New Commissions - Autumn Songs

Since its foundation the Little Missenden Festival has championed contemporary music as a major part of its artistic role. To this end the Festival has always commissioned new music - from John Tavener's Greek Interlude (1979) to Mark Bowden's Breaking Wheel (2018) and The path is winding (2019) by John Woolrich - thereby creating a significant volume of work. 

In 2021 we were fortunate enough to be able to commission a major new work from the composer Julian Philips which would reflect back to the early days of the Festival. In 1968 Festival founder Pat Harrison commissioned one of our finest poets, Ted Hughes, to write five autumn poems for Little Missenden School children to chant at Harvest Festival, with Ted present. To celebrate this Festival landmark we commissioned Julian to set the poems as a short song cycle for soprano, baritone and piano. Since they’re children’s poems we asked Julian to weave in brief episodes for a small chorus of children. When Ted wrote his poems Little Missenden was a junior school, but is now infants only, so for the chorus we invited former Little Missenden pupils who are now mainly at Great Missenden Junior School. 

This cycle was very successfully premiered in St John's Church on 9th October 2021 by an outstanding team of performers: soprano Elizabeth Atherton, baritone Dominic Sedgwick, pianist Iain Burnside and, of course, the children who gave a sparkling and faultless performance prepared and conducted by John Webb. The five poems of Ted's Autumn Songs are: The Leaves; The Seven Sorrows; The Defenders; There came a day; The Stag.

We're delighted that we can now make this performance available online (link to audio/video?).