Welcome to the Barnes Music Festival 2025
We are delighted to present our programme for this year’s Barnes Music Festival with the theme of Music & Literature, exploring how literature has shaped music and vice-versa.
We have an exciting programme of 36 events over two weeks at venues across Barnes. We open the festival with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields and a pre-festival talk by Sir Antonio Pappano. Later in the festival we host Opera Holland Park as well as Gesualdo Six and the King’s College London Choir.
Other highlights include the return of pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, this time playing with Samson Tsoy, and of Roderick Williams in a new programme accompanied by Andrew West. Alistair McGowan reprises the musical portrait of Erik Satie to mark his centenary and Gyles Brandreth joins with pianist Stefan Bednarczyk to present Shakespeare’s Music. We close the festival with Elgar’s mighty Dream of Gerontius.
Other top musicians include Jeneba Kanneh-Mason piano, Cordelia Williams piano with Tamsin Waley-Cohen violin, Tama Matheson actor with Clare Hammond piano with a reprise of Byron Don Juan, Richard Gowers organ, Helen Charleston soprano with Toby Carr lute, Harry Baker jazz trio and Henry Chandler violin with John Paul Ekins piano.
Our local groups Barnes Music Society, Barnes Choir, Barnes Community Choir and Barnes Concert Band bring their special performances to the festival and St Michael’s is hosting a Come & Sing Dido & Aeneas conducted by Hilary Campbell.
We are pleased to have as our first Artist-in-Residence the exciting horn-player Ben Goldscheider who is performing in the opening concert, adjudicating the Barnes Young Musician of the Year and giving his own concert with pianist Giuseppe Guarrera.
Our Schools Programme continues with the engagement of local primary schools, and our local secondary schools are hosting masterclasses for the best young musicians. We even have a Toddlers Concert for the very young.
We are grateful to all our supporters especially our principal partner Chestertons, our major partner Russell-Cooke, to the Benefactors and Friends of Barnes Music Festival and above all to the musicians who share their music and their passion with us. We hope you enjoy the festival!
Andrew Summers, Chairman & James Day, Artistic Director