Three Choirs Festival

The Three Choirs Festival has delighted audiences in Worcester with a packed programme of choral concerts, chamber recitals, and family events celebrating the natural world and how it has inspired musicians throughout the ages. Composers including Judith Weir and Bob Chilcott were present to hear their works performed to a rapt audience, who received this year’s programme offering from Samuel Hudson with enthusiasm.

The opening night concert featuring Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus and Stanford’s rarely-performed Stabat Mater ‘couldn’t have happened anywhere else’ and ‘looked and felt like a community expressing itself musically on the largest scale’ (Richard Bratby, The Spectator). Roger Sayer brought the sounds of Interstellar to Worcester Cathedral in a jaw-dropping late-night concert, the BBC Singers and Anna Lapwood triumphed in a ‘challenging, rewarding, superbly performed’ concert (John Quinn, Seen and Head International), and the Festival Chorus brought the week to a rousing conclusion with a thrilling performance of Elgar’s choral epic The Kingdom.

Three new festival commissions were performed throughout the week, including Nathan James Dearden’s response to Holst’s The Cloud Messenger, described as ‘genuinely moving’ (Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph). Luke Lewis and Joe Duddell gave premieres of works in tribute to the late Steve Martland in a superb concert by the Heath Quartet and GBSR Duo (‘[it’s] much to the festival’s credit that this sense of connectivity, carrying the flame and crossing generations of composers, could not have been more fittingly celebrated’ (Rian Evans, The Guardian), and Paul Mealor’s beautiful Ring’d with the Azure World was given a stunning premiere by the three cathedral choirs. New for this year, early-career composers enjoyed a week of workshops and camaraderie, culminating in a showcase of their works being performed by the Carice Singers.

The Three Choirs Festival moves to Hereford in 2025, where Artistic Director Geraint Bowen has put together an exciting programme to include Mendelssohn’s fiery Elijah and two new festival commissions from Richard Blackford and Bob Chilcott. The festival will also mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with a revival of his oratorio The Atonement. As well as a new programme, the festival has recently announced a new Chief Executive, with the experienced David Francis joining the staff team in the autumn. Full details on the Hereford preview can be found at 3choirs.org.