Brimming over with music

‘Hello, Gavin. Have you got the sackbuts with you?’ Administrative magician Rebecca Rickard is dealing with what is, for her, a fairly ordinary sort of phone call in the greater scheme of things. As it turns out, Gavin (Henderson) has indeed got no fewer than three sackbuts, and is planning to bring them with him the following morning on the London to Totnes train. Three musicians in this, the first week of the 60th Dartington International Summer School, will no doubt be duly grateful.

The Summer School is a unique gathering point for musicians of every possible description and of varying standards of ability. Following a roughly chronological scheme from early music through to contemporary, there are one-week courses in piano accompaniment and early brass (cornetts and sackbuts), two-week courses in film music composition and jazz improvisation, three-week courses in conducting and opera performance. On a single day when I was there, I looked in on a piano masterclass, a baroque orchestral workshop and an introduction to Indian classical music, and attended a concert by Tarang — an ensemble of young musicians playing classical and contemporary Indian music — and the Rose Consort of Viols. There was a great deal more on offer but I have unfortunately not yet managed to master the art of being in three places at once. If I’d gone in later weeks, I could have earwigged on a voice class given by Emma Kirkby, joined a RockShop session with Herbie Flowers or witnessed William Sitwell make his debut as narrator in a performance of Façade, the first Sitwell to do so since Edith.

Artistic director Gavin Henderson is a man acutely attuned to Dartington’s past while taking constant and pragmatically creative care for its future. And Dartington’s past is a glorious one, with a breathtaking roll call of musicians who have studied and/or taught there, from Paul Hindemith, Nadia Boulanger, Benjamin Britten and Myra Hess, through Virgil Thompson, Luciano Berio and Elizabeth Lutyens to Barenboim and Du Pré, Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Amadeus Quartet and, more recently, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and Thomas Adès.