Senior classical critic Andrew Clements has chosen the ESO’s performance of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s “Golden Legend” at this year’s English Music Festival as a Guardian Pick in the May 25th issue of the Guardian, calling the performance “a must for English music aficionados.”
The Golden Legend, nr Wallingford
The English music festival is now well established in south Oxfordshire, offering a bank holiday weekend’s worth of concerts devoted to the 19th and early 20th-century British music. There are always plenty of performances of rediscovered works, and the big event this year is a revival of Arthur Sullivan’s cantata The Golden Legend. Based upon Longfellow’s poem, it was first performed in 1886, and became second only to Handel’s Messiah in popularity in Victorian England, when it was regarded as the greatest of Sullivan’s serious works. In the last 75 years, though performances have been increasingly sporadic; this specially mounted occasion, with John Andrews conducting the English Symphony Orchestra will be a must for English music aficionados.
Dorchester Abbey, Sat