The Festival Pass £100 (£85 Concessions) - includes entry to all Oxford May Music Festival Events in 2025.

Half-Season Pass £60 (£55 Concessions) – gives entry to any 3 concerts and 3 lectures. Events must be specified at time of purchase. To book a Half-Season Pass please call 01865 305 305 or email boxoffice@oxfordplayhouse.com for further assistance.

The Festival Pass and the Half-Season Pass are available to book until Friday 1 May 2026.

Lectures are free if you have a ticket to the subsequent concert.

A limited number of free tickets for Under 25s is available from Oxford May Music direct - please visit their website for further details.

Our lecturers are all Fellows of the Royal Society: Professors Nial Tanvir, on the generation of elements inside stars; Iain Couzin, on rhythm and synchrony in animal collectives; and Leo James on how antibodies fight infection from inside our cells.

The musical highlights include welcome returns from old friends of the Festival, pianist Katya Apekisheva, who gives a new take on a famous piece by Tchaikovsky and oboeist Nicholas Daniel, who leads a performance of Mozart’s evocative Gran Partita, which introduced Mozart in the award-winning “Amadeus”. Continuing the movie theme, Jack Liebeck and Olga Zador play works from film scores as varied as Shostakovitch, Dario Marinelli and Bernstein. Barber, Elgar, James Francis Brown and Brahms also feature prominently. Our Administrative Director has finally delivered himself of that great egg, his weighty biography of Einstein, concentrating on his science and music. Both are on show in his book launch lecture-concert. The Festival Finale is Rainer Hirsch’s hilarious spoof of that grandiose pinnacle of Wagnerian splendour, the Ring cycle. Come to this and you can verify for yourself that well-known critique of Rossini about Wagner, enjoying the glorious moments but avoiding the awful quarters of an hour.

Jack Liebeck appears throughout and as ever is our Artistic Director and musical guide.