Press Release
Hereford Three Choirs Festival celebrates 300 years in 2015
The 300th anniversary of the Three Choirs Festival will be celebrated in the 2015 festival, taking
place in Hereford 25 July – 1 August. Highlights of the programme include performances of the
Verdi Requiem, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, a new setting of the evening canticles by Bob
Chilcott, choral works by Neilsen and William Mathias, and Messiaen’s vast orchestral work
Turangalîla. The Philharmonia will again be orchestra in residence.
Artistic Director Geraint Bowen has chosen to reflect the festival’s heritage and extraordinary
longevity by presenting repertoire that would have been well known to participants at the start of
the 18th century alongside more recent works whose scale, complexity and sound-world would have
been utterly unimaginable to them. The Opening Service will feature a period instrument orchestra
and the music of Purcell, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will visit the Three Choirs
Festival for the first time to accompany Bach’s St Matthew Passion performed by the Three
Cathedral Choirs of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester. At the other end of the chronological and
sonic spectrum will be Sibelius’s Symphony No 5, the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan
and Isolde, the Verdi Requiem and a revival of a 1982 Hereford Three Choirs Festival commission:
Lux aeterna by the Welsh composer William Mathias, who died in 1992.
Hereford Three Choirs Festival 2015 will also feature what is believed to be the first performance in
any of the three choirs cities of Olivier Messiaen’s massive orchestral work Turangalîla-Symphonie.
Premieres will include a new set of Evening Canticles by Bob Chilcott and a cantata by Pete Churchill
for community choir The Gathering Wave, which will explore the experience of the Polish
community who came to Herefordshire as refugees after the second world war.
The Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir will perform Bob Chilcott’s Requiem and the week will feature
concerts by the Orlando Consort, Voces8 and vocal trio Juice. Soloists during the festival will include
mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly, baritone Roderick Williams, pianist Steven Osborne and organist
John Scott.
As ever, the central pillars of the festival are the evening cathedral concerts featuring the Three
Choirs Festival Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra, featuring internationally-known guest
conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis as well as Geraint Bowen and his colleagues from Gloucester
and Worcester, Adrian Partington and Peter Nardone.
The close connections between the Three Choirs Festival and the life and music of Sir Edward Elgar
are not forgotten and the first evening concert of the 2015 festival on Saturday 25 July in Hereford
Cathedral will be a performance of his most famous oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.
The full Three Choirs Festival Hereford 2015 programme will be announced at the end of March.
Hereford Three Choirs Festival 2015 Press Release
December 1, 2014
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Artistic Director Geraint Bowen and the Three Choirs Festival’s Chief Executive Dominic
Jewel are available for interview.
More information and a selection of high-resolution images from:
Clare Stevens
Marketing and Media Manager
Three Choirs Festival
7c College Green
Gloucester
GL1 2LX
Clare.Stevens@3choirs.org
01452 768935 (office)
07968 367079 (mobile)
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The Three Choirs Festival has its origins at the end of the 17th
century in visits by the lay clerks of Gloucester, Hereford and
Worcester to one another’s cathedrals for joint services and informal
singing. More formal annual ‘music meetings’ can be traced back to
around 1715 and have continued ever since, interrupted only by the
two world wars, making this the oldest continuously running classical
music festival in the world. The event rotates between the three
cathedral cities on a three-year cycle. Hereford 2015 is the 288th
Three Choirs Festival.
2. The Three Choirs Festival Chorus is largely drawn from auditioned
members of the choral societies of Hereford, Gloucester and
Worcester, with the largest contingent each year coming from the
host city. Amateur choral singers have been taking part in the festival
since the middle of the 19th century to augment the cathedral choirs
of boy trebles and male altos, tenors and basses.
Hereford Three Choirs Festival 2015 Press Release
December 1, 2014
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3. This is the fourth year of the Philharmonia’s orchestral residency at
the Three Choirs Festival. More information about the residency:
http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/concerts/residencies/three_choirs_festival
4. The Gathering Wave brings together adult singing groups and
children from all over Herefordshire to work towards a performance
in Hereford Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival. Run by the
county’s community music charity The Music Pool, it provides an
opportunity for amateur singers young and old to come together,
share their passion for singing with like-minded people, and play their
part in the most important event in Hereford’s musical calendar. In
2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012 more than 250 people took part.
Participating groups for 2015 include the Garrick Singer, Ledbury
Community Choir, the Fire Choir, the Golden Valley Singers, three
local primary schools and St Mary’s R C High School, Hereford.
http://www.musicpool.org.uk
5. Supporters of Hereford Three Choirs Festival 2015 include

The Elmley Foundation www.elmley.org.uk

Hereford City Council www.herefordcitycouncil.gov.uk

Philharmonia Orchestra www.philharmonia.co.uk

The Frank Clarke-Whitfeld Trust
Hereford Three Choirs Festival 2015 Press Release
December 1, 2014
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