WELCOME TO THE BMF

The Birmingham Music Festival is one of Britain's leading piano competitions.

We welcome entrants of all ages and all abilities from enthusiastic beginners and gifted amateurs to veteran competitors.

We have a fantastic venue: The Ruddock Performing Arts Centre at King Edward’s Schools, the BMF offers high quality grand pianos in both of our performance theatres and adjudicators to match.

We think the Birmingham Music Festival offers the very best in amateur music making.

We look forward to seeing you at the Festival!

The 2020 Birmingham Music Festival will take place on
10 and 11 October 2020

The Ruddock Performing Arts Centre at King Edward’s Schools

Edgbaston Park Road

Edgbaston

Birmingham

B15 2UA

Welcome to our 2020 website and syllabus. This will be our fourth year in the magnificent facilities at The Ruddock Performing Arts Centre. I'm not aware that any other amateur festival has a comparable venue.

As usual we have tweaked our syllabus. This year we will be holding a Beethoven 250 class. Many festivals are doing so this year of course, but in my view at least, we can never hear enough Beethoven! With a 10 minute time limit I hope that we will hear some of the music written for solo piano beyond sonata movements. Does anyone fancy having a go at the Rondos Op.51, the Fantasia Op.77, the Polonaise Op.89, or some of the sets of variations or perhaps a selection of Bagatelles? We have also adapted our Romantic class to recognise that there are other Polish Romantic piano composers beyond Chopin.

I am pleased to welcome back John Gough as one of our adjudicators after an absence of five years, and to welcome Luis Parés to the BMF for the first time. Both are experienced adjudicators and performers, and their comments and suggestions will be much appreciated.

As always, to be sure of your place at the Festival, I encourage everybody to enter early, especially those wishing to compete in the main Recital Class 20 which is usually oversubscribed.

I look forward to seeing you in October.

Richard

Richard Abel
Chairman

Our Aim:

"The object of the Festival is to advance, encourage and foster the art of music making by holding and promoting an annual competitive festival of public performances, recitals and concerts"