Look up the name of Mark Eynon on the web, and you will find full details of a carpet fitter in Swansea. Of Mark Eynon, director of the Newbury Spring Festival, there is no immediate sign. With a lot of commuting up and down the M4, it might just be possible to combine the two jobs, and I must admit that my fanciful imagination received a slight blow when I discovered that the two Marks are not, in fact, one and the same person.

“My first serious job was actually as a festival director,” Mark of Newbury explained. “I thought I was going to direct opera, but at the age of 24, while I was an assistant stage manager at Sadler’s Wells, I met an entrepreneur who wanted to open an opera restaurant. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I know lots of young singers who’d welcome the chance to sing there’. Two days later, I had a phone call saying: ‘We’re calling it Spaghetti Opera, and it opens next Monday.’ “The same enlightened entrepreneur also had a catering company based in Witney, and they did the Henley Royal Regatta. He said: ‘Mark, I’ve had this brilliant idea of turning the Henley Regatta into an arts festival the following week. Do you want to be our director?’ Of course, I couldn’t turn down an opportunity like that. The conversation took place one February, 25 years ago, and we did the first festival, from scratch, that same July.”

The Newbury Spring Festival has been around a bit longer – 31 years. During that time it has burgeoned into a truly international, high-profile, affair, with more than 40 separate events included this year. While the accent is mainly on classical music, there’s also jazz, cabaret, dance music, even a garden symposium. Mark Eynon has been in charge for the last ten years, and could be forgiven for getting a little jaded by now. But the opposite is the case – his enthusiasm seems to explode through the walls of his office.

One of the things he enjoys most, he told me, is featuring young, unknown musicians, then bringing them back a few years later, when they’ve become famous. That’s something that may well happen as a result of this year’s Newbury innovation – a piano competition. What, another one? Surely all aspiring young pianists’ eyes are focused on the Leeds International Piano Competition later this year?

“Let me be very modest about this!” Mark exclaimed. “We are an international festival, with a huge range of visiting artists. However, this is not an international piano competition. I wanted to bring together all the conservatoires in this country – although having said that, the British conservatoires now attract students from all over the world. So I have got someone from Lithuania, and someone from Japan, for instance – there will be very much an international profile.”

The jury will be chaired by conductor Sir Roger Norrington, fresh from his supervision of the judging panel on BBC TV’s Maestro series. Like Maestro, the Newbury competition is going to include an audience vote. Given the problems with audience votes in general on TV programmes in recent years, could that be a recipe for trouble?

“Our system of voting is going to be absolutely transparent,” Mark assured me. “The jury will retire, and the audience will be given an opportunity to put one vote in a box for each of the different candidates. Then the decision will be made for the audience prize, as well as first, second, and third prizes voted on by the jury.”

To the evident entertainment of the other members of the Newbury team sitting around us, I asked Mark Eynon what he’s like to work with: bringing performers in from all over the world, does he constantly bite his nails, and fret that the phone is going to ring, saying: “My plane’s been cancelled, and I’m stuck in Prague”?

“Very good question! I am actually quite relaxed, because, to be honest, I’m now focusing on next year. For the current festival, I have a fantastic team around me. But I do worry when an artist drops out at the last minute.

“Last year, the opening night was Mendelssohn’s Elijah. I’d invited Joan Rodgers to sing the soprano part. On the morning of the concert she rang the conductor, David Parry, to say: ‘I’ve woken up with food poisoning, I’m throwing up, I can’t sing’.

‘We decided that the obvious replacement would be Mary Plazas, who, of course, went to school just up the road in Didcot. David rang her, and she said: ‘This is an extraordinary coincidence. I’ve got a ticket to the performance anyway, but I had a dream three nights ago that I was sitting there in the audience, Joan couldn’t sing, and I had to stand up and perform instead of her.’”

n The Newbury Spring Festival runs from May 9-23. Full details online at www.newburyspringfestival.org.uk Box office: 01635 522733.