Friday afternoon's concert is led by selections from Stravinsky's folk-inspired The Firebird, paired with work by Sally Beamish, the festival's composer in residence. Beamish is a viola player, a fierce champion of folk music and one of the most highly regarded composers working today. She evokes a strong sense of the natural world in her compositions; reflected strains of traditional folk melody endow her compositions with an earthiness comparable to Bartok, and her loving arrangement of La Mer, featured in Saturday's concert 'Reflets dans l'eau', paints miraculous sea pictures, illuminating all sorts of hidden detail in Debussy's work.

Sunday opens with 'Soil and Spirit', a celebration of the earth and our connection to it. This exploration of the relationship between the natural and the human through images and spoken word will be led by Jeremy Naydler - philosopher and gardener. We're then invited to move skyward and beyond with the final concert of the programme, 'Into the Ether'.

While the festival features individual investigations of each element, its motive is to combine them. Priya Mitchell's programme reflects the tenet of Hindu thought that only the sense of hearing could perceive all five elements; matters of the spirit could not be seen, touched, tasted or smelled – they could only be heard, through the elusive Ether, with which the festival closes.