Seven days of great live music from stunning Yorkshire castles, chapels and churches, shared by the Ryedale Festival straight into your home
- From Sunday 19 July to Sunday 26 July, Ryedale Festival will livestream eight free-to-view concerts from the rolling dales ofNorth Yorkshire to people’s homes for the first time ever
- Audiences will be able to watch the concerts on theonline platform RyeStream, which they can find at ryestream.com or by visiting Ryedale Festival’s website
- Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason [pictured] will open the festival with an afternoon recital of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 2 in A Major alongside classics from the American piano repertoire including Gershwin’sThree Preludes
- Violinist Rachel Podger will play baroque masterpieces from the beautiful pre-Raphaelite chapel of Castle Howard. Rachel’s performance will take in a breathtaking set of repertoire, including Biber’sThe Guardian Angel, a stunning work that portrays a guardian angel with a child
- Elsewhere, clarinettist Matthew Hunt and pianistTim Hortonwill perform together in a concertexploring fantasy in music, encompassingJörgWidmann’sFantasie and the music of Schumann and John Ireland
- “Trailblazing Anna Lapwood” (Evening Standard) will delight audiences in a performance of virtuoso organ playing, brimming with the work of Bach, Barbara Heller and Frescobaldi amongst others. Anna’s recital will be livestreamed from the elegant St Michael’s Church in Coxwold, one of Yorkshire’s most ancient churches
- Filling All Saints’ Church in Helmsley with his usual fizzing energy, cellist Abel Selaocoe will present a powerful concert drawn from the music and stories of his native South Africa, interleaved with Baroque masterpieces
- Pianist and Artistic Director Christopher Glynn and soprano Rowan Pierce will perform in a programme entitled Music for a Whilewhere the pair will present a winning mix of traditional songs and works by Purcell, Schubert, Schumann and Grieg
- Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Christopher Glynn will play Elgar, pairing the great composer’s Chanson de Nuit and Chanson de Matin with his Violin Sonata in E Minor to invoke the comforting scenes of the English countryside
- The festival’s partnership with Streetwise Opera is marked by Streetwise performers from all over the country joining baritone Roderick Williams OBE, Christopher Glynn, the Brodsky Quartet and Genesis Sixteen for a virtual performance of The Linden Tree from Schubert’s song cycle Winter Journey. Streetwise Opera Director, Hannah Conway said: ‘We are delighted to share “The Linden Tree” at the Ryedale Festival, a project which has united people affected by homelessness across England with world-class artists. Working with director Freya-Wynn Jones to newly interpret Schubert’s masterpiece, they have devised film and images inspired by the natural world around them. As homelessness soars due to the pandemic, Streetwise Opera’s work remains more vital than ever.
- The Carducci Quartet will then close the online festival by taking to the adorned and expansive Great Hall of Castle Howard, filling the magnificent space with Phillip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 Mishima and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 Serioso
- Speaking of Ryedale Festival 2020, Artistic Director Christopher Glynn said: ‘Our new online platform is there to throw open the doors of the Ryedale Festival this summer. It’s there to share the joy of classical music with more people than could ever fit into one venue. And it’s there to support musicians at a time when they have never needed it more. We all miss the feeling of community that is only ever fully present when people gather in a room and fill it with a sense of anticipation. It’s an alchemy we will value all the more when normal life is restored. But in the meantime, we hope this online festival will bring pleasure to music-lovers everywhere.’
- Every year, the Ryedale Festival welcomes outstanding performers from all over the world, both established and emerging, to perform a wide-ranging and distinctive programme in the many spectacular venues in and around Ryedale, North Yorkshire – an area imbued with history and surrounded by outstanding natural beauty
- The Festival enjoys a large, loyal and enthusiastic audience, the warm support of the local community and a reputation as one of the most exciting and enterprising in the country
- Now the festival can increase its reach beyond Yorkshire and outside of the UK, with the livestream available internationally
- All concerts will be accessible for at least three weeks, so that audiences who can’t join the festival can watch later, or even re-watch their favourite events