Tuesday's Royal Philharmonic Society music awards ensured that there will be twangy little lyre-shaped statuettes on display in the smallest rooms of several artists and ensembles I've long admired. But for some reason I found myself just as pleased when an award went to a festival I've never been anywhere near.
The East Neuk of Fife is not somewhere that I - or I'll bet half those born outside Scotland - can point to on a map, but on Tuesday the newish annual music festival that's based there beat off competition from two higher-profile London-based ventures to win the Classic FM-sponsored award for Audience Development. A look at the 2007 plans reveals a gloriously un-Classic FM programme mixing Bach with Steve Reich, cabaret music from Gavin Bryars, and the Alban Berg Quartet, no less, presenting a recent commission from Wolfgang Rihm alongside Schoenberg and late Beethoven - all over a span of four days.
Of course, there's no way an event like this is going to compete for breadth of programming, star headcount or new commissions with the established musical behemoths of Edinburgh, Aldeburgh and the like (though things aren't necessary rosy in those - see the latest Private Eye for a worrying view of the situation in rudderless Cheltenham.) And yet small can be beautiful: I can't be the only person to wonder whether Snape Maltings' compact little Easter Festival might have a more distinctive character than the London-by-sea jamboree that is the main Aldeburgh Festival a couple of months later. And there's a lot to be said for a compact programme that doesn't leave you hurtling like a headless chicken from one concert to the next, but that instead leaves time to explore a new, out-of-the-way place or to kick back in a cosy country pub ...
Sounds good, doesn't it? This summer, I'm going to try to catch some chamber music at Blackthorpe Barns in Suffolk, which is down the road from where I grew up but which I haven't visited since its annual music series got going. But where else should we all be headed before word gets out? What are your best-kept music festival secrets - and, for the sake of avoiding the word "classical", let's say we're looking at those where the music is mainly unamplified and mainly written down - but not necessarily entirely ... Spill the beans.
