New music organisations have been just as harshly treated as opera by funding bodies over the past year. In the last week alone, following the confirmation that Manchester-based new-music group Psappha had been disbanded, news emerged that neither the Cheltenham music festival nor Dartington summer school would continue in their current form.
But somehow the Huddersfield contemporary music festival forges on regardless. This year’s programme, which packs more than 50 events into 10 days, has all the vigour of its pre-Covid years. And, unquestionably, there is still an audience eager to take on everything HCMF has to offer – all of the concerts I attended during the first weekend were filled to capacity and enthusiastically received.
