Launch of the Music at Paxton 2025 festival programme

From Friday, July 18 to Sunday 27, Music at Paxton presents 10 days of glorious international music at Paxton House on the banks of the River Tweed.

The 2025 festival comprises 24 events and concerts from international, national and local artists in the famous Paxton House Picture Gallery, hung high with paintings from the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection.

Following on from the success of last year, the festival ventures beyond the grounds of Paxton House for concerts in Norham, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Duns.

With chamber music, family events, talks, workshops and song, Music at Paxton audiences will be treated to festival debuts, Scottish premières and a medley of musical styles from across time and continents, including Western Classical, Opera, Contemporary, Indian, Folk, Jazz and Gaelic.

Programme highlights include: Associate Ensemble, Consone Quartet, surpass themselves with their offering of classical masterpieces, new discoveries, a Scottish première and Schubert’s incomparable String Quintet.

Carducci Quartet help mark important composer anniversaries, and leading Baroque specialists the London Handel Players perform sonatas for flute and violin.

Solo recitals open and close the festival, and sought-after pianists Yevgeny Sudbin and Pavel Kolesnikov both present unmissable programmes matching sensitivity with virtuosity.

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston returns to the Music at Paxton, this year with pianist Sholto Kynoch and lutenist Toby Carr.

Kuljit Bhamra, a leading pioneer in British Asian music, will guide audiences through a joyous celebration – in concert and a workshop – of classical and modern Indian musical styles.

Acclaimed actor Maggie Steed appears as the Princesse de Polignac in homage to the Paris Salon phenomenon, together with the exciting young Chloé Piano Trio.

Angus Smith, Artistic Director, said: “Our distinguished guest musicians are once again offering a wonderful array of profound and inspirational music that embraces a wide range of compositional styles, and we firmly believe that the keynote of this festival will be having fun!”

Hailed by the Daily Telegraph as “potentially one of the greatest pianists of the 21st century”, Yevgeny Sudbin has earned the highest international acclaim. Audiences will hear delicate Baroque compositions of JS Bach and Domenico Scarlatti through to the intensity and brilliance of spectacular works by Liszt, Scriabin, and Prokofiev.

Marking the third and final year of their current association with the festival, the Consone Quartet and special guests present an outstanding series of three programmes. They complete their Robert Schumann cycle with the first quartet, and one of Brahms’s last works considered by many to be his most profound chamber composition; The Clarinet Quintet. Their second concert is full of revelations.

Opening with Beethoven’s own arrangement of his Piano Sonata Opus 14 No.1, it concludes with the Quartet in G by Emilie Mayer (1812–1883), the most prolific woman composer of the German Romantic period. The early Baroque musical dance form ‘Chacony’ provides inspiration for a new work (and Scottish première) by Oliver Leith, a young British composer whose music is earning widespread international acclaim. Their final concert features cellist Philip Higham for Mozart’s Quartet in A, one of six that the composer dedicated to Haydn and Schubert’s Quintet – his final, majestic composition – framed by lively outer movements that bear strong folk influences.

The Carducci Quartet’s programme celebrates two important composer anniversaries, with 2025 marking both 150 years since Ravel’s birth and the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death.

Lutist Toby Carr’s programme traces the great English Renaissance lutenist and composer John Dowland’s legacy, in the works of Philip Rosseter, Daniel Bacheler and Robert Johnson.

Following her spell-binding performance in partnership with the Consone Quartet in 2024, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston returns this year with pianist Sholto Kynoch in a programme that weaves together music from across the centuries, juxtaposing works from the Baroque with Romantic and contemporary songs. Helen is also joined by theorbo player Toby Carr for a morning concert of songs by Henry Purcell, Barbara Strozzi and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Late 1970s West London was the setting for a remarkable explosion of cultural activity in film, dance and music as, against the background of tense political times, the British Asian community unleashed a wave of irresistible artistic expression. One of the pioneers of this time, Kuljit Bhamra – composer, producer and tabla player – charts a course with his brilliant colleague’s singer Shahid Abbas Khan and sitarist Jonathan Mayer for an east/west collaboration, with generous helpings of Bollywood and Bhangra along the way!

The London Handel Players’ programme features Bach and Telemann who met as young men in Eisenach in 1709.

Music at Paxton hosts its very own ‘Salon’ featuring actor and comedian Maggie Steed as Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, renowned for her glittering Parisian soirées. Joining Maggie are Chloé Piano Trio for an evening of enchanting music by Satie, Fauré, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Lili Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade and Beethoven. Chloé Piano Trio’s second concert features Judith Weir’s realisation of a haunting hymn by the medieval Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, and Amy Beach’s 1938 dynamic trio infused with Native American influences, are preceded by Beethoven’s ever-popular ‘Ghost’ Trio.

Audience-favourite, pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, performs the festival finale, shedding new light on the work of even the most familiar composers; Mozart and Ravel.

With a number of family friendly and free concerts on offer, including an uplifting choral performance by Northumbria Chamber Choir, free one-hour taster concerts in conjunction with Live Music Now Scotland, stepdancing and ‘hands-on’ Indian Music Workshop, the 2025 Music at Paxton programme proves that small is indeed mighty.

Angus added: “We invite audiences to explore music that will both entertain and challenge all our preconceptions, in concerts that will demonstrate the joy of experiencing live music performed by passionate artists who dedicate their lives to their art.”

Concessions across all concerts start at just £6. General booking for the festival opens on Tuesday, April 22, with priority booking for Patrons and Benefactors on April 7, and for Friends on April 14. Visit: www.musicatpaxton.co.uk