We are delighted to welcome one of the worlds great string quartets the Quatuor bne to this years festival where they will also lead masterclasses for young ensembles. They pay tribute to these enchanted isles in Brittens brilliant and precocious portraits of…

Your OCMF 2024 Festival Pass gives you:‐ Invitation to the Reception on the opening night‐ A saving of £58 compared to buying individual tickets‐ One ticket that gives you access to all events‐ Priority access to events so you can choose the…

Join us for scintillating performances from our inaugural OCMF Studio given by ensembles taking part in the masterclasses this year led by Quatuor bne Reto Bieri Priya Mitchell and Dirk Mommertz. This concert will include a performance of Brittens String Quartet No.…

We are proud and excited to inaugurate a new initiative a platform for emerging British chamber ensembles which we hope introduces you to the stars of our musical future. This year the Paddington Trio take us on a whistlestop tour of three…

Romani and Traveller people have been excluded from cultural imaginaries of Britishness but in this talk Hazel Marsh shows how these groups have made immense contributions to our shared folk heritage. She explores an archival collection held by the Vaughan Williams Memorial…

A captivating expansive clarinet quintet by an important early Black British composer deservedly headlines a concert filled with discoveries. Heres a scintillating Swiss treatment of Irish folk music; vivid music for children from a twentieth‐century Romantic; and a wistful waltz for…

Here are two very contrasting twentieth‐century masterpieces: Vaughan Williams universally‐beloved evocation of an English summer with its lark and its country fair; and Brittens brilliant and heartfelt portrait of his musical mentor Frank Bridge with variations showing his humour his integrity his…

It is extraordinary that Rebecca Clarkes very distinctive musical personality could have been ignored for nearly seventy years. She was a gifted professional viola player and her insiders understanding of the special sound and expressive possibilities of the viola has ensured that…

Elgars magnificent piano quintet is one of his last masterpieces written at the end of the Great War which destroyed the world he had grown up in with all its stability and self‐confidence. Here Elgars inimitable grandeur with its usual traces of…

An unmissable opportunity to hear one of the giants of the keyboard Elizabeth Leonskaja on a rare visit to the UK playing a composer very close to her heart. With Julius Drake whose own insights into Schubert are justly celebrated she tackles…

Music of four centuries: from the sixteenth‐century William Byrd one of the great Renaissance composers of all Europe to the composer who soundtracked Restoration London Henry Purcell; then leaping into the 1970s the astonishing sounds and characters Britten conjures from…

In the 1970s an eighteenth‐century manuscript was discovered in Christ Church library containing Handels chamber arrangement of his immortal Water Music originally written for an evening Royal pageant on the Thames with a barge accommodating 50 musicians. Perhaps the royal party…

A talk by Steve Roud author of the celebrated Folk Song in England and the New Penguin Book of English Folksongs. Steve will give a concise history of English traditional folk song from a time when singing out loud was normal…

Four great contemporaries with hugely different voices. Vaughan Williams fascinating early Piano quintet still speaks an English dialect of Brahms but is a strong and successful piece on its own terms. Finzis Eclogue is a lovely example of the English pastoral style…