The Bergen Music Festival

Martin Randall Travel is extending its programme of small-group tours this summer to include the internationally renowned Bergen Music Festival (25¬–31 May 2011). The tour includes top category seats at seven concerts, including a final evening song recital with Andreas Scholl.
Steeped in musical and theatrical history, and surrounded by mountains and fjords, Bergen offers visitors a relaxed but lively holiday. There is plenty of good art and architecture in the mediaeval quarter that compares interestingly with the sleek, functionalist town centre. The tour’s hotel is a short walk from the main festival venue, the Grieghallen, and is central to the festival atmosphere that grips this colourful sea port.
Musical highlights include Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex performed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra at the Grieghallen, and Christophe Rousset conducting the French band Les Talens Lyriques who perform 18th century Neapolitan music at Edvard Greig’s summer home. The final evening is in the company of Andreas Scholl with Tamar Halperin performing songs and keyboard works by Purcell, Handel and Haydn. Music historian and broadcaster Richard Langham Smith leads the 7 day tour. His particular field of interest includes early music, 19th and 20th century French music; in 1994 he was admitted to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the rank of Chevalier.
The price of the tour is £2,480 per person. This includes return air travel on Norwegian Air economy class flights from Gatwick to Bergen; private coach for transfers Continues over…
and some excursions; 7 nights’ accommodation in a 4-star hotel within easy reach of the main concert venue and museums; top category tickets to seven concerts; breakfasts, one light lunch and four dinners with a glass or two of wine, water and coffee; some boat trips and admissions visited with the group; all tips for restaurant staff, drivers, guides; all taxes and the services of the lecturer.
Full details are available on www.martinrandall.com
For further information, please contact:
Liz Brown or Guy Hinton
T: 020 8742 3355 E: lizbrown@martinrandall.co.uk

Notes to editors:
- Martin Randall Travel is the leading cultural tour specialist, offering the widest range of art, music, architecture, archaeology, gastronomy, literary, walking and history small-group tours available. They are pioneers and leader in the field of own-brand, all-inclusive music festivals which match music and place by presenting concerts in historic buildings – palaces, churches and abbeys – that have an association with the music.

-This tour is led by Richard Langham Smith, a music historian and broadcaster with particular interest in early music and 19th and 20th century French music. His reconstruction of Debussy’s opera Rodrigue et Chimène opened the new Opéra de Lyon in 1993, while his new edition of Carmen has been used for a run of performances by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. He has published widely on Debussy and Berlioz and has taught at several universities including Lancaster, Exeter and the Royal College of Music.

- Martin Randall Travel has won numerous awards over the last 22 years, including AITO Travel Company of the Year in 2006, 2008 and 2009.

-The maximum number of participants on this tour is 22.