Find out what the press said about the 2009 Bath Music Festival
Bath Music Festival is officially over for another year. We hope you enjoyed our "epic 16 day feast" (as described by The Guardian) and would greatly appreciate any feedback on the Festival. Please click here to download our questionnaire, which can be sent back to the freepost address on the form.
This year we had more artists, events, variety and innovation than ever before. Here is what the newspapers had to say:
Sunday 24 May, Assembly Rooms
Janacek and Britten
"Paul Nilon delivered Rodney Blumer's haunting translation of [The Diary of One Who Disappeared] with uncompromising clarity, while Carolyn Dobbin
portrayed his Gypsy seductress with the most luscious tone. But it was
the orchestral colour with which MacGregor invested the accompaniment
that elevated this to the status of drama." THE GUARDIAN
Saturday 23 May, Pavilion
Maceo Parker Band featuring Dennis Rollins
"James Brown may no longer be with us, but thank goodness that Maceo Parker is
still out there spreading the gospel. Forty years or more after he joined
forces with the great showman, the saxophonist remains one of the sharpest
and funkiest performers on the block. It was impossible
to resist the perfectly proportioned riffs and the dynamic call-and-response
vamps, all harking back to an era when R&B had yet to degenerate into
cocktail hour bombast" THE TIMES
Sunday 24 May, Guildhall
The Well-Tempered Clavier
"Carole Cerasi's performance of the first book of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier constituted a collector's gem." THE GUARDIAN
Monday 25 May, Assembly Rooms
Freddy Kempf
"The
most dazzling display, meanwhile, was that of pianist Freddy Kempf [...] The combination of rigour and
interpretative insight suggested that Kempf in his early 30s is gaining
considerably in artistic maturity, and Liszt's transcription of the
Liebestod from Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde confirmed as much. The
long phrases were spun out with a tenderly expressive singing line and,
even at their most powerful and climactic, were impeccably controlled." THE GUARDIAN
Friday 29 May, Pavilion
Dr Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys
"The line-up — guitar, banjo, fiddle and
bass — was the one prescribed by tradition, and a lovely sound the players
made, infectiously rhythmic but never rough, always with a vein of Southern
courtliness under the energy. Soaring over it all was Stanley’s
extraordinary fierce pure tenor — a voice now known to millions from the
soundtrack to ’Oh Brother where art Thou?’ When he sang ’O Death’
unaccompanied it was a reminder that country in its tragic vein is not so
far from the blues." THE TELEGRAPH
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