I hope that the truncated appearance of this year’s Festival is a source of consternation and disappointment to all of you. I hope also that I can reassure you that this is in no way intended to be a model for the future; it’s just that our Chairwoman, Hege Hernæs, has decided to take a year’s sabbatical, and I’m possessed of sufficient realism to know that there’s no way in which I could undertake the organisation of a full Festival week without her, even with the aid of our excellent committee. I’m especially grateful to John Dove for encouraging me in my wish to at least offer a weekend’s entertainment, and for allowing the brunt of the organisation to fall on his shoulders.

Since I took over the Festival’s artistic direction in 2006, one of my priorities has always been to have musical events that actually create themselves during the Festival week -many of our most memorable concerts, for instance the Bruckner 7th Symphony in 2008, were put together “on the spot”, the performers in that case never having met each other until a couple of days beforehand. This way of working isn’t really feasible over a weekend, so what we have to offer will have been prepared in advance. However, my new chamber ensemble Florin, which provides the backbone of the three concerts this year, was born in Glenfinnan (or more precisely Inverness airport departure lounge) out of that same Bruckner experience in 2008, and all our “guests” (Helena Rose, Susan Frank, Duncan Strachan) have been involved in the Festival in various ways over the last few years.

Another priority for us has been the encouragement of local young talent, and we’re delighted to welcome two particularly stellar examples: Duncan Strachan has already made a number of impressive Festival appearances (2006, 2007, 2008); Helena Rose was modestly concealed within the orchestra for Noye’s Fludde back in 2010 but after she won Highland Young Musician of the Year last year we simply had to give her a proper platform.

As always, we bring you a mix of well-loved and less-familiar music. Bartók’s violin Duos are based on folk music he collected in Hungary and Rumania around a century ago; Offenbach was a fine cellist as well as the undisputed master of French operetta; Schnittke’s String Trio is surely the most viscerally exciting of the entire repertoire, owing much to early Shostakovich; Volkmar Andreae was famous in his lifetime as a conductor - he was invited to succeed Mahler at the helm of the New York Philharmonic but preferred to stay in Europe - but I had the great pleasure of discovering his music while guest leading the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra last year; Arensky’s brooding two-cello Quartet was written as a memorial to his great friend and idol Tchaikovsky. Beethoven and Mozart can, I think, be left to speak for themselves!

Enjoy our long weekend, and we intend to be back up to full fighting strength for 2013.

Charles Mutter