Priya Mitchell on what to expect from this year's Oxford Chamber Music Festival

Picasso once said, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” This was Priya Mitchell’s inspiration for this year’s Oxford Chamber Music Festival, which opens next week and draws together two strands connected to the theme of creation.

“I was thinking about that quote in relation to music making and the creative process, and what that means for a musician,” Priya explains. “The concept of doing away with what’s old and starting with a blank sheet, in order to break free from traditions that one is bound by through one’s musical education.

“That’s when one starts being truly creative, when you’re free of that sort of straitjacket of tradition, which for a musician is really important.

“The other strand was I thought it would be fun to take the audience through the musical journey of the seven days of the creation, through pieces that symbolise beginnings, awakenings, water, eternity, the earth, sun, moon and stars, animals and finally silence.”

It’s a theme that offers the musician plenty of scope, and Priya has put together a mouth-watering blend of music old and new, from the likes of Beethoven, Bach and Schubert to John Cage. “I try to get a mix of pieces that I would like to participate in and discover as well as the audience,” she explains. “So it’s a joint discovery between all of us, and I think that’s very important.”

The festival opens, appropriately, with music connected to chaos and first light, symbolised by Morning Raga, an improvisation by cellist Matthew Barley, Milhaud’s La création du monde and pieces by Rebel, Bach and Brahms.

Morning Raga is the first of a series of improvisations by Matthew, which will provide a constant thread throughout the festival.

“He brings his own special slant because he’s such a great improviser,” Priya says. “He’s very daring, and always takes things to the edge. It’s a great gift to be able to improvise in front of an audience in the way that he does. His improvisations are always a breath of fresh air.”

One of the more unusual concerts is Message from Earth, which was inspired by the audio-visual disc carried into space on board the Voyager probe in 1977. The disc contained a medley of sounds typical of life on earth, and included an eclectic range of music from Mozart to Chuck Berry.

In this concert, some of the festival’s musicians have chosen an equally eclectic selection of pieces, to include the Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op.130, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major, Strauss Morgen and improvisations on themes by Chuck Berry. The festival closes with the finality of silence, in a concert that includes Cage’s 4’33” alongside Schnittke’s Silent Night, Bruckner’s Stille Betrachtung, Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G major and Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D.956.

“I’m immensely happy at how the festival has developed over the years,” says Priya, who started the festival in 2002 with just a small group of friends.

“That mix of spontaneous music making and the atmosphere that comes from the audience is a unique dynamic, and we all get swept along.

“There’s a sort of alchemy and a magic to what happens, which is quite extraordinary.”

Oxford Chamber Music Festival
Holywell Music Room, University Church and The Vaults & Garden Café
October 1-4
Tickets: Call 01865 305305 or visit www.ticketsoxford.com
Visit ocmf.net