Our Chairman’s Welcome – Bruce O’Brien

Welcome to the 66th St Endellion Summer Festival. Set amongst a context of much pain and strife in our world, we hope that this year’s festival will offer you a place of retreat, contemplation and exhilaration.

This year, as ever, has a programme filled with thrilling music, and some firsts for the Summer Festival (including a film, and St Endellion’s favourite father joining the cast of Falstaff). As well as some firsts, this festival also sees some “lasts” with the departure of Joely and Rachel as Artistic Directors. Joely took on the challenge of becoming joint Artistic Director in 2023, partnering with then co-AD Roderick Williams to programme a festival featuring such highlights as Traviata, and the sublime Sarah Connolly in both orchestral and chamber settings.

In 2024, Rachel joined the AD partnership and they cooked up a storm of music around the central work of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. This year sees the second and final outing of this pair and you will have read what they have in store for us. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank them both for their enormous commitment to this festival – it takes a huge amount of effort to devise such a rich and varied programme of opera, orchestral, choral, chamber and religious music and then to garner the forces required to make it happen and make it sparkle. It’s been a joy to partner them as they have brought their vision to life these last years.

And, as this “last” gets closer, I can also share that Paul Daniel will be taking on the baton (quite literally) of Artistic Director for the 2026 festival. Paul, as you may know, first came to the festival in the early 80s accompanying Stephen Varcoe in Die Schöne Müllerin, featuring in the Beethoven Triple Concerto and even playing continuo in the St John Passion. After a near 40 year hiatus, we were delighted when he accepted an invitation to conduct Elgar’s The Kingdom in 2023, and then returned last year to lead a very special performance (in our view) of Brahms's German Requiem. We have enjoyed working with Paul hugely these last two years, and so we’re excited to have him on the team. Paul is here this year conducting Falstaff – and who knows, we may even share a few hints as to what he is programming for 2026.

At the Endellion festivals, we are always seeking to honour the community that hosts us every year, and you may notice that elements of our programme and even some of our signage are now translated into Cornish. We are very lucky to have two proponents of the Cornish language in our community (Jeff Stanford and Kerenza Peacock, who you can both find in the violin section); last year Kerenza taught the participants a Cornish word every day (and we have shared these essential words on page XX of this booklet for you) so feel free to practice your Cornish on any member of the festival community who we assure you will be fully conversant in festival Cornish!

And finally, another beautiful thing that is happening this year is our art exhibition. Lois Oliver (also of the violins), our curator, has this year partnered with students from Falmouth University to commission some art works that you can see in the exhibition but also in this booklet (and even on the ticket website). It feels exciting that new work has been created especially for the festival and I urge you to have a look as we expect they will be flying off the walls.

Finally, thank you for coming to support us this year. The arts have taken a hammering from many quarters, and it’s only with your generosity in buying tickets and joining our Friends scheme that we are able to continue not only performing in this beautiful place, but also to support young musicians meet the costs of playing in the festival.

Bruce O’Brien