Cellist Adrian Brendel on his new festival, the Birtwistle story behind its name, and a conversation about Alfred Brendel that wasn’t supposed to happen.
A new summer festival starts in Dorset this July. Tree of Strings from Music at Plush launches in Abbotsbury on 3 July 2026. Its distinctive name comes from a Harrison Birtwistle string quartet, borrowed by Adrian Brendel to remember his close friend in his final years, itself inspired by a Sorley MacLean poem about a musical culture dying out on a Hebridean island.
Brendel’s instinct to give new life to past things runs through a conversation that touches on why the same genre-mixing that feels welcome in a Dorset tithe barn gets treated as a betrayal when the BBC Proms attempts it — and, toward the end, turns to his father Alfred, during whose final touring year before his death Adrian attended concerts incognito, alongside strangers who had devoted decades to Alfred’s playing.
