filarmonica della Scala with Riccardo Chailly (conductor). This tour includes two walks in the surrounding hills of 2–3 hours, led by an experienced walking guide. Led by musicologist Professor Stephen Walsh, who gives daily talks on the concerts.

And could there be a lovelier city in which to attend a summer music festival? Lucerne occupies one of the most picturesque settings in Switzerland, divided into two parts by its river, bordering on the dramatic shores of the Vierwaldstätter Lake and overlooked by craggy mountains. Its mediaeval prosperity is still visible in the squares, guildhalls and churches that line its riverbanks. The nineteenth century was a heyday for Lucerne as it led the way in attracting tourism to Switzerland.

Itinerary Day 1. Fly at c. 12.15pm from London Heathrow to Zurich (British Airways). Drive to Lucerne, a lively, historic city amid lake and mountain.

SWITZERLAND

Day 2. Morning walking tour of Lucerne, starting at the oldest road bridge in Europe, the richly decorated Chapel Bridge, and continuing to the Spreuerbrücke, notable for its ‘Dance of Death’ roof panels. Visit the Rococo interior of the huge Jesuit Church and the 13th-century Franciscan Church. Free afternoon. Evening concert at the KKL with Maurizio Pollini (piano): programme to be confirmed.

Ever since its inauguration over seventy years ago, with a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini in the grounds of the lakeside house where Wagner had stayed, the Lucerne Festival has been regarded as one of the most prestigious music festivals in Europe. The event has been further enhanced by a brilliant venue. The KKL (Kultur- und Kongresszentrum) is a giant glass-and-steel arts complex located right on the lake just a few hundred yards from the old town of Lucerne. Designed by Frenchman Jean Nouvel and completed in 2000, this is modern European architecture at its finest. Its colossal cantilevered roof projects over the water’s edge, bringing the changing moods of the lake right into the building, and water channels separate the various wings. The most advanced acoustical science has been lavished on the beautiful Konzertsaal.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

Day 3. A morning visit to the Sammlung Rosengart, an extraordinary collection devoted to 20th-century art including many works by Picasso. Late-morning concert at the Lukaskirche with SpiegelTrio: Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio in A minor, Op.50; Shostakovich, Piano Trio No.2 in E minor, Op.67. Free afternoon. Opera (concert perfomance) at the KKL: L’Orfeo (Monteverdi), English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir, Sir John Eliot Gardiner (conductor).

Lecturer Professor Stephen Walsh is the author of a major biography of Stravinsky, and, most recently Musorgsky & his Circle. He was for many years deputy music critic for The Observer.

Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £3,240 or £3,080 without flights. Single occupancy: £3,520 or £3,360 without flights. Included: tickets (first category) for 5 concerts, costing c. £700; flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Airbus 319); private coach; breakfasts, 2 lunches and 3 dinners with wine; all admissions; all tips; all taxes; services of the lecturer, tour manager and local walking guide. Accommodation: Romantik Hotel Wilden Mann (wilden-mann.ch): 4-star hotel dating back to the 13th century. Double rooms have two single mattresses on one bed frame, as is the usual style in Switzerland. How strenuous? This is a walking tour: it is essential for participants to be in good physical condition and to be used to country walking which includes going up and down hills. Participants should have appropriate walking footwear. The concert hall is located half a mile from the hotel. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. This brochure was produced in house. The text was written by Martin Randall and other members of staff. Lecturers also contributed. It was designed by Jo Murray and sent to print on 25 January 2017. Illustration: Lucerne, Todentanzbrucke, from ‘A Book of Bridges’ by Frank Brangwen, 1915.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | To u r s & e v e n t s b y d a t e

MUSIC TOURS & EVENTS BY DATE 2017 We offer many more music tours than are detailed in the previous few pages. We also run music-themed London Days, residential music weekends in the UK and all-inclusive music festivals. Please contact us to request full details for any of the following tours and events, or visit www.martinrandall.com MARCH 2017

JUNE 2017 10–12 Strauss in Cardiff (md 337) Simon Rees 15–19 Monteverdi at La Fenice (ed 341)........ 10 16–19 Strauss in Leipzig (md 335) Barry Millington........................................ 9 16–22 The Schubertiade (md 345) Misha Donat 27– 5 Trasimeno Music Festival (md 374) Prof. Geoffrey Norris & Dr R. T. Cobianchi............................... 11

3– 5 MUSIC WEEKEND: The London Bridge Trio & Friends (md 161) Richard Wigmore

JULY 2017

13–18 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FLORENCE (md 165)

6–13 THE RHÔNE: BACCHUS & ORPHEUS (md 388)

28– 2 Ballet in Paris & London (md 194) Luke Jennings 31–10 The Ring in Berlin (md 200) Dr John Allison & Dr Jarl Kremeier

APRIL 2017 5– 8 Opera in Oslo (md 208) Dr Michael Downes........................ page 12 12–18 The Ring in Berlin (md 220) Barry Millington & Dr Jarl Kremeier This tour is currently full 14–17 MUSIC WEEKEND: The Vienna Piano Trio (md 223) Richard Wigmore

MAY 2017 12–18 Prague Spring (md 294) Prof. Jan Smaczny 16

London Day: Handel in London (ld 293) Richard Wigmore..................................... 19

20–25 TOLEDO: A FESTIVAL OF SPANISH MUSIC (md 310) 20–26 The Dresden Festspiele (md 312) Prof. Jan Smaczny 27– 2 Handel in Halle (md 317) Dr David Vickers

31– 6 Baden-Baden Whitsun Festival (md 320) Prof. Stephen Walsh.................. 8 31– 4 Opera in Berlin (md 315) Dr Michael Downes & Tom Abbott

London Choral Day (ld 381)............... 18

13–17 The Beaune Music Festival (md 398) Prof. Richard Langham-Smith.................. 6 13–17 Verona Opera (md 396) Dr Michael Douglas-Scott 15–22 Gstaad Menuhin Festival (md 399) Dr Michael Downes 19–25 The Ryedale Festival (md 405) Prof. John Bryan......................................... 4 20–24 Music in Savonlinna (md 404) Simon Rees 21–25 Opera in Munich (md 424) Prof. Jan Smaczny & Tom Abbott

AUGUST 2017 11–14 Drottningholm & Confidencen (md 456) Ian Page.................................... 15 17–21 Verona Opera (md 484) Dr R. T. Cobianchi 20–25 The Lucerne Festival (md 499) Prof. Stephen Walsh................................. 16 20–26 Walking the Danube (md 501) Richard Wigmore 20–27 THE DANUBE FESTIVAL (md 500) 27– 2 The Schubertiade with hill walking (md 508) Richard Wigmore 29– 3 The Sibelius Festival (md 584) Stephen Johnson......................................... 5 30– 4 Organs of Bach’s Time (md 506) James Johnstone & Tom Abbott

Please contact us to register your interest: Edinburgh Festival Opera in Macerata & Pesaro

Main illustration: Paris, Palais Garnier, watercolour by Yoshio Markino, publ. 1908; top: detail from ‘The Fugue’, lithograph 1861 by Edouard Ender.

SEPTEMBER 2017 4–10 THE JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH JOURNEY (me 520) 5–10 Haydn in Eisenstadt (me 547) Prof. Denis McCaldin

OCTOBER 2017 30– 5 Savouring Lombardy (me 636) Fred Plotkin

Please contact us to register your interest: Verdi in Parma & Bussetto

NOVEMBER 2017

‘The festival really provided so many special moments that I will carry with me for years to come.’ ‘The music was wonderful. Every concert was a memorable and thrilling experience.’

6–11 VIVALDI IN VENICE (me 672)

DECEMBER 2017

Please contact us to register your interest: Music in Berlin at New Year

For a full list of our Christmas and New Year tours in 2017, please contact us.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

TOURS & EVENTS BY DATE: 2017

29– 2 The Bergen Festival (md 318) Prof. Richard Langham-Smith................ 13

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | London Days

London Choral Day Three choirs & three churches in Marylebone Monday 3 July 2017 (ld 381) Price: from £190 Performances by The Marian Consort, Sansara and Cantores Jacobenses. The venues – all churches – include St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate, St James’s Spanish Place and the Parish Church of St Marylebone. Lunch and afternoon refreshments are also provided. Our London Choral Days showcase some of the finest choirs in the country in a selection of the most beautiful buildings in and around the capital. They take the form of a day-long

sequence of performances interspersed with refreshments, talks and – if desired – walks. The venues are chosen to be within walking distance of each other, though there is the option of signing up for vehicular transport. Marylebone was a small village which in 1700 was still many fields away from London. By 1800 it had been largely encircled by the ever expanding metropolis, though open country remained to the north; today it is considered city centre. With the random meanderings and varied architecture of the High Street and Marylebone Lane, its village origins are palpable, while the contiguous grid of squares and streets bear the hallmarks of the Georgian development of aristocratic estates.

Indeed, much of Marylebone remains in the hands of the descendants of the Portman and Portland families who laid it out two or three centuries ago, and their management helps to maintain the district as one of the most gracious and salubrious in central London. It is a fairly peaceful district too, certainly by comparison with its frenetic borders – Oxford Street, Marylebone Road, Edgware Road. Within these boundaries are little-altered Georgian streets and squares, a wide range of independent shops and restaurants, and some of the most distinguished and capacious churches in London. Three of the most beautiful are the venues for the day’s music.

The churches The Parish Church of St Marylebone, completed in 1817, is the masterpiece of NeoClassical architect Thomas Hardwick. Its six-column Corinthian portico and crowning tempietto are aligned with John Nash’s contemporaneous York Gate, and look towards Regent’s Park. The interior was enriched but not spoiled in the 1870s. St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate is utterly different, a tranquil and luminous reminiscence of rural East Anglia. Dedicated in 1903, it is the work of Sir Ninian Comper, last of the great Gothic Revival architects, whose preference was for Perpendicular, last of the English mediaeval Gothic styles. The tenebrous, cathedral-like Catholic church of St James’s, Spanish Place manifests a radically different variety of the Gothic Revival. Early English in style, it powerfully evokes the Middle Ages while displaying refinement of planning and beauty of detail characteristic of the late Victorian era. This is the best work of Edward Goldie, a leading architect of Catholic churches.

The choirs

LONDON DAYS

The Marian Consort is an internationallyrenowned early music vocal ensemble, with a repertoire which encompasses the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and contemporary (it has commissioned works from several composers). It has given concerts throughout the UK and Europe and features regularly on BBC Radio 3, and has released four acclaimed CDs. The group draws its members from among the very best young singers, normally singing one to a part, thus allowing clarity of texture and subtlety to illuminate the music. The Marian Consort is directed by Rory McCleery, singer, choral conductor and academic.

Sansara. Founded in 2013, Sansara is a dynamic and innovative chamber choir which unites many of the UK’s finest young singers. It has received high praise from audiences and

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | London Days

‘A very interesting and enjoyable day – faultlessly executed as always.’

reviewers alike, and in 2015 won First Prize and Audience Prize in the London International A Cappella Choir Competition. One of Sansara’s founding aims is to provide young conductors with the opportunity to direct a group of likeminded and responsive young singers and so there is no single director. The choir explores varied and ambitious repertoire and is active in the production of new choral works. Cantores Jacobenses. There is an extraordinary and little-appreciated musical phenomenon in central London, namely the large number of first-rate church choirs which are composed of (paid) professionals. The Choir of St James’s Church, Spanish Place is an outstanding example, with members who are free-lance consort, opera and solo singers. The choir is striking not only for their high calibre but also for the full-throated heft which is traditional in Catholic liturgy. Cantores Jacobenses is the name they adopt when performing in concert. Their director is organist Iestyn Evans.

The music

choirs participate, alternating and then joining together. Acknowledging the origin of the church as the chapel of the Spanish embassy, Cantores Jacobenses perform polyphony by Victoria, Guerrero, and Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, whose move to Mexico led to the adoption of vibrant rhythms. Start: 11.20am at St Cyprian’s, Glentworth Street, NW1 6AX. Doors open at 11.00am. Staff lead from Baker Street Station at 10.55am. Lunch is at The Orrery and another good restaurant on Marylebone High Street. Afternoon refreshments are in the vicinity of St James’s church. Finish: c. 5.30pm, Church of St James’s, George Street, W1U 3QY. Bond Street is less than 10 minutes away (Baker Street 15 minutes).

The third and final episode exploits the spatially variegated architecture of St James’s to enhance the day’s musical climax, and two

Audience size: 80–150.

Illustration opposite: London, St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate, after a drawing by G.M. Ellwood in ‘Some London Churches’,1911; below: G.F. Handel, wood engraving c. 1880.

Tuesday 16th May 2017 (ld 293) Lecturer: Richard Wigmore The 26-year-old Handel scored a sensation in 1711 with his first London opera, Rinaldo. A year later he settled permanently in the English capital, already the largest city in the world. As a contemporary noted: ‘His return to London was hailed by the musical world as a national acquisition, and every measure was adopted to make his abode pleasant and permanent.’ Indeed it was. Handel immediately became the de facto resident composer of the Haymarket opera company and Queen Anne granted him an annual pension of £200, an arrangement continued by George I. Long before he took British citizenship in 1727 he was being acclaimed as Purcell’s undisputed successor as Britain’s national composer.

The afternoon begins at Green Park with a short walk through Mayfair to the composer’s own parish church, St George’s in Hanover Square. From here to the Handel House Museum in Brook Street, where the composer lived from 1723 to his death, and which houses inter alia a superb collection of Handel-related paintings. The Foundling Hospital holds the Gerald Coke Handel collection of manuscripts, music and books and the remarkable hall is where Handel’s own performances of the Messiah raised huge sums for the hospital. The day culminates in a concert performance of one of Handel’s greatest operas, Ariodante, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the title role. This drama of love, vengeance and deceit in mediaeval Scotland is accompanied by the English Concert, conducted by Harry Bicket. Start: meet at 1.15pm at Green Park Underground Station Finish: c. 10.30pm at Barbican Centre Price: £265. This includes refreshments, supper, travel by Underground and taxi, special arrangements and top-category tickets for the evening performance costing £65. Fitness: participants need to be able to cope with busy Underground journeys and a considerable time on foot; standing and walking. The evening performance does not finish until c. 10.30pm. Group size: maximum 18 participants.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

LONDON DAYS

At St Marylebone Parish Church there is another programme of Renaissance and modern. This time the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury composers are Franco-Flemish, among them some of the most influential (and widely travelled) composers of their time – Josquin, Gombert and Lassus. All are represented here with settings of the Song of Songs. The exquisitely beautiful Klusās dziesmas (‘Silent Songs’) from 1979 by the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks are settings of poetry about love, loss and death, and thus echo the sentiments of the earlier music.

Fitness: For those who do not choose the vehicular option, there are walks at a leisurely pace of, at most, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes and 10 minutes (waiting at pedestrian crossings included). The 10-minute walks are from/to tube stations.

Handel in London Retracing the Composer’s Steps

The music has been conceived not as three discrete concerts but as an integrated sequence, a single great musical experience in which the individual parts illumine and enlarge upon what has gone before. The day begins at St Cyprian’s Clarence Gate, a perfect setting for English music of the sixteenth century. The Marian Consort sing pieces by Parsons, Tallis and Byrd which show the allusive nature of many of the period’s most celebrated works, with themes of desolation and a desire for divine intervention reflecting the sentiments of the country’s beleaguered Recusant population. Interleaved with these are modern treatments of Marian texts by three contemporary British composers, Hilary Campbell, Judith Weir and Matthew Martin. They reflect the sensibilities of their Renaissance counterparts while exploring the possibilities offered by a modern vocal and harmonic idiom.

Price: £190 not including transport (the pedestrian party), or £215 with transport by taxi (the vehicular party). Both options include lunch and afternoon refreshments.

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | 2018 preview

MUSIC IN 2018 A PREVIEW We plan to run the following music tours, festivals and events in 2018. Please contact us to register your interest. JANUARY 2018 26–28 MUSIC WEEKEND at The Castle Hotel, Taunton: The Schubert Ensemble

Mozart in Salzburg

Valletta Baroque Festival

FEBRUARY 2018 28– 5 The Ring in Dresden.................see page 9

Welsh National Opera

Opera in Nice & Montecarlo

Opera in Berlin

MARCH 2018

JUNE 2018

Verona Opera

20–27 THE RHINE VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL

Incontri in Terra di Siena

Trasimeno Music Festival

24– 2 The Ring in San Francisco........see below

The Baths of Caracalla

The Schubertiade

Gstaad Menuhin Festival

PRAGUE: A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC

Opera in Copenhagen

AUGUST 2018

Aldeburgh

MUSIC IN THE COTSWOLDS

Walking the Rhine Valley

The Leipzig Bach Festival

The Richard Strauss Festival

25– 1 A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN FRANCONIA

The Schubertiade

Salzburg Summer Festival

Grafenegg Festival

Walking in Franconia

JULY 2018

Verona Opera

21–28 THE DANUBE FESTIVAL

Torre del Lago

Opera in Macerata & Pesaro

Chopin in Warsaw

Drottningholm & Confidencen Santa Fe Opera

Walking the Danube

Buxton Opera

The Ryedale Festival

MAY 2018

Savonlinna Opera

Opera in Prague & Brno

Kuhmo Festival

SEPTEMBER 2018

Opera in Berlin

The Beaune Music Festival

Opera in Munich & Bregenz

24–28 THE DIVINE OFFICE: CHORAL MUSIC IN OXFORD

Budapest Spring Opera in Spain

The Ring in San Francisco Likely dates: 24 June–2 July 2018 Details available in February 2017 Please contact us to register your interest

Haydn in Eisenstadt

Music in the Saxon Hills

Music in the Regions

OCTOBER 2018

Janáček in Brno

Wexford Opera

Savouring Lombardy

Cremona

Parma & Bologna

A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC IN BOLOGNA

DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED

MUSIC IN 2018 20

Opera in Zagreb

Opera in Helsinki

Opera in Paris

Music in Paris

Hamburg Opera

Opera in Leipzig

Naples: Art, Antiquities, Opera

Lofoten Festival

The Ring in New York

MUSIC WEEKENDS: at The Castle Hotel in Taunton and The Swan Hotel in Lavenham, January–May 2018 (artists to be announced)

Main illustration: ‘Instantly a stream of fire gushed forth’, watercolour from ‘The Stories of Wagner’s Operas’, publ. 1915; top: detail from a wood engraving of c. 1880.

Telephone +44 (0)20 8742 3355 | info@martinrandall.co.uk | www.martinrandall.com

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Booking details

BOOKING FORM TOUR NAME(S)

DATES

TOUR CODE(S)

NAME(S) – as you would like it/them to appear on documents issued to other tour participants. Participant 1 Participant 2

ROOM TYPE ☐ Single occupancy room(s)

FURTHER INFORMATION or special requests. Please mention dietary requirements, even if you have told us before.

☐ Double room (two sharing) ☐ Twin room (two sharing)

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS ☐ Group travel from London (air or rail), if applicable to this tour. ☐ No travel – making your own arrangements for travel to and from the destination.

CONTACT DETAILS – for all correspondence

FELLOW TRAVELLER – if applicable

Address

Postcode/Zip

Country

If you have made a booking for someone who does not share your address, please give their details here. We will then send them copies of all tour documents. We will NOT send them a copy of the invoice or anything else relating to financial matters.

Mobile

Name

Telephone (home)

Telephone (work)

Address

E-mail ☐ Please tick if you are happy to receive your tour and booking documents by e-mail only, where possible.

Postcode/Zip

☐ Please tick if you do NOT want to receive regular updates by e-mail on our other tours, music festivals and London Days.

Country

☐ Please tick if you do NOT want to receive any more of our brochures.

What prompted your booking? For example, an advertisement in ‘The Garden’ or another publication, a marketing email from us, browsing on our website, or receiving our brochure.

Email Telephone

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Booking details

PASSPORT DETAILS. Essential for airlines and in case of emergency on tour (not applicable for tours in the UK if you are a UK resident). Title

Surname

Forenames

Nationality

Place of birth

1. 2. Date of birth (dd/mm/yy)

Passport number

Place of issue

Date of issue (dd/mm/yy)

Date of expiry (dd/mm/yy)

1. 2.

NEXT OF KIN or contact in case of emergency.

Participant 1:

Participant 2 (if next of kin is different):

Name

Telephone

Relationship

MEMBERSHIPS – only needed for certain UK tours. Please give membership numbers and expiry dates. National Trust (England, Scotland or affiliate):

English Heritage:

PAYMENT & AGREEMENT Please tick payment amount: ☐ EITHER Deposit(s) amounting to 10% of your total booking cost. ☐ OR Full Payment. This is required if you are booking within 10 weeks of departure. Carbon offset. We subscribe to Beyond Carbon, a carbon offset scheme approved by AITO. If you are taking a tour with flights and wish to make a donation (£5 for short-haul, £10 for mid/long-haul), please tick below. Read more at www.martinrandall.com/responsible-tourism. ☐ Please add a carbon offset donation to my booking.

TOTAL: £

added to cover processing charges. This brings us into line with standard travel industry practice. It does not apply to other forms of payment.

☐ BANK TRANSFER. Please give your surname and tour code (e.g. md 123) as a reference and ask your bank to allow for all charges.

Account name: Martin Randall Travel Ltd Bank: Handelsbanken, 2 Chiswick High Road, London W4 1TH

For transfers from UK (Sterling) bank accounts: Account number 8663 3438 • Sort code 40-51-62

For transfers from non-UK bank accounts: IBAN: GB98 HAND 4051 6286 6334 38 Swift/BIC code: HAND GB22

I have read and agree to the Booking Conditions on behalf of all listed on this form.

Please tick your payment method: ☐ CHEQUE. I enclose a cheque payable to Martin Randall Travel Ltd – please write the tour code on the back (e.g. md 123).

Signature

☐ DEBIT OR CREDIT CARD. I authorise Martin Randall Travel to contact me by telephone to take payment from my Visa credit/Visa debit/Mastercard/AMEX. Bookings paid for by credit card will have 2%

Date

Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF, United Kingdom

Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024 Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia

Canada Tel (647) 382 1644 Fax (416) 925 2670 canada@martinrandall.ca

Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 Fax +44 (0)20 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com

Tel 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au

USA Tel 1 800 988 6168 (toll-free, and connects to the London office)

5085

ABTA No.Y6050

M U S I C 2 0 1 7 & 2 0 1 8 | Booking details

BOOKING CONDITIONS Before booking, please refer to the FCO website to ensure you are happy with the travel advice for the places you are going to. wwwfco.gov.uk

Please read these You need to sign your assent to these booking conditions on the booking form.

Our promises to you We aim to be fair, reasonable and sympathetic in all our dealings with clients, and to act always with integrity. We will meet all our legal and regulatory responsibilities, often going beyond the minimum obligations. We aim to provide full and accurate information about our holidays. If there are changes, we will tell you promptly. If something does go wrong, we will try to put it right. Our overriding aim is to ensure that every client is satisfied with our services.

What we ask of you That you read the information we send to you.

Specific terms Our contract with you. From the time we receive your signed booking form and initial payment, a contract exists between you and Martin Randall Travel Ltd. Eligibility. We reserve the right to refuse to accept a booking without necessarily giving a reason. You need to have a level of fitness which would not spoil other participants’ enjoyment of the holiday by slowing them down – see ‘Fitness’. To this end we ask you to take the tests described. By signing the booking form you are stating that you have met these fitness requirements. If during the tour it transpires you are not able to cope adequately, you may be asked to opt out of certain visits, or be invited to leave the tour altogether. This would be at your own expense. Insurance. It is a requirement of booking that you have adequate holiday insurance. Cover for medical treatment, repatriation, loss of property and cancellation charges must be included. If you are making your own flight/travel arrangements, please ensure you have insurance in place that protects you in the unlikely event of Martin Randall Travel cancelling the tour. Experience tells us that free travel insurance offered by some credit card companies is not reliable in the event of a claim. Passports and visas. British citizens must have valid passports for all tours outside the United Kingdom. For most countries the passport needs to be valid for six months beyond the dates of the tour. If visas are required we will advise UK citizens about obtaining them. Nationals of other countries should ascertain whether visas are required in their case, and obtain them if they are. If we cancel the tour. We might decide to cancel a tour if at any time up to eight weeks before there were insufficient bookings for it to be viable. We would refund everything you had paid to us. We may also cancel a tour if hostilities, civil unrest, natural disaster or other circumstances amounting to force majeure affect the region to which the tour was due to go.

If you cancel. If you have to cancel your participation on a tour, there would be a charge which varies according to the period of notice you give. Up to 57 days before the tour the deposit only is forfeited. Thereafter a percentage of the total cost of the tour will be due: between 56 and 29 days: between 28 and 15 days: between 14 days and 3 days: within 48 hours:

40% 60% 80% 100%

We take as the day of cancellation that on which we receive written notification from you. If you cancel your booking in a double or twin room or cabin but are travelling with a companion who chooses to continue to participate on the tour, the companion will be liable to pay the stipulated single supplement. Safety and security. If the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against travel to places visited on a tour, we would cancel the tour or adjust the itinerary to avoid the risky area. In the event of cancellation before the tour commenced we would give you a full refund. We would also treat sympathetically a wish to withdraw from a tour to a troubled region even if the FCO does not advise against travel there. Seatbelts. Our tours and festivals subscribe to the health and safety legislation of the destination. In some parts of the world the law concerning seatbelts differs to the UK. The limits of our liabilities. As principal, we accept responsibility for all ingredients of a tour, except those in which the principle of force majeure prevails. Our obligations and responsibilities are also limited where international conventions apply in respect of air, sea or rail carriers, including the Warsaw Convention and its various updates. If we make changes. Circumstances might arise which prevent us from operating a tour exactly as advertised. We would try to devise a satisfactory alternative, but if the change represents a significant loss to the tour we would offer compensation. If you decide to cancel because the alternative we offer is not acceptable we would give a full refund. Financial protection. We provide full financial protection for our package holidays which include international flights, by way of our Air Travel Organiser’s Licence number 3622. When you buy an ATOL protected flight inclusive holiday from us you receive an ATOL Certificate. This lists what is financially protected, where you can get information on what this means for you and who to contact if things go wrong. Most of our flights and flight-inclusive holidays on our website and in our brochure are financially protected by the ATOL scheme. But ATOL protection does not apply to all holiday and travel services listed. Please ask us to confirm what protection may apply to your booking. If you do not receive an ATOL Certificate then the booking will not be ATOL protected. If you do receive an ATOL Certificate but all the parts of your trip are not listed on it, those parts will not be ATOL protected. In order to be protected under the ATOL scheme you need to be in the UK when you make your booking and/or one of the flights

you take must originate or terminate in the UK with the group. We provide full financial protection for our package holidays that do not include a flight, by way of a bond held by ABTA The Travel Association. We will provide you with the services listed on the ATOL Certificate (or a suitable alternative). In some cases, where we aren’t able do so for reasons of insolvency, an alternative ATOL holder may provide you with the services you have bought or a suitable alternative (at no extra cost to you). You agree to accept that in those circumstances the alternative ATOL holder will perform those obligations and you agree to pay any money outstanding to be paid by you under your contract to that alternative ATOL holder. However, you also agree that in some cases it will not be possible to appoint an alternative ATOL holder, in which case you will be entitled to make a claim under the ATOL scheme (or your credit card issuer where applicable). If we, or the suppliers identified on your ATOL certificate, are unable to provide the services listed (or a suitable alternative, through an alternative ATOL holder or otherwise) for reasons of insolvency, the Trustees of the Air Travel Trust may make a payment to (or confer a benefit on) you under the ATOL scheme. You agree that in return for such a payment or benefit you assign absolutely to those Trustees any claims which you have or may have arising out of or relating to the non-provision of the services, including any claim against us (or your credit card issuer where applicable). You also agree that any such claims maybe re-assigned to another body, if that other body has paid sums you have claimed under the ATOL scheme. English Law. These conditions form part of your contract with Martin Randall Travel Ltd and are governed by English law. All proceedings shall be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Fitness – please read A certain level of fitness is a requirement for participation on our tours. We ask that all participants take these quick and simple tests to ascertain whether they are fit enough. 1. Chair stands. Sit in a dining chair, with arms folded and hands on opposite shoulders. Stand up and sit down at least eight times in thirty seconds.   2. Step test. Mark a wall at a height that is halfway between your knee and your hip bone. Raise each knee in turn to the mark at least sixty times in two minutes.   3. Agility test. Place an object three yards from the edge of a chair, sit, and record the time it takes to stand up, walk to the object and sit back down. You should be able to do this in under seven seconds. An additional indication of the fitness required, though we are not asking you to measure this, is that you should be able to walk unaided at a pace of three miles per hour for at least half an hour at a time, and to stand unsupported for at least fifteen minutes.

Making a booking 1. Booking option. We recommend that you contact us first to make a booking option which we will hold for seven days. To confirm it please send the booking form and deposit within this period â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the deposit is 10% of your total booking price. 2. Definite booking. Fill in the booking form and send it to us with the deposit. It is important that you read the Booking Conditions at this stage, and that you sign the booking form. Full payment is required if you are booking within ten weeks of departure. 3. Our confirmation. Upon receipt of the booking form and deposit we shall send you confirmation of your booking. After this your deposit is non-returnable except in the special circumstances mentioned in the Booking Conditions. Further details about the tour may also be sent at this stage, or will follow shortly afterwards.

5085

ABTA No.Y6050

Martin Randall Travel Ltd Voysey House Barley Mow Passage London W4 4GF, United Kingdom

Martin Randall Australasia PO Box 1024 Indooroopilly QLD 4068, Australia

Canada Tel (647) 382 1644 Fax (416) 925 2670 canada@martinrandall.ca

Tel +44 (0)20 8742 3355 Fax +44 (0)20 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk www.martinrandall.com

Tel 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand 0800 877 622 Fax +61 (0)7 3371 8288 anz@martinrandall.com.au

USA Tel 1 800 988 6168 (toll-free, and connects to the London office)