David Mckie: Elsewhere

Just as no self-respecting village can get through the summer without staging its annual fete, so no town of any consequence can nowadays hold up its head unless it has put on a festival.

Hay-on-Wye, as you may have noticed, Brighton and Bath (where there seem to be festivals all the year round) are only a few of those that have recently opened their doors, are shortly to launch, or whose phones are now soliciting bookings, along with Hampstead and Highgate, Oldham, Salisbury, Buxton, Presteigne and a host of others that are even now writing to ask why they haven't been mentioned. And starting tomorrow night, with Opera Restor'd's double bill of Domenico Scarlatti's La Dirindina and Haydn's La Canterina, and running though to a gala night on Saturday week featuring the great composer's The Seasons, is the 11th English Haydn Festival in Bridgnorth, Shropshire.

What, practically minded people may ask, has Haydn to do with Bridgnorth? Bridgnorth is a treat and a treasure. It may not be as famous as Ludlow, some 20 miles to the south-west, with its feted restaurants, imposing streets and mighty castle where Shakespeare is played in the summer, but the view that you get of it coming in from the east, set out on its rock high above the Severn, with sandstone St Leonard's at one end of the panorama and Thomas Telford's green-domed church of St Mary Magdalene at the other, is thrilling.

Though mercifully very much smarter than it was a decade ago, the low town is merely a prelude. The high town fans out from the high street, with the 17th-century town hall-cum-market in the middle. St Leonard's is ensconced in a close which would grace a cathedral, while St Mary's commands the end of East Castle Street, a work of harmony where even the 20th century does not offend. From here you can get to the castle grounds - only one craggy remnant is left - and on to a walkway that looks down over the Severn to the cluttered streets of the low town.

An electric railway (70p return: no singles) will take you from the top of the cliff to the river; alternatively you can walk down the Cartway, where till the 1850s families lived in caves. Away to the west a footbridge sweeps over the traffic to the handsome stone station of the Severn Valley Railway, the most celebrated of the lines that Beeching killed and enthusiasts later revived: its trains chug by the sleepy Severn to glorious, flood-cursed Bewdley and then, if you choose, to Kidderminster.

This town may lack the classical virtues of Ludlow, but to balance that there's a liveliness and a warm spontaneity that more decorous Ludlow lacks. It triumphantly passes what I increasingly think is one of the tests of a truly successful town: the number of knots of people who have just bumped into each other and are busy exchanging gossip, round which you have to navigate. What it hasn't got, though, is any known connection with Haydn. Though he spent long spells in England, there's no reason to think he strayed into this part of Shropshire. There are all the symphonies written during his time in London in 1791-95 - though even before that there are works that he wrote with an eye on English audiences. There's an Oxford symphony (no 92), but, unhappily, no Bridgnorth.

The connection that now exists came from pure serendipity: a town manager looking for ways to lure visitors into the town and enrich its cultural life; a church with a good acoustic (St Leonard's) now declared redundant; and a locally based professional violinist - John Reid, who directs these festivals - with a record of staging festival events and a taste, not just for Haydn generally, but specifically for the Englishness he found in some of these works.

Like so many such enterprises, this one involves a delicate, sometimes difficult balance between bounding ambition and strictly limited means. The musicians Reid assembles to form the English Haydn Orchestra and Chorus cannot expect to get London rates; they are billeted for their stay with supportive local families. But they congregate here with enthusiasm - even more so now, perhaps, since the festival has converted to period instruments, alienating some of the former audience who dislike this kind of old-fangled practice, but bringing in a fresh clientele drawn from further away.

The artist in residence for this year's festival is the Dutch fortepiano specialist Ronald Brautigam. If you're a lover of Haydn, you can come for the music and enjoy and admire the town as a bonus. If you don't love Haydn (and it's said that such people exist, though I find that hard to believe) come just for the town. It may not feed you as lavishly as the fleshpots of Ludlow, but it's otherwise irresistible.