Still going strong: Dartington International Summer School

When composer Stevie Wishart arrives at Dartington International Summer School in a few weeks’ time, she will feel, as many fellow musicians have said, like she is coming home. Dartington is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. Almost anyone who's anyone in music in the last half-century has passed through its Great Hall and Grade 1 courtyard. Hindemith, Copland, Carter and Boulanger were early visitors who helped to underscore its commitment to composition. Performers too – including Neville Marriner, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kiri Te Kanawa, Barenboim and Brendel, to barely scratch the surface – have all left their mark. Stravinsky's 1957 visit, for example, saw a remarkable composition class featuring Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Hugh Wood, Richard Rodney Bennett and Cornelius Cardew. For Wishart, it's a very special place: ‘Something happens when you take the arts out of an urban setting and go to a place rich in nature,’ she says. ‘To have artistic excellence, to be making serious music in a beautiful place… it's wonderful.’

Dartington was established at Bryanston School in 1948 by William Glock, who would become controller of music at the BBC. By 1953, it had become the Dartington International Summer School, a magnet for innovative musicians. It established a diverse community of performers, composers and thinkers and was renowned for offering amateurs, students and young professionals the chance to play with world-leading musicians as well as giving established artists the chance to experiment and explore new collaborations.

Today, artistic director Joanna MacGregor – in her final year in the job – presides over a summer school and festival, which offers an outstanding four-week programme of daytime courses and evening performances to amateurs and professionals. Since 2015, she has broadened its scope to include poetry, dance, improvisation and film, as well as re-establishing opera, world music, folk and jazz within a core programme of classical, chamber and contemporary music.

‘It creates a community of all ages and backgrounds, coming together in a fantastic atmosphere of study and friendship, celebration and performance’, she says. ‘The opportunities here are second to none.’

MacGregor, who is also head of piano at the Royal Academy of Music, has been credited with re-invigorating both the summer school and the festival with a genuinely innovative approach to bring in artists, not just musicians, of the highest calibre and creating exciting and collaborative programmes.

She had performed at Dartington for more than ten years and, as she puts it, ‘fell in love with the place.’ But such success does not come by ‘wafting along at the top,’ she says.

‘There's an incessant eye on detail, a bloody-mindedness. What's going on financially doesn't interest me but it's necessary to know. What I'm interested in is the importance of learning to be creative. Of course, it's evolved over 70 years but we do now have a really magical landscape here.’

Leigh O’Hara, who is director of music at St Paul's Girls school, will be directing the summer school's chamber music this year for the first time. He's been attending for a quarter of a century.

© TERRY JEAVONS

© TERRY JEAVONS
Dartington's Old Playhouse

‘I've never missed a year’, he says. Now a trustee and foundation member, he's done every job from volunteering and working in the office to accompanying, directing and conducting.

‘It's just been wonderful’, he says. ‘On the surface, physically, it looks as if nothing has changed. But things have moved on, with the summer school, the concerts and the community involvement. There are, of course, the big names who make Dartington what it is, but there is a new and innovative side developing so well.

‘We have many talented enthusiasts who are devoted to Dartington, including a contemporary music enthusiast who comes with so many clarinets, a most unassuming judge who comes every year and is an excellent harpsichord player, and a lot of Dutch people who were renowned for their tea parties.

‘I'm always excited to go to Dartington. There's that moment of anxiety when you get off the train at Totnes, there are so many unknowns and you wonder what's going to happen. But you take a few moments to settle and you look around, you go into the White Hart for the first meal, and suddenly you're back in the swing and it really feels like coming home.’

A few of this year's highlights

• 1 Aug ‘Sea Poem’: Alice Oswald, with Steve Buckley, saxophone and Huw Warren, jazz piano
• 2 Aug ‘The Caliph and the Poet’: Tamim al-Barghouti, spoken poetry, Stevie Wishart, hurdy-gurdy and violin, Joanna MacGregor, piano
• 10 Aug Bach, St Matthew Passion
• 13 Aug A short history of the summer school from former artistic director Gavin Henderson
• 14 Aug Alfred Brendel on playing Mozart
• 16 Aug Oh! What a Lovely War: Students from the advanced music theatre course
• 19 Aug Joanna MacGregor, Soul of a Woman: Music by Stevie Wishart, Freya Waley-Cohen and Eleanor Alberga
• 21 Aug 50 years of vintage summer school archive film: Participants, celebrated musicians, folk dancing in the Courtyard – with live music
• 25 Aug The Marriage of Figaro: Students from the advanced opera and conducting courses perform with the Dartington Festival Orchestra

Dartington offers a bursary scheme to help students, graduates and young musicians attend advanced courses.

See the full programme at: www.dartington.org/summer-school