Composer shares bill with author interviews

EDWARD Elgar received due tribute at last year’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival. Now it is the turn of another Hampstead composer, Sir William Walton, who will be applauded at this year’s festival, which kicks off on May 12.
The 10-day festival has chosen to honour the composer of Façade and Belshazzar’s Feast, who died in 1983 aged 80.
He lived a peripatetic life in and out of Hampstead, spending some time in Hollyberry Lane, but the real buzz and attraction was his love affair with Jane Clark, wife of Sir Kenneth, later Lord Clark, creator of the celebrated Civilisation TV series.
At one time Walton was about to run off with Lady Clark – she lived then in immaculate Upper Terrace House, Hampstead — but the composer was persuaded otherwise by his benefactor, Vicountess Wimborne, with whom he was also romantically linked over the years.
Festival artistic director George Vass said: “The exciting oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast and Façade, an entertainment he wrote to accompany the surreal poetry of Dame Edith Sitwell, are probably the public’s favourite pieces.” The festival will showcase these works.
Mr Vass added: “But I am very much looking forward to conducting some of the film music for Laurence Olivier’s epic Henry V at Hampstead Parish Church.”
The festival features a screening at the Everyman cinema of Tony Palmer’s evocative profile of Walton, called At the Haunted End of the Day, which was made towards the end of his life for television’s South Bank Show. The event will include a conversation on stage between Mr Palmer and South Bank director Melvyn Bragg, himself a Hampstead resident.
There is a French flavour to much of the music programme, with important works by Poulenc, Debussy and Ravel among the treats. Another major feature will be the performances of works by David Matthews, the festival’s first composer-in-residence, who lives in Hampstead Garden Suburb. These will include the world premiere of a specially commissioned work, entitled Journeying Songs, for the cellist Ralph Kirshbaum.
The festival includes a series of six Literature in the Afternoon events at which retired BBC producer Piers Plowright will interview such notable local writers as Dame Beryl Bainbridge, Miranda Seymour, the poet Ruth Padel and actress Gayle Hunnicutt.
There are also children’s events, bat walks, night sky events, an illustrated lecture and jazz.
To obtain a festival brochure, with booking details, call 0207 722 1414 or email info@hamandhighfest.co.uk.