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GREGYNOG
REVIEWS
It was a great pleasure for us to come to such a beautiful setting. It was a wonderful evening . . . Some concerts are, quite simply, ‘special’. Many things can contribute to such a feeling but it draws on everything from the artistic planning, the artists, the venue, the heritage and the audience to mean so much to so many.
The King’s Singers, 2007
Summer Festivals 2008
Gregynog Festival, June 13-22
This year’s Festival includes a rare UK appearance by pianist Pascal Rogé, who will perform an all-French programme on June 21, alongside performances by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Andrew Kennedy (June 14), Elin Manahan Thomas (June 21) and the Badke Quartet (June 14). Artistic director Rhian Davies has spent three years planning this year’s 75th anniversary celebration of the Gregynog Festival and aims to recreate the atmosphere of the Welsh stately home in the 1920s and ’30s when it enjoyed visits from Walford Davies, Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams.
Gramophone, May 2008
2008 Festival Guide – A Summer of Music
Gregynog Festival, 13 - 22 June
Check out Tenebrae, BBC NOW, pianist Pascal Rogé and tenor Andrew Kennedy with the Badkes for Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge
BBC Music Magazine, April 2008
The 50 Best Summer Festivals 2008 – The Ultimate Guide to the Best Classical Festivals at Home and Abroad
38. Eternal Light in mid Wales – Swansea-born soprano Elin Manahan Thomas brings her shimmering vocals to Gregynog
The Music Room at Gregynog has seen its fair share of greats over the years from Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten to Bryn Terfel. Following in the footsteps of these musical giants is young soprano Elin Manahan Thomas who had a chart-busting success with her 2007 album Eternal Light. She makes her début at the Gwyl Gregynog Festival and promises to light up the Music Room with brilliant Baroque sparkle. Other delights include a recital of 20th-century French piano repertoire by Pascal Rogé, while tenor Andrew Kennedy and the Badke Quartet perform a beautiful concert of chamber music inspired by Montgomeryshire and the Borders.
Classic FM Magazine, May 2008
Among the many fine festivals in Wales, land of song, are . . . the Gregynog Festival . . . where new artistic director Rhian Davies has secured the covetable services of trumpet virtuoso du jour Alison Balsom, vocal favourites The King’s Singers and tenor Andrew Kennedy . . . and includes a celebratory Elgar Day.
The Classical Music Guide to Music Festivals, 2007
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Where did Elgar disappear to after cruising a thousand miles up the Amazon, being made Master of the King’s Music, and conducting his Enigma Variations and Cello Concerto at Aberystwyth? To a retreat deep in rural mid-Wales which, even today, is high on the wish-list of any musician who knows about it.
There have been summer festivals at Gregynog Hall (now a conference centre for the University of Wales) for the best part of 75 years. And the current festival, regenerated in the late 1980s and since last year under the new and inspired artistic directorship of Rhian Davies, has just celebrated both Elgar’s visit to Gregynog in 1924 and the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Elgar Day was on Sunday, and the big house, in its 750 acres of bosky grounds, hosted what felt like an old-style, sepia-tinted houseparty. Guests lunched on the lawns, sat on the staircases and filled the music room for a day of talks, archive film, exhibitions – and a high-fibre concert of Elgar’s chamber music.
The young Sacconi Quartet chose music written at about the time of Elgar’s visit to Gregynog, a period that coincided with a particularly purple patch of inspiration. We heard the String Quartet in E minor, and the Piano Quintet in A minor for which the quartet were joined by Gary Matthewman. Both performances revealed the warmly attuned ensemble of this outstanding young quartet. And they caught to a nicety both the melancholy within Elgar’s musical expression of the passage of time, and the impassioned energy of his own composing present. Ben Hancox, the quartet’s leader, was accompanied by Matthewman in a movingly perceptive performance of Elgar’s E minor Violin Sonata.
Hilary Finch, The Times, 27 June 2007
