Sanguine Estate Festival 2015
In the last few years, festivals celebrating the magnificent tri-fector of fine food, wine and music have become a regular and much loved part of the Australian arts scene. Now in its fourth year, the Sanguine Estate festival in Victoria’s beautiful Heathcote has become one of the most in-demand tickets on the classical music calendar, regularly selling out many months in advance. A boutique vineyard, Sanguine Estate make a number of award winning wines.
Concerts take place over one weekend on Friday evening, Saturday (morning, afternoon and evening) and Sunday morning before the whole event concludes with a gourmet luncheon and festival goers return to reality. Gourmet catering is also supplied for Friday supper and Saturday lunch before a gala four course dinner on Saturday evening with matching wines. The festival is catered by the superb Monsieur Pierre. The musical part of the equation comes from artistic director Howard Penny, one of Australia’s most successful classical musicians. A cellist who spent 30 years in Vienna as one of Europe’s most esteemed cellists returned home to Melbourne five years ago and quickly got to work on realising his vision for a chamber music festival.
Concerts are held in the wineries’ barrel room which holds just 140 and the combination of wooden barrels and intimate space provide superb acoustics for music making. Joining Penny and co-festival director Chris Howlett are artists of only the highest calibre. Regulars include the breathtaking violin virtuoso Paul Wright, soprano Sara Macliver, violist Tobias Breider and pianist Ian Munro. Each year a number of guests join them and have included names such as Jiwon Kim, Paul Dean, Brett Dean, Daniel de Borah and Hoang Pham.
Mason & Hamlin have been a proud partner in this event for three years now, supplying a BB semi-concert grand which sings in under the fingers of these virtuosos in the barrel room.
The 2015 festival was a particularly vintage year on all fronts, with superb performances of Beethoven, Weber, Faure, CPE Bach, Dvorak, Hindemith, Schumann, Spohr and Bartok all featuring the Mason & Hamlin.
2016 will be on sale shortly and as always tickets will be hotly contested. If this little teaser and accompanying photos have sparked your interest, be sure to get in quick and join us next year!
