[3] A key feature of the Swaledale Festival is the commitment to new commissions and recently composed works; commissioned pieces by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Brough and Heather Fenoughty received their premières in 2012, and the 2013 Festival included premières of works by Sally Beamish, David Blake, Stephen Goss, Tim Garland, Roland Dyens and Graham Coatman.
A week of music and drama in and around Richmond, it was initially scheduled for September in order to attract motorists on their way south from the Edinburgh Festival.
Musical highlights of the first Richmondshire Festival[4] included a recital at Aske Hall by the Melos Ensemble, with Gervase de Peyer, Cecil Aronowitz and Emanuel Hurwitz, and a concert at the County Modern School by the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, as it was then known.
There were also performances by local school, amateur and scratch groups, tea-dances, talent contests, and military bands beating the retreat.
It now appears that the Festival was started by members of the Delmé Quartet who were then resident in the Upper Swaledale village of Muker, in September 1972.
In 1981 Woolston ran an expanded series (ten events, most in St Andrew's Church, Grinton) “as part of the Richmondshire Festival”.
As far as can be inferred from the available programmes, there was strict demarcation between the two: Richmondshire limited itself to odd years and to the immediate area of Richmond; Swaledale was annual, and went no further down-dale than Marrick.
In 1993 Elizabeth Carter was appointed artistic director, a post she would hold until 2002; Trevor Woolston stepped down, though he would continue to appear at the Festival as a performer.
The first recorded chairman was the composer David Blake, a professor at York University and a resident in Askrigg; and the first board members included Katherine Carr, the daughter of the late Dr Bull - a nice piece of continuity.