Oxford May Music: Treescapes

Discover the inspiration that trees have had in music, art and literature in an illustrated concert with festival favourite Stephen Johnson (speaker) and festival exhibition photographer Kaupo Kikkas.

After the interval, there will be a performance of Elgar's final major chamber music composition, the Piano Quintet, the first movement of which drew on trees for its inspiration. It was composed in a country house in Sussex that the Elgars rented in 1918. The ghostly first movement represented a group of trees nearby that according to legend grew on the spot where some Spanish monks were killed by a bolt of lightning while celebrating mass.