Saturday 11 – Sunday 12 January 2025
The RNCM Strings Festival celebrates the sheer versatility, beauty, and brilliance of string music across a range of concerts and programmes.
We invite musicians and enthusiasts of all ages to immerse themselves in a weekend of exceptional performances that reinvigorate the classics and explore new musical landscapes. Our students, staff, and guest artists will be performing side-by-side throughout, captivating listeners and embodying learning at its highest level.
The RNCM’s 2024/2025 theme, Dance:Music, appears across the festival, setting music in motion and featuring compositions inspired by dance or performed in collaboration with dancers. Works like Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion and Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow are brought to vivid life with dancers from the innovative dance-theatre group, Company Chameleon.
We’re also delighted to be joined by world-renowned soloists from across the globe in our opening concert with The Hallé and RNCM students. Cellist István Várdai will perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1 in E flat major while violinist Simone Lamsma, fresh from her critically acclaimed residency with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, will bring Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major to life.
Highlighting our younger talent, chamber groups from Junior RNCM will perform before Saturday’s main event, and on Sunday, our open-access Young Strings group will present a pop-up performance ahead of the RNCM String Ensemble’s dance-theme programme with choreography by Company Chameleon.
Sunday evening offers an interlude in the Café Bar with NOMAD before the festival’s final concert, led by Zoe Beyers of the BBC Philharmonic. The RNCM String Orchestra will perform Stravinksy’s Concerto in D ‘Basle’ and Britten’s Lachrymae, culminating in a modern retelling of Bizet’s Carmen through Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite for strings and percussion with live dancers.
In between performances, visit our luthiers exhibition: Ayres Violins, D’Addario, Kai-Thomas Roth, Rod Ward Violins, William Castle, William John, and William Szott.
There’s a wealth of collaborations throughout the festival, and we warmly invite you to experience with us a weekend in which music, dance, and the brilliance of string music unite in celebration.