A Generous Weekend

The third William Alwyn Festival,
attended by PATRIC STANDFORD

The inspiration for this third Festival to honour William Alwyn in and around his former home in Southwold, Suffolk, was stimulated by events focused in the year of the centenary of his birth, 2005. Some years before that, the William Alwyn Foundation had been established with the encouragement of his widow, Mary Alwyn, better known as the composer Doreen Carwithen, and in due course a Festival was proposed, and its committee established under the Artistic Direction of Andrew Knowles, and expertly managed by the composer Elis Pekhonen who is also a local resident. This year the Festival covered a generous weekend, with an opening recital by Julian Lloyd Webber on 10 October 2013 -- an event that, though including British music by Ireland, Delius, Frank Bridge and Lloyd Webber, had to neglect the composer at the heart of the enterprise as his relatively modest instrumental output did not provide anything for cello and piano.