A very absorbing week at the Three Choirs Festival, which I've never attended before, for all its (and my) longevity; next year's will be the 300th edition. The civic pride of the three cities who rotate yearly in hosting the Festival is intense, and I'm sure Hereford and Gloucester also make great Festival centres. But Worcester's Elgar sites, its ancient cathedral and streets, and beautiful river banks, made for a particularly lovely stay in bright weather.
A visit from the BBC Singers, including my oratorio In the Land of Uz was a personal musical highlight. This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio Three at the beginning of October - a week which will mark the Singers' 100th anniversary. The opening of the concert features imaginative and sensitive organ transcriptions of the Peter Grimes Sea Interludes, created and played by Anna Lapwood. And also a definitive performance of Poulenc's extraordinary Figure Humaine conducted by Sofi Jeannin.
A further big deal was Festival Evensong sung by all three cathedral choirs, under Samuel Hudson (which you can hear at present on BBC Sounds.) The thrills here were a huge setting from the book of Habakkuk by Charles Villiers Stanford (died 100 years ago) together with responses by Thomas Tomkins (Worcester organist for 500 years.) My motet A Wreath leads the broadcast off. The history of music in a beautiful place.
Pictured: Elgar's birthplace in Lower Broadheath, just outside Worcester
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