The Hatfield House Music Festival turns fifteen with Sir András Schiff, The Sixteen and a new work by James MacMillan, built around John Dowland four centuries after his death.
The Cecils have been paying musicians at Hatfield since the house went up, and the archive still holds the record. John Dowland, the lutenist, and Nicolas Lanier, the first Master of the King’s Music, were both in the first Earl of Salisbury’s pay, and Morley, Byrd and Gibbons dedicated pieces to him. The festival built on that record was founded in 2012 and is directed by the cellist Guy Johnston, who plays in it too.
Fifteen years in, it books at a level the room disguises. Most of the programme runs in the Marble Hall, small enough that the front stalls can watch the bowing, and this year it holds Sir András Schiff, The Sixteen, the countertenor Iestyn Davies, the viol consort Fretwork and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields String Ensemble. The Purcell School’s students return every year, and the schools project runs alongside the main bill rather than after it.
The 2026 edition marks three things at once: the festival’s fifteenth year, Lord Salisbury’s eightieth birthday, and four hundred years since Dowland’s death. Dowland runs through it accordingly, opening the Thursday when The Sixteen and Fretwork play him beside Morley, Byrd, Lawes and Coprario, and reaching the schools project, where local children are writing new songs from his music. Sir James MacMillan has written a new work for Lord Salisbury, first performed across a weekend that closes with The Sixteen and Johnston in the Old Palace.