Simon Callow At The Two Moors Festival!

We’re very excited to announce that acclaimed actor Simon Callow will be taking centre stage at this year’s Two Moors Festival – something of a coup for classical music festivals in the UK and a production that we’re definitely looking forward to later on this month.

On October 23rd at Exeter Cathedral from 19:30, a fundraising concert in aid of the Addington Fund and the Two Moors Festival will be put on, with the programme including Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and the Orchestra of the Swan on hand to provide audiences with the most beautiful classical music.

Callow will be the narrator for our performance of Peter and the Wolf and artistic director Penny Adie had this to say about the forthcoming event: “To have such esteemed actor as Simon Callow narrating Peter and the Wolf is extremely exciting. An actor’s voice is his most precious instrument and in Callow’s case, his resounding tones combined with impeccable diction will bring unique qualities to the story-telling.”

Callow is one of the most respected stage and screen actors in the UK, having starred in the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Chance in a Million and Little Napoleons. Aside from being a star of stage and screen, Callow is also a renowned director and writer, but he is also known for his passion for classical music.

Not only has he directed operatic productions and appeared alongside numerous orchestras over the years, but written about various composers and fronted a range of classical music documentaries as well. There could be no better person to take on the role of narrator for Peter and the Wolf at this year’s 15th anniversary of the Two Moors Festival.

 

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Top 10 Classical Music Blogs!

As a UK classical music festival, we here at the Two Moors Festival are always following and reading other organisations’ and bloggers’ websites. There are some really brilliant classical music blogs out there so it’s amazing for us to announce that we’ve been featured in the top ten list of all classical music blogs in the UK.

Compiled by Cision (now Vuelio), the rundown includes Jessica Duchen’s Classical Music Blog, Planet Hugill, The Cross-Eyed Pianist, Boulezian, British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content, Where’s Runnicles?, Richard Bratby, new:dots, Classical Iconoclast and us, the Two Moors Festival.

We’re so honoured to be given a mention and in such seriously good company, so thank you very much Cision/Vuelio for valuing our blog and giving us a mention for the work we do in the classical music sphere.

We urge you to go and have a look at the other blogs in the top ten – there’s some amazingly interesting stuff being written about and if you’re interested in this genre of music, then your reading list should certainly include all of these blogs.

Have you already come across any of these blogs before? Which of them are your favourites and why? We’d love to hear what you find so inspiring about each of them so come along and drop us a line in the comments below.

State of play in the Festival’s run-up

67 days to go until UK classical music festival The Two Moors Festival begins…

When I think of how much there is to do in only 67 days, it is positively daunting. It’s better not to dwell and just get on with it.

Business is brisk in the Box Office – a relief as it would be seriously worrying were it not so. Friends’ bookings are healthy and the number of new Friends is up on last year. This is positive in itself and a good boost to morale. It also gives our wonderful person running the Office plenty to do. We are so lucky this year in having Oxford music undergraduate, Rebecca McNaught to help. Not only is she a super person, but is brilliant at the job and great on the phone giving would-be ticket purchasers all the information they need before they make up their minds to buy tickets.

Talking of the Box Office, we must be one of the few festivals to have a real person at the end of the phone. We guarantee that whoever speaks has specialist knowledge and who knows how to pronounce indecipherable names such as Ibragimova and Shostakovich. It is amazing how much difference this makes to ticket sales!

Tackling PR is vital at this time of year. The trouble is where to start as there are so many avenues of possibility. The other problem is how to cover 1,200 square miles of festival patch. We are fortunate in that the local press and regional magazines such as Devon Life are keen to include features. Local radio also sparks as does BBC TV’s ‘Spotlight’ providing there is something to film – concerts by and large do not make good television! The national media is becoming more supportive than ever and as I type, there has been a splendid article in Classical Music Magazine as well as promises from the press and various Listings.

Classic FM has done us proud over the years and we’re crossing fingers that they might be able to give us air-time as they have in previous years. There is also BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ which we try to interest – successfully a number of times.

There is the series of run-up concerts in the Ticket Office at Tiverton Parkway’s Ticket Office. These may sound totally off the wall. Well, they are! The concerts do not disrupt the everyday working of the station; people come and go and it’s quite often that someone might be asking whether they might need to change at Birmingham New Street while Bach is providing the background music. We never stop the ongoing business of raising funds to cover costs. How tedious this is for my husband, John. We wouldn’t survive without his Trojan efforts.

One of the main jobs to do in August is assembling the programme. It’s true to say that this is a nightmare. Inserting notes and biographies are the easy bits. The hardest part lies in achieving consistency in the way a work is written. Does one write Sonata in E major Op. 14 No.1 or Sonata Op. 14 No.1 in E – the options are endless!

On which note, I will end and give readers the next instalment in a few days’ time.