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Southwell Minster
Saturday 25th August 2018 | 7.30pm
Following his sell-out solo recital last year, Southwell Festival is proud to present the brilliant Sheku Kanneh-Mason playing the most famous concerto in the cello repertoire. Michael Tippett, a confirmed pacifist who was to become one of Britain’s leading composers of the 20th century, began writing A Child of Our Time on 3 September 1939 – the day Britain declared war on Germany. It was a response to fascism and European disunity – an attack on racial prejudice, bigotry and xenophobia whose message is as relevant today as it was nearly 80 years ago.
In a work of originality and great beauty, for which the composer wrote both words and music, Tippett uses five spirituals to underline his message: these 19th-century American slave songs transcend time and place to express the two extremes of the human condition – desolation and hope, and remind us of our common humanity.
Edward Elgar Cello Concerto
Michael Tippett A Child of Our Time
Sheku Kanneh-Mason cello
Susanna Hurrell soprano
Madeleine Shaw mezzo soprano
Andrew Tortise tenor
Roland Wood baritone
Festival Voices
Festival Sinfonia
Marcus Farnsworth conductor
Tickets £35 £25 £15
18 years and under £17.50 £12.50 £7.50
Southwell Music Festival is an annual, top-quality classical music festival taking place each August Bank Holiday to celebrate classical music, raise the profile of the town and its magnificent medieval Minster, and to inspire local musicians – especially young people. Like the previous four festivals, the 2018 festival will be held over the Bank Holiday weekend from Wednesday 22nd and Monday 27th August 2018.
The full programme of the Southwell Music Festival will be released in the spring, but the organisers have confirmed that the central choral and orchestral concert in the Minster on Saturday 25th August will feature Nottingham’s BBC Young Musician winner Sheku Kanneh-Mason performing Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
Southwell – a small, historic town in rural Nottinghamshire on the edge of Sherwood Forest – is the ideal place for a festival. Dominating the town is its Minster – seat of the Bishops of Southwell and Nottingham and a centre for high quality music-making.
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