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Philip Pullman will be the speaker at the opening concert of the Oxford Chamber Music Festival this year, at the Sheldonian Theatre. The festival runs from September 27-30.

Did you know that the Oxford festival really began in Highgate? Music critic David Sonin has the story

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, has all the attributes that mark it out as one of the world's great university towns.

There is its history, its architecture, great museums and libraries and the collegiate life, while private to students, gives the city its vitality.

But despite the intensity of the city's musical life, partly through the collegiate chapel choirs, the orchestras and chamber ensembles, the city did not boast a festival to celebrate the musical art.

Well, that was until five years ago when the enterprising young violinist Priya Mitchell, who is based both in Oxford, where she grew up, and Highgate, set out to remedy the omission.

With skill and determination she founded the Oxford Chamber Music Festival which, in a short time, has established itself as a spell of a few days of music-making with established credentials that are global by any measure.

This year's celebration runs from September 27 to 30 and as in past years brings together established as well as emerging talents in programmes that juxtapose mainstream and modern chamber music.

The musicians, plus the odd literary celebrity, meet in the evenings for public jam sessions at the QI Club in Turl Street, intellectual Oxford's answer to the no less cool Soho House, and the brainchild of the people behind the TV panel game QI, hosted by Stephen Fry.

Explaining her choice of artistic direction for the 2006 festival, Priya said: "The musical focus will be on the chamber output of three composers for whom this year is a cause for global celebration: it marks the 250th birthday of Mozart, the 150th birthday of Schumann and the centenary of the birth of Shostakovich.

"At the 2003 festival our theme of Love and Madness highlighted Schumann, and in 2004 we put the emphasis on Russia, but in this triple anniversary year we couldn't miss the opportunity to focus on the chamber music of these composers."

The contemporary strand will be provided by the works of Thomas Larcher, the Austrian composer and pianist who was born in 1963, and whom Priya met at Lars Vogt's Spannungen festival at Heimbach in Germany. His output tends to be for small groups of players.

The titles of his works are intriguing,. For example, My Illness is the Medicine I Need, Smart Dust, Milkradio and Mumien - mummies as in ancient Egypt rather than those at school gates.

The festival opens at the Sheldonian Theatre and then continues with lunchtime and evening concerts at the Jacqueline du Pr