"Acclaimed Welsh soprano Elin Manahan Thomas officially launched the 2009 Gregynog Festival Programme with a taster performance at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, on Tuesday 21 April.

The festival, which celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, will be held from Friday 12 - Sunday 21 June in the historic Gregynog Hall near Newtown in Powys. Elin Manahan Thomas is one of the headline performers alongside The Sixteen, The Dufay Collective, Kungsbacka Piano Trio, Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, Iestyn Davies and Gary Cooper, O Duo and The Aronowitz Ensemble.

The theme of this year's exciting Gwyl Gregynog Festival, which runs from June 12-21, is composer anniversaries.

Following the festival's successful 75th anniversary celebrations in 2008, the party continues into this year with programming ranging from Henry VIII to Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn to highlight the composers' Wales and Borders connections.

Headline artists include The Sixteen, the world-class choir who are the Voices of Classic FM, soprano Elin Manahan Thomas and Haydn Trio Eisenstadt from Austria, early music specialists The Dufay Collective, and The Aronowitz Ensemble featuring Gregynog favourites Tom Poster and Guy Johnston.

A new work by the celebrated composer Mervyn Burtch will receive its world premiere at the 2009 Gregynog Festival. Notes to a drama, commissioned with the support of the PRS Foundation for New Music and Welsh Music Guild to mark the composer's 80th birthday, will be performed by the Kungsbacka Piano Trio on Saturday 13th June at 7.30pm. Mervyn will also give a pre-concert talk and lead an open public rehearsal of his new score earlier in the day.

The festival's closing concert will be given by The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers. This will be The Sixteen's only date at a Welsh festival as part of their famous annual Choral Pilgrimage and is already attracting keen interest as it offers such an exceptional opportunity to hear the choir perform in a space as intimate as Gregynog's historic Music Room.

The Sixteen's programme will include works by Henry Purcell and the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation, James MacMillan. The concert celebrates the 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth and MacMillan's 50th birthday.

The Dufay Collective, one of the UK's finest early music groups, will mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne with a concert featuring repertoire composed by Henry himself as well as other music from the Tudor period.

Continuing the composer theme, a recital by counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, fast emerging as one of the world's most exciting Handel singers, will mark the 250th anniversary of Handel's death. Making his Gregynog Festival debut, Davies will sing a selection of Handel arias accompanied by harpsichord virtuoso Gary Cooper.

Gregynog Festival will be the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt's only appearance in Wales as part of a year-long tour to mark the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death at prestigious international venues including the Louvre and Metropolitan Museum of Art. They will perform with guest early music superstar Elin Manahan Thomas, following their recent collaboration to record the same repertoire on location in Austria for the forthcoming Tinopolis / S4C documentary Papa Haydn.Music to mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's birth will be played by ex-BBC New Generation Artists, The Aronowitz Ensemble. The programme features pieces composed during the composer's little-known visit to Wales in 1829.In a change of mood, a late-night, jazz-inspired session is designed to conjure up memories of Alec Templeton, a blind, Cardiff-born pianist-composer who became a huge radio star in the USA from the 1930s yet is virtually unknown in his native Wales.

The festival also features a recital by the outstanding Anglo-Swedish Kungsbacka Piano Trio to honour the 90th anniversary of the founding of the National Council of Music for Wales. This programme will include the world premiere performance of a new Piano Trio by distinguished Welsh composer Mervyn Burtch, commissioned by Gregynog Festival to mark his 80th birthday.

For more information contact the Festival Committee via the website listed to the right of this page."

Article by Duncan Foulkes

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