RYEDALE Festival gets underway this week with four world premieres and artists in residence, including actor Jeremy Irons.

The Royal Northern Sinfonia continues its relationship with Ryedale Festival, while the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has become a new partner.

Ryedale Festival’s 2016 season runs from Friday to July 31. Jeremy will be performing alongside the Heath Quartet in four concerts that pair Beethoven’s late String Quartets with T S Eliot’s Four Quartets.

The concerts take place on July 19, 20, 21 and 23, at various venues across the Ryedale, including Castle Howard, where Jeremy filmed the TV series Brideshead Revisited back in the 1980s.

This year's festival will also see world premiere performances of four works by internationally-renowned composer James MacMillan, who will also appear in a pre-concert talk.

Motet IV for solo harp will be performed by Catrin Finch, Motet III for solo clarinet is an adaptation of music from his work Since the Day of Preparation about the Resurrection of Christ and will be performed by Andrew Marriner, Four Little Tributes will be performed by the Royal Northern Sinfonia and was composed in honour of fellow composers Michael Berkeley, Sally Beamish, John Casken and the late Peter Maxwell Davies, who died after this work’s conception, and Motet II for cello and piano will be performed by Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynyuk.

Other festival premieres include new English translations of Handel’s fantasy opera Alcina by John Warrack and Schubert’s Winterreise, translated by Jeremy Sams.

Christopher Glynn, the festival's artistic director, said: "I’m delighted to welcome the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment into our fold, alongside Royal Northern Sinfonia.

"The festival exists to bring the highest quality music and arts to the people of North Yorkshire, and with the artists and musicians on offer in 2016 we are proud to be doing just that.

"We are confident that the Festival shows how classical music is alive and kicking, and presented to the highest standards, outside the UK’s capital."

To book, phone the box office on 01751 475777 or go to ryedalefestival.com