The Three Choirs Competition is at Hereford this yr, operating from 26 July to 2 August 2025 with its acquainted mixture of large-scale choral concert events, chamber recitals, late-night occasions and household pleasant programmes. The programme attracts on not solely the three cathedral choirs (Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester), however The Three Choirs Competition Refrain, drawn from auditioned newbie singers in and round Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, the Three Choirs Competition Youth Choir for singers aged 14-25 and the Three Choirs Competition Voices which is open to everybody, with no audition required.
This yr’s programme celebrates Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s a hundred and fiftieth anniversary with a efficiency of his main choral work, The Atonement which was written for the 1903 competition in Hereford. A big-scale 90 minute choral and orchestral work, the premiere was carried out by the composer and featured a textual content by native author Alice Parsons. This yr, the work is carried out by Samuel Hudson with the Three Choirs Competition Refrain and Philharmonia Orchestra plus soloists Rebecca Hardwick, Aoife Miskelly, Amy Hoyland, Martha McLorinan, Mark Le Brocq, and David Stout.
The work was unpublished and the rating has been resurrected from the manuscript held by the Royal School of Music [and is now happily available on IMSLP]. For the libretto, Parsons crafted a singular libretto that includes a mixture of paraphrased biblical quotes from the Gospels alongside together with her artistic extra-liturgical narrative commentary, and the work options the dramatic characters of Christ (baritone), Pontius Pilate (tenor), Pilate’s spouse (soprano), Mary the Mom of Christ (soprano), Mary, the spouse of Cleophas (mezzo-soprano) and Mary Magdalene (contralto).
Different main works at this yr’s competition embrace Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi, alongside the premiere of Richard Blackford’s The Black Lake which is impressed by the 1961 Welsh novel, One Moonlit Evening by Caradog Pritchard.
Different performers in Hereford embrace the King’s Singers, Roderick Williams, Sarah Connolly, Emma Johnson, the Carducci Quartet, and Stile Antico.
Full particulars from the Three Choirs Competition web site.
