A new artistic director, Lincolnshire-born pianist Ashley Wass, devised the “Romantic Experience” programme for 2007. This highlighted music which was programmatic or had extra-musical connections, drawn mainly from the 19th century but also reaching back to the 1700s as well as into the current day.

 

2008 had “Home and Abroad” as a theme. Each programme included a substantial work by a British composer performed in the context of other pieces and composers who had influenced the work. There was a blend of music which had been neglected and deserved revival, alongside the familiar and well-loved.

 

In 2009 Ashley took the opportunity to highlight Mendelssohn in his anniversary year, a composer who Ashley believes is under-rated. It afforded the chance to present some less-often-performed chamber pieces and also some interesting re-workings of familiar orchestral works.

 

In 2010 the Festival was a celebration of the city of Paris, featuring composers who had either spent time there or had published works there, plus the French composers who were the backbone of the various schools of music thriving in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The programme included not only some immediately recognisable pieces but also introduced less well-known but equally attractive works.

 

The theme in 2011 featured performing composers and composing performers in “Page to Stage”. The Festival also recognized the 200th anniversary of Liszt's birth and commemorated several of his visits to the county in 1840, including performances in venues used by Liszt.

 

“Notes from Nature”, the title of the 2012 Festival, acknowledged the Lincoln Cathedral Flower Festival which ran concurrently with LICMF. Of all potential sources of inspiration, nature could be thought to be the most fertile across the centuries. Two new initiatives featured in the 2012 Festival: two ‘Meet the Composer’ events with Festival Composer-in-Residence Sally Beamish, and a couple of string workshops for young players.