PETERSFIELD Musical Festival invites youngsters to join in and have some fun at a family concert on March 20.
Children aged from four to 11 may take along a small drum or other percussion instrument to the Festival Hall for a 3pm start.
They will be able to accompany a varied programme of music including selections from Lion King’, Fanfare for the common man by Aaron Copland and Rippling Watercolours.
The concert will be performed by Meridian Winds, a local band of wind players with close connections to local schools and colleges, aimed at encouraging young musicians to enjoy and broaden their music making.
St Peter’s Church is the venue for the 2022 Festival’s midweek recitals on Tuesday, March 22, and Wednesday, March 23.
Tuesday’s concert will be devoted to the young recipients of the Michael Hurd for Young Musicians Awards who are thrilled to be performing in front of a live audience.
Flautist Shoshana Yugin Power, recent winner of the festival’s Young Composer competition, will play a programme including CPE Bach. Shoshhana is a music scholar at Bedales.
Kenji Luc will be accompanied by his sister on cello for a selection of music including the beautiful Debussy piano Sonata.
The following day, two popular musicians familiar to local audiences take the stage in the church. Emilie Capulet and Mark Dancer will perform a programme of Viennese piano duets.
These will include pieces by Mozart and Schubert and a piano arrangement of Beethoven’s famous 5th Symphony.
Emilie is an award-winning international pianist, writer and musicologist in demand for her lectures and performances.
Mike Dancer is director of music and organist at St Peter’s Church in The Square.
On March 26 the final concert in the festival, In Praise of Singing, features Felix Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, an exhilarating cantata originally composed to commemorate the publication of the Gutenberg Bible.
The music sets a sequence of Biblical texts, mainly from the Psalms, and charts a journey from darkness to light.
It will be a fitting celebration for the four young soloists and Festival Chorus of a return to live performance and encapsulates for many the sheer joy of choral singing.
Other highlights of the programme are Britten’s Soirées Musicales (based on Rossini) and Smetana’s rousing and popular Vltava.
Tickets are now on sale, with full details of this year’s Festival programme, from the website at petersfieldmusicalfestival.org.uk