I’ve long wanted to programme a Festival around indisputably one of the greatest examples of human achievement, Ludwig Van Beethoven.

Our 2015 Festival has a major survey of the huge variety and colour in his Chamber Music in only three days and in six concerts.

I have placed him alongside great Romantic masterpieces by French/Belgian composers who would have been the first to acknowledge their debt to him. In many ways, the huge waves of Romantic release found in the French works are a direct result of the explosive genius in Beethoven, which he always balanced with great Classical sensibility; they took all the restraints off that Beethoven maintained and the contrast is fascinating and satisfying.

The concerts will be performed by a dream team of master performers, including three great pianists, brought together by us and working for a week in Leicester and playing all the concerts for a deeply attentive audience in the exquisite Victorian Art Gallery at Leicester’s New Walk Museum, a venue and an event that we all treasure.