If you’re a grand Anglo-Italian family who own a castle on a hill in Tuscany, the thing to do is run a summer music festival. Ideally like the one on an estate, La Foce, where the writer Iris Origo chronicled her wartime experiences in the 1940s, and where the Incontri in Terra di Siena now take place.
Organised by Origo’s descendents, under the stars in baroque courtyards, scented gardens and other enchanted locations as the cicadas chirp and the mosquitos (more than usually macho this year) bite, it’s a true Chiantishire event in that its culture mixes English and American with true Italian. And the big event this year was a performance by the Italian-born, American-resident, English competition-winning pianist Alessio Bax, playing Beethoven with the Southbank Sinfonia.
