London Mozart Players Ensemble set to open 2020 Petworth Festival

The curtain rises on this autumn’s special edition of the Petworth Festival with a celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary.
London Mozart PlayersLondon Mozart Players
London Mozart Players

Howard Shelley directs the London Mozart Players Ensemble in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 on Friday, October 16 at 8pm. The concert opens with the opening Adagio-Allegro assai from Haydn’s 94th Surprise Symphony.

Events will happen live to small invited audiences of sponsors and friends – but will be streamed, giving the public the chance to buy tickets and attend the events online. It’s a model that LMP executive director Julia Desbruslais is delighted to embrace. It’s definitely the way forward in these challenging times.

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“Hats off to (Petworth Festival artistic director) Stewart (Collins) for really thinking around this problem (after the entire summer festival was wiped out by the pandemic). He has just completely rethought everything and now it is happening in October, and that is great for the festival and for the people that support the festival and for us. To stream it is the way forward in these times of only being able to have a limited audience. You have just got to make the most of it and to look for the opportunities. I think this nation has always been very behind in terms of the classical music it was offering online. The Berlin Phil has had a virtual concert hall for years. But it has meant a very steep learning curve for lots of organisations.”

For LMP it has worked wonderfully. They immediately committed to online content and found themselves reaching audiences around the world, in South Africa and Australia for instance, they would never have dreamt of reaching: “I think there has been a really positive side to what has been happening providing you look for the opportunities.”

LMP came into it with a record of resilience. In 2014, it nearly folded. Arts Council funding was cut; local authority funding was cut; the end threatened. But instead the players took over and now run the orchestra: “The old management were not sure we could get through it, and so we, the players, took it over, and it is such an exciting thing because it means that the players are all so very much invested in it. That’s so important to us. Before it was them and us. Now it is just us.”

Back in 2014, it had very few concerts lined up; this year, they were looking at 150 concerts with tours to Hong Kong, Dubai and Korea.

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“And then literally overnight everything collapsed. You just couldn’t believe the speed at which everything stopped, and every day more and more concerts were being cancelled. But from day one we were putting new content online. We involved the members of the orchestra and also people we have worked with in the past. And it has been a real life line for our players. We have discovered some incredible talents within the orchestra, people that can present things in wonderful ways.”

And this is the way things are going to have to be: that online aspect will remain crucial: “But then you realise that you can’t just give away this content for nothing. If you have got to find a model moving forward, it has got to be behind a paywall. People can’t just have this fantastic music for nothing.”

And that is the model Stewart has adopted for this year’s remodelled, rethought Petworth Festival...