Elijah was a perennial favourite at the Three Choirs Festival for many years. In his authoritative book Three Choirs, A History of the Festival (1992), Anthony Boden includes a list of all significant works performed at the Festival between 1890 and 1991. The entry for Elijah reads "every Festival from 1890 (and some prior) until 1929" and then lists a further twelve outings for the work up to 1986.....I'm not sure how often Elijah has been programmed at Festivals since 1986 but I suspect it's not been given that frequently....Why should this be so, given the work's stature among oratorios?

Watch the video of Adrian Partington's address to the Three Choirs Festival Society at their lunch on Tuesday 11 August.

We have had so many wonderful e-mails from our regular supporters following the Hereford Festival, that I couldn't resist sharing this e-mail from Stephanie Martin, Associate Professor of Music at York University in Toronto...

Roderick Dunnett, MV Daily

"If one word sums up the 2009 Three Choirs Festival, it would be 'professional'. Held this year at Hereford (the annual event alternates or shifts between Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester), this unquestionably superb festival -- founded in the early eighteenth century not long after George I ascended the English throne -- is one of the supreme highlights of the English summer."

 

 

To link to a scan of the actual newspaper article reviewing the Rodolfus Choirs performance in Tewkesbury Abbey on Monday 10 Aug by Roger Jones for the Gloucester Citizen, please click here.

To link directly to the Daily Telegraph review by Ivan Hewett of the evening concerts on Thursday Aug 13th, please click here.

To link directly to the Guardian review of Wednesday 18 August, please click here.

The winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year 2002 talks to the Three Choirs Festival