Since 1982, Midlands-born Richard Phillips has been the driving force behind a multitude of music & arts events across Warwickshire and beyond. As director of the prestigious Leamington Music Festival, he is responsible for bringing some of classical music’s finest artists to the region.

This year’s event, taking place early this month, will be Richard’s last, as he’s decided it’s time to take a well-earned retirement. Here, he reflects on his involvement with the festival across the decades and shares his hopes for its future...

You’ve had a particularly wide-ranging career, Richard. How did you become involved in Leamington Music Festival?
I taught in Lausanne for a nice summer in 1959, and then, after I went to Oxford, I went to Italy for two years and taught in the Milan area. I went to La Scala Milan 88 times, so I got to know quite a bit about opera.

I worked at Sadler’s Wells Opera for four years ahead of getting a job in Yorkshire, where I stayed for 10 years before returning to live in Warwick in 1980, living in the house where I was born. My plan was to start a wine business - that was one of the other reasons for me being in Italy. The wine business didn’t get going, but the telephone did, and people started phoning me up saying ‘would I do this, would I do that…’ I have been freelancing for fortysomething years.

I worked with Warwick Arts Society for 25 years and then started accumulating other festivals. In 2005 the board found that they’d got bored with festivals.

I was 65 at the time and thought ‘No, no, we’re not going to finish.’ We started Leamington Music the next year... Now, here I am 18 years later, playing my part in the 2024 festival, after which I’ll be retiring.

Are you going to find it difficult to step away?
It’s probably the right moment to go. The house in which I live is a grade two star building. It was bought by the family in the 1930s and there’s probably bits of it which have never been unpacked. I just want to make sure that it’s in order, for when I’m carried out in my coffin… There’s plenty to do!

You have quite a legacy of music festivals -  early music, contemporary music, opera…
…And literary, too - we also set up Warwick Words. We called it the Warwick Literary Weekend to begin with, but it’s become the Warwick Words & History Festival.

From that breadth of experience, what are you most proud of creating?
I think probably what I’ve achieved in the Warwick area. When we moved back here in 1980 it was pretty grey.

I always refer to ‘the Rattle Effect’: Sir Simon Rattle suddenly got people talking about music. I’ve always seen him as a big boulder in the middle of a pond, with ripples coming out. We benefitted from these ripples by the time it got out to Warwick, 20 miles to the south. It was fantastic to take hold and make it into something really big. Some years I was programming at least 200 concerts in one place or another.

This year’s Leamington Festival has a Czech theme. What’s the connection?
The Czech Free Army was actually stationed in the Leamington area for two years during the war. By 1968 the Czechs had been underneath the Russians and communists for 20 years and suddenly they got this man, Dubček, who gave people great hope - that period is known as the Prague Spring. I thought it would be a great place to go for a summer holiday, so off I went to Prague and it was fantastic. After firstly being under the Nazis during the war, and then the Communists - the spirit of people feeling liberation was terrific... I’ve now been back 20 times to Czechoslovakia, as it was, and I’ve been very fond of the place. Because of this connection,  we’ve run a series of Czech music festivals since 1995.

What are you most looking forward to this year?
Well, I’m particularly looking forward to having a Czech composer, Sylvia Bodorova, back here. I commissioned five works from her when I was with Warwick Art Society, one of which became really quite famous. She’s writing a new work for oboe and string quartet, which will be premiered on the 4th of May. There’s a quartet of hers in a morning concert on the same day, and then on the final day - which will be my final concert - there’s another performance of Terezín Ghetto Requiem, the work that I commissioned in 1998. To hear that again will be amazing.

Do you think the festival has a wide reach, or is it more for local people?
Particularly with our Czech festivals we have people coming from all over the country - and some people from the continent as well. There’s always a core local audience, but we do get people travelling. Funnily enough, one of the other main loves in my life has been Early Music. At St Mary’s Church in Warwick, which is a wonderful venue, we’ve set up a series of concerts every winter, which has been going since 1996, and many of the top musicians in the Early Music field have performed there. They’ve all loved coming to the church because it’s just right for the music.

We once did a festival in Warwick in which every concert was of the period of the building, or connected in some way. In the Lord Leicester Hospital, we had music from 1617, when King James I came and had dinner there. That goes back to how important it is for festivals to have a local significance and a local connection.

What are your hopes for the future of the festival?
In a way the future isn’t in my hands, but I’m hoping that Helen Beecroft, who has been working with me, will not only continue what I’ve set up but also produce some new ideas. Inevitably one does get set in one’s ways, and keeps asking the same musicians to come and play because we know they’re fun and they communicate. We do need some new blood, so I would be fascinated to see in what direction things go; which composers will be championed. I want some surprises.

What piece of advice would you give Helen, or anyone else who might follow  in your footsteps?
It’s a big question, and of course so much of it depends on the financial element these days. I was very lucky in that the expansion of the festival happened in the 1980s, when sponsorship was an absolute doddle and businesses would fall over themselves to be engaged and give you money. Sadly that no longer happens.

You must have a vision and just go for it. Don’t put on music that you wouldn’t want to hear yourself. It’s an ego trip, I admit that, but I think that it’s very important. You need leadership... Just have a vision and follow it, is my advice.

Leamington Music Festival runs from 2 to 6 May, with concerts taking place in the town’s Royal Pump Rooms, All Saints Church & Holy Trinity Church

By Jessica Clixby