Dante Summer Festival,
10-15 July, 2018
Stoke Climsland – Blisland – Calstock – Launceston – Callington – St Kew
The world-renowned Dante Quartet returns to the area next month, for its annual Summer Festival.
Dante Summer Festival organiser, and Dante Quartet lead-violinist Krysia Osostowicz writes: ‘The 2018 Dante Summer Festival brochure has now been available for some time – in fact our 15th anniversary! To celebrate this special year, we are adding an extra day to the festival, and two new venues.
‘We open in Stoke Climsland with high-spirited Haydn and Smetana’s turbulent quartet ‘From My Life”, and we welcome you for the first time to Lavethan, the Dantes’ wonderful new base in Cornwall.
‘Join us in Callington for a wild and wonderful evening of Klezmer music, and in Calstock for an evening of pure Shostakovich, washed down with a shot of Russian vodka.
‘In Launceston, no fewer than three local young string groups join us, while at the stunning village church of St Kew, we look forward to a guest appearance from Beethoven himself (consummately acted by David Timson), introducing his three great Razumovsky Quartets.
‘Meanwhile, we also have some pre-festival concerts in Devon and Cornwall coming up in June: on the 20th in Honiton, 21st in Stoke Climsland, 22nd at St Endellion and 24th in Lympstone. We’d be delighted to see you at any of these – you can find details on our website, www.dantequartet.org
‘We warmly invite you to join the Friends of the Dante Festival, or to renew your subscription if you are already a Friend, using the form inside the brochure. We hugely appreciate the Friends’ generous contributions and moral support.
‘One of the main benefits of being a Friend is the guarantee of seats with the best sight-lines in each venue. This year’s champagne reception for the Friends will be after the evening concert in Launceston Town Hall on 13th July, and if you wish to join, we greatly look forward to seeing you there and hearing your comments and feedback.
‘Brochures may be obtained by emailing osostowiczk@gmail.com Please also feel free to forward the website link, www.dantefestival.org We look forward to seeing you soon!’
Krysia has since been back in touch to remind me, and our readers, that they’ve taken the somewhat brave step this year of extending the catchment area of the festival to Blisland and St Kew, and that a couple of the regular venues don’t figure this year – like Tavistock, or Yelverton.
Ticket sales are roughly on a par with previous seasons at this juncture, but I know that the Dantes are hoping that, by changing a few things around this year, and adding an extra day, this will bring in more listeners overall, than before.
Those of you who have attended any of the events from previous Dante Summer Festivals will surely know what a great variety of music is on offer, and what a friendly, family-like atmosphere there is throughout.
We just don’t get string-quartet-playing of this calibre on our doorstep anymore, so do make the most of it – especially if you happen to live near either of this season’s new venues. True, all this season’s concerts this season happen to be in Cornwall. But the Devon border is not that far away, at least from some of them.
Philip R Buttall
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