The Hatfield House Music Festival gave Rachel Podger, Imogen Cooper and the Doric Quartet a Jacobean setting, and ended with Handel and Tavener in St Etheldreda’s Church.
The cellist Guy Johnston’s Hatfield House Music Festival ran at Hatfield House in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, from Thursday 9 to Sunday 12 October 2025. Rachel Podger, Imogen Cooper and the Doric Quartet led its four days of chamber music.
Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, built the Jacobean house between 1607 and 1612, and the Marquess of Salisbury is the festival’s president. Its concerts take place in the Marble Hall and in St Etheldreda’s Church.
The festival began in 2012 under Johnston, who remains its artistic director. The Navarra Quartet, Alison Balsom, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, The Sixteen and VOCES8 have appeared since. It commissions new works and runs an education strand beside the concerts.
The 2025 programme set early music beside modern. Mishka Rushdie Momen opened it, and Johnston and Melvyn Tan gave the world première of Matthew Kaner’s Sonatina Scordatura. The soprano Claire Booth sang Shostakovich’s Blok settings.
Podger led a baroque programme with the lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, and Ensemble 360 played Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. The Doric Quartet played Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and Cooper played the complete Schubert Impromptus.
The finale paired Tavener’s The Protecting Veil with the first part of Handel’s Messiah.