History

This description of the Festival’s origins is from the booklet The Allegri at 50, written by Piers Burton Page:

“When in 1971 cellist Bruno Schrecker bought a property called the Old White Lion in the tiny village of Llanfyllin, lying at the centre of a triangle roughly formed by the larger towns of Oswestry, Welshpool and Bala, it was initially intended purely as a holiday home. But then he looked more closely at the church, St. Myllin’s. St. Myllin’s turned out to have acoustics ideal for a string quartet. And friends! And room for a small audience too. For warmth and intimacy and glorious surroundings, Llanfyllin can scarcely be beaten.”

When concerts started here in 1972, the Allegri Quartet were always enthusiastic performers at a festival that they made their own. They performed every year for 47 years – albeit with a changing line-up – until the Covid-19 pandemic removed all opportunities for live music, here in Llanfyllin as elsewhere. Indeed, Covid-related restrictions were a contributory factor in the disbanding of the Allegri in 2021. The Festival owes all of its members an enormous debt of thanks for their legacy of high quality musicianship and exciting concerts.

The Festival could not have continued to the present day without outside funding. Various organisations and individuals have given financial support over the years but special thanks are due to our former Patron, the late Lord Gowrie, and the charity of which he was a Trustee, the Derek Hill Foundation, which allocated grants to the Festival for many years.

Post-Covid, with a blank canvas, we were presented with an opportunity to extend the range of music making beyond the string quartet. So, in 2022, the Festival was reborn with an up-and-coming wind quintet, the Ensemble Renard, and Ieuan Jones giving a harp recital. The tradition of a string quartet was maintained with the Coull Quartet taking up the Allegri’s mantle. Audience numbers were larger than expected, setting the Llanfyllin Festival on course to continue bringing top class music to its audiences.