SINCE 1999 A LIVE REVIEW SITE FOR OPERA, BALLET, CONCERTS, BROADCASTS, AND THEATRE
United Kingdom Three Choirs Festival [2] – Smyth, Jackson, C. Matthews: Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), The Goldfield Ensemble / Adrian Partington (conductor). Worcester Cathedral, 25.7.2021. (JQ)
United Kingdom Copland, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Elgar – Three Choirs Festival 2021 [1]: Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo-soprano), Tom Mole (baritone), Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra / Samuel Hudson (conductor). Worcester Cathedral, 24.7.2021. (JQ)
Samuel Hudson discusses his 2021 Three Choirs Festival with John Quinn
When Samuel Hudson took up his post as Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral in autumn 2019, he must have been very excited. Not only was he to be in charge of the music at one of England’s leading cathedrals, but also the post carried with it the artistic directorship of the Three Choirs Festival one year in every three – and it was to be Worcester’s turn to host the festival in the summer of 2020. He moved to Worcester from Blackburn Cathedral, where he had been Director of Music since 2011, and his musical pedigree is strong. He was organ scholar successively at Girton College, Cambridge and Wells Cathedral, after which he held posts at two significant churches, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, London and All Saints’ Church, Hertford, prior to his move to Blackburn.
THREE CHOIRS FESTIVAL 2021
It was a bitter disappointment when the Covid pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 Three Choirs Festival in Worcester; this was the first time in its 300-year history that the Festival had been cancelled other than during war time. Since then, the outlook for live music-making in the UK has been very uncertain, but the highly successful vaccination programme and a very welcome significant reduction in case numbers has brought optimism and the Three Choirs has announced a programme for the 2021 Festival. The city of Worcester has again been given the opportunity to act as host and the Festival will run from 24 July to 1 August.
Three Choirs Festival postpones for a year
The Three Choirs Festival has announced that it will postpone this year’s eighty-event festival till 2021, with the Worcester festival taking place between 24 and 31 July next year.
2019 Elgar Festival: 30 May – 2 June 2019
Festivals abound in the UK and here’s another one and one specific to a composer with an international reputation yet inextricably associated with England and Wales and with the city of his birth. Straddling the end of May and the start of June this year the City of Worcester and the English Symphony Orchestra hold the 2019 Elgar Festival.
Wagner at Worcester’s Swan Theatre
Worcestershire audiences will have a rare chance to hear some of the grandest music ever written, sung by some of the most powerful singers in the world, on the 16th of February, when the English Symphony Orchestra, hailed as the International Orchestra of Elgar Country, perform Act I of Richard Wagner’s opera The Valkyrie (Die Walküre) in Worcester’s Swan Theatre under the baton of Kenneth Woods.
