The 24th Lake District Summer Music International Festival is aiming for a top three festival rating again this year as it reveals the programme which Festival organizers will paint on the canvas of the Lake District across 17 days this August, starting today.

LDSM is affectionately known as the “friendly festival” by more than 10,000 festival-goers each year. This year’s International Festival will bolster its reputation of hosting thrilling concerts in inspiring settings, by staging 52 events, in 12 different locations, across the breathtakingly beautiful county of Cumbria.

Rugged fells, shimmering lakes, and sun-drenched dry stone walls, will provide the backdrop in which the strains of chamber music will be heard across the valleys.

LDSM 2008 launches a new theme of “The Architecture of Music” which will be explored over the next three Festivals.

Artistic Director, Renna Kellaway, says: “The architecture of music must be one of the oldest sciences civilization has forged. From deep in the aeons of time sounds and rhythms have been gathered into recognizable forms. From religious celebrations to secular inspiration, the high peaks of European music have been established in an architecture of sound, texture and rhythm in which we can all participate.”

LDSM has always had its heart in chamber music and the 2008 International Festival again presents great chamber music performed by leading international ensembles. Quatuor Ebène, now BBC New Generation Artists, return to LDSM which gave the young quartet their UK début and their first BBC broadcast.

The Gould Piano Trio return to perform Beethoven and Ravel as well as a new work by composer Benjamin Wallfisch commissioned by the group. The Razumovsky Ensemble perform Schubert’s Octet and Beethoven’s lesser-known Septet.

Unique collaborations of resident artists also form the backbone of LDSM’s annual offering. This year the Chilingirian Quartet, resident ensemble since LDSM’s inception, perform Mozart with violist Yuko Inoue, and Respighi’s evocative setting of Shelley’s The Sunset with mezzo soprano Wendy Dawn Thompson. French pianist Romain Descharmes, emphatic winner of last year’s inaugural Perlemuter Competition, will join for the first time with compatriots Quatuor Ebène on Cézar Franck’s Piano Quintet.

In a Festival Finale, clarinettist Chen Halevi, violinist Philippe Graffin, cellist Oleg Kogan and pianist Charles Owen perform Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time preceded by the world premiere of a new play, written by novelist and writer Jessica Duchen and performed by the author alongside the great Robert Tear.

Collaborations are not unique to resident artists though. The Dufay Collective and Alquimia explore the musical flowering as Arab-Andalusian and Christian cultures clashed some seven hundred years ago. This concert is part of a popular strand of some of the greatest Early Music which has evolved in LDSM’s programming in recent years. Other similar offerings in 2008 include a performance of Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutem by Vox Animae and two special late night concerts by Stile Antico – the young doyens of BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM and recent collaborators with Sting.

Lake District Summer Music is, however, far more than a Festival. Its charitable purposes also focus on training and presenting to audiences some of the most talented emerging professional musicians from around the world.

Past alumni of its International Summer School now pursuing successful careers include violinists Nicola Benedetti and Nicolaj Znaider, cellists Hannah Roberts, Kate Gould and Alice Neary, pianists Steven Osborne and Carole Presland and ensembles such as the Belcea, Sacconi and Navarra Quartets. Such a roll of honour establishes LDSM as one of the first places to hear the next generation of professionals. As well as the LDSM Young Artists daytime concerts, masterclasses and the Christopher Rowland Candlelight Serenade, audiences can also get to hear young talent performing alongside great professionals. This year’s Menuhin Concert presents Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht performed by massed strings led by The Chilingirian Quartet.

With a variety of musical peaks to explore other performances - including the Complete Beethoven works for solo cello performed by Colin Carr and Thomas Sauer, fun and wit from Classic Rhythm, Carnatic and Hindustani music performed by SAMYO (the UK’s national youth orchestra of Asian Music), three world premieres, the renowned storyteller Taffy Thomas in his garden of wonders, talks and an art exhibition, and much more besides - there is more than ever for audiences to enjoy at LDSM this year.