Lichfield Festival's triumphant conclusion a fitting climax to showcase entertainment excellence - review

The Lichfield Festival concluded on a triumphant note after nearly two weeks of classical music, folk, jazz, opera, drama and comedy.

This year the festival not only had to compete with the Wimbledon tennis championships, as it usually does in its first week, but also the football World Cup - yet a huge number of the performances were either sold out or near-capacity.

The climax of the festival is the final orchestral concert, which this year once again featured the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, marking the 250th anniversary of American independence with an all-US programme of works in the cathedral.

Conducted by Ryan McAdams, soloist Maria Ioudenitch gave a stupendous performance of Samuel Barber’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.

It followed the complex Charles Ives composition Three Places In New England, and the concert concluded in dynamic style with Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

The concluding weekend of the festival also included some splendidly swinging jazz from the sophisticated singer Clare Teal and her band at the Garrick Theatre, before pianist Junyan Chen gave a final solo concert in the cathedral, with works by Rachmaninoff and Wild.

Folk star Kate Rusby has a big following, though purist enthusiasts prefer her earlier traditional performances. Her concert in the cathedral, delivered with great humour, opened with her own traditional-feeling Walk The Road.

In the interval, fans presented her with a box of cupcakes marked “CAKE RUSBY” - to her considerable delight.

When pianist-singer Joe Stilgoe and singer Liza Pulman walked on stage at the cathedral for their show Hooray For Hollywood a strange thing happened. No one applauded. However, with a slick show of movie favourites, they soon had this curiously reticent audience on their side. They are super professionals, technically immaculate and endlessly amusing.

The Rachmaninov choral masterpiece Vespers was wonderfully performed by the massed voices of Ex Cathedra, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore, who is retiring soon after a very long and distinguished career in the region.

The solo voices of mezzo-soprano Martha McLorinan and tenor James Robinson soared above the beautiful choral backdrop.

There was a double helping of saxophone joy on Tuesday, July 14, with student James Wong playing with great zest, accompanied by pianist Chichi Li, in a lunchtime recital at Wade Street Church. Highlights included Mediterranean region works by Albeniz and Italian composer Cimarosa.

Then in the evening popular sax star Jess Gillam dazzled the cathedral with a programme of great variety, including works by CPE Bach, David Bowie, Telemann and Michael Nyman. Not a show for classical purists, perhaps, but great fun.

At St Michael’s Church, pupils from the Purcell School gave very promising performances, with a string quartet performing a two movements from Dvorak’s American Quartet and a quintet vigorously presenting the same composer’s Piano Quintet. Solo pianist Ryosuke Asano gave a dynamic performance of Prokofiev’s strangely titled Sarcasms.