Tetbury Music Festival – Ensemble Oblique – A Soldier’s Tale (6pm)

Devil's Fiddle, Soldier's Bargain

Stravinsky wrote The Soldier's Tale as a touring show built for actors and seven musicians to carry from town to town near the end of the First World War. Ensemble Oblique brings that same lean, portable energy to the Goods Shed for two performances in one evening, this the earlier of the pair.

Violinist Miranda Fulleylove leads the seven-piece band through Stravinsky's septet score for clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, violin and double bass, working through tango, ragtime and march rhythms as a soldier trades his fiddle to the Devil for a book that tells him everything he wants to know. Elgiva Field directs the singer-actors, and Peter Ash, artistic director of the Odyssey Festival Orchestra, conducts the score's constantly shifting time signatures.

The whole piece runs a single hour, tight enough that a folk tale about a devil's bargain never loses its grip.

Saturday 26 September 2026 · Tetbury Goods Shed, The Old Station Yard, Cirencester Road, Tetbury GL8 8EY · Starts 6pm