The year 2012, as many of you will know, saw a rather slimmer Festival than in previous years, due to Hege Hernaes, our Chairwoman, taking a well-deserved sabbatical. While I was very proud of what the rest of the committee, led by John Dove, managed to put on over that weekend, it was always our intention to return to a richer and more varied diet!

We have however kept, more or less, to the idea of a long weekend rather than something that looks like a week or so. When we took over the Festival, at the end of 2005, the idea was to hold the event before a) the tourist season gets seriously underway and b) more importantly, before the midges appear! Both seem to be getting progressively earlier, and the weekend structure last year attracted many favourable comments, so May 3rd - 6th it is.

Hege’s sabbatical was, in fact, not so that she could put her feet up and sip camomile tea, but so that she could co-ordinate an even more complicated, not to say nightmarish, project than our Festival: that of massively upgrading the Glenfinnan Station Museum, and constructing a fully- accessible pathway from that site up to the famous Viaduct. The chronicles of a certain young wizard have massively increased the numbers of people visiting Glenfinnan and especially the viaduct, and the lovely hills were starting to suffer. The result, brought about first by Hege’s astonishing fund-raising skills and then by a combination of helicopters (bringing stone up the hillside) and simple, back-breaking manual labour, is stunningly beautiful, as you’ll see on the Saturday.

To tie in with the “official opening” of this path, we decided to hold a musical celebration of Glenfinnan itself. The church has, of course, always been one of the Festival’s prime venues and is now looking lovelier than ever after a long-overdue lick of paint. Glenfinnan Station itself hosted the Smith Quartet back in 2006 for a memorable performance of Steve Reich’s “Different Trains”, anda huge wind orchestra braved the elements in front of the Glenfinnan House Hotel in 2007 for Berlioz’ “Grande Symphonie Funebre et Triomphale”; this year, however, we’re going a step further, linking all these venues as well as the Viaduct, the Monument and the surrounding hillsides with a programme to amuse and inspire in equal measure - it’s a Family Gala Day, so really something for everyone.

Elsewhere, we start with a (very) Spanish evening at the Acharacle Alhambra (formerly Acharacle Grand Opera House, occasionally Symphony Hall, and known for the rest of the year simply as Shielbridge Hall): Jonathan Powell’s spell-binding interpretation of Albéniz’ “Ibéria” precedes a delicious paella dinner. For once not all Ardnamurchan’s shellfish will be speeding south in refrigerated lorries...

Sunday we stay in Glenfinnan, and our two concerts, at 11.30am (50 minutes) and 5pm (2hrs 10) allow a perfect Sunday day out, with plenty of space for a good lunch and a walk in between. David Watkin brings his Bach solo cello project here for the morning concert, bringing his colossal musicanship and thoughtfulness to two of the Suites. At the end of the afternoon, we’ve a musical gallery that explores the responses of some very different composers to Nature’s miracles. Even if Dvorak’s the only composer on the programme you’ve heard of, and especially if you’ve never considered the glockenspiel as a serious musical instrument, do take us on trust - magic is guaranteed.

I can’t understand how I managed never to programme Schubert’s great C major String Quintet until now - but that wrong will be righted on Monday 6th May, with our closing concert down at the Ariundle Centre, Strontian. Duncan Strachan has long been one of the Festival’s brightest young stars - he was still a teenager when he first appeared in 2006. This time he brings his quartet, the Maxwell Quartet, and they’re joined by David Watkin who will have worked with them intensively over the next few weeks - I have no doubt that the results will be truly thrilling.

Enjoy, and please tell all your friends BEFORE you come up in May, so that they all come too!

Charles Mutter