TICKET’S for next week’s West Meon’s eighth annual music festival are selling well – despite several of the event’s promotional banners being stolen or vandalised.

Music director Andrew Fuller is finding it hard to understand why the festival posters are being targeted.

He said: “Our local organising team always ensures they erect the banners with the landowner’s permission and where they will not cause an obstruction or interfere with sight lines, so why they are persistently damaged is a puzzle.”

Two years ago, several of the annual chamber music festival’s banners were also stolen, but this year although one has been stolen, several of the others have been vandalised with the supporting wooden posts snapped or the banners damaged.

“The festival also raises funds for The Rosemary Foundation, which operates a hospice-at-home service in Hampshire,” added Mr Fuller, “so we really can’t understand what anyone may be objecting to when they trash the banners.

“They’re expensive to produce, so the more often we have to pay for replacements so there is less money to go toward the festival’s nominated charity or our outreach work with schools.”

The festival, which features the internationally renowned Primrose Piano Quartet (pictured), opens next Friday (September 14) with a candlelit concert of music by Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, and Lehár at St John the Evangelist at West Meon, and continues with six more events in West Meon and neighbouring Warnford – including a children’s concert and late night folk band – until Sunday (September 16) when the closing concert will commemorate the end of the First World War in words and music with leading tenor James Gilchrist joining the Primrose Piano Quartet, violinist Jonathan Stone, and Hampshire organist Kate Jones.

Tickets are currently available for all concerts and are available online or on the door. For more details, visit westmeonmusic.com.