NEXT month sees Harrogate celebrating its 50th annual festival with a series of events featuring some of the biggest names in music and books, writes Peter Bevan.

One of the biggest is pianist Alfred Brendel, who first appeared at Harrogate Festival in 1974. Though now retired from the concert platform, on Friday, July 3, Brendel will present his lecture, A Pianist’s Alphabet, which includes not only his views on, say, Bach and Beethoven, but advice on coughing!

Guest curator this year is cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who began his career at the festival as a Young Musician. As well as presenting both a masterclass (July 10) and An Evening with… (July 11) he will be developing the current Young Musicians series.

The series this year will include violinist Soh-Yon Kim (July 4), pianists Jenna Sung (July 9) and Martin James Bartlett (July 17) and soprano Chloe Saywell (July 23), all lunchtime recitals.

Artist-in-residence this year is pianist Saleem Ashkar, previously seen performing Beethoven’s piano sonatas at Sage, Gateshead.

In Harrogate he will give a piano recital on July 10 with Chopin, Medtner and Bartok as well as Beethoven, and his Polyphony Foundation from Nazareth will bring together communities in music by Dvorak, Shostakovich and Wissan Joubran (July 12, at 3pm).

Other classical highlights include performances by the Quartetto di Cremona (July 9), candlelight concerts by La Serenissima (July 5) and Armonico Consort (July 17), guitarist Milos (July 16), harpsichord player Mahan Esfahani (July 23) and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra with pianist Freddy Kempf who will give the closing concert on the 26th.

In other fields, John Wilson and his Orchestra will present Cole Porter in Hollywood (July 4), the Grammy award-winning jazz and soul singer Gregory Porter will appear in the HIC Main Auditorium on the 11th and Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis in the Royal Hall on the 25th.

This is by no means all and full details including venues and prices are at harrogateinternationalfestivals.com or call the box office on 01423 562303.

Complementing all these concerts and recitals there is the Raworth’s Harrogate Literature Festival which takes place in the Crown Hotel over the long weekend of July 2-5 and Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at the Old Swan from July 16-19.

Both are absolutely jam-packed events with literally dozens of writers involved.

The first will include novelists Sadie Jones, Joanne Harris and Louis de Bernieres, TV personalities Judy Finnigan, Bill Oddie and Paul Heiney plus designers, politicians, comedians and many others who have turned to writing about their experiences.

The crime writing festival, now one of the biggest of its kind, brings a host of big names such as Sara Paretsky, Lee Child, Mark Billingham, Arnaldur Indridason and M C Beaton as well as regulars Ann Cleeve, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson and many, many more.

Full details are in separate brochures in local libraries or as above.