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We have no desire to become a musical version of Jacob Rees-Mogg, says the festival’s artistic director. Instead, we shine a light on neglected voices, challenge received opinions, and prove that ‘cowpat’ is not a musical insultFor three days every April the impossibly beautiful town of Ludlow, Shropshire, fills up with music for the Ludlow English song weekend. As its artistic director let me hastily deconstruct the title. The Weekend is a long one; we offer more than song; and as to being English – how long have you got? Terms and conditions apply. We are 14 miles from the Welsh border and I’m a proud Scot, so we’re acutely aware of what flags are run up our flagpole. The core of our repertoire, though, is the golden period of song spanning the first half of last century, stretching from Hubert Parry to Benjamin Britten, and taking in Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, Gerald Finzi and John Ireland along the way. Our thinking is this: if you love Britten, you’ll find his mothership in Aldeburgh; if you’re drawn to Vaughan Williams and his circle, there’s no single point of pilgrimage. That’s the gap our Ludlow weekend seeks to fill.Parry (1848-1918) is one of my heroes, by all accounts the kindest of men. His musical upbringing was entirely Germanic, his address book full of his German friends. Translate any of his fine songs into German and they would pass for shining examples of the lieder tradition, the ghost of Johannes Brahms smiling over his shoulder. But many of the younger composers Parry mentored at the Royal College of Music decided to break away from this Teutonic sound world – before, during and after the first world war. Their decision was aesthetic and nationalistic. Parry watched in agony as some of his brightest and best, such as George Butterworth, left for France, not to return. Ivor Gurney did come back, but scarred inside and out. Bridge took a decade to process the war, going on later to invent an entirely new way of composing. Continue reading...