It goes without saying that we have a remarkable amount of English music on the menu, from Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and Caractacus to Vaughan Williams’ An Oxford Elegy. (These last two works surely deserve to be performed more often.) Into this fabric we weave a thread of music and musicians works from around the globe.

From Europe we present works by Beethoven, Bruch, Mahler and Mozart, as well as Brahms’ enduring masterpiece Ein deutsches Requiem.

We remember the tenth anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11 with John Adams monumental cantata On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned in 2002 and recalling the fall of the World Trade Center in New York. This theme is reflected too in our Wednesday evensong, which will feature the first performance of a newly-commissioned anthem Still, in remembrance by Jackson Hill of Pennsylvania, USA. Guest conductors this year include the inspirational Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki in Mahler’s Third Symphony, as well as the effervescent and ever-popular Sir Andrew Davis.

For early music enthusiasts, we are delighted to welcome back Florilegium with their concert of Bach’s The Musical Offering (transcriptions of his organ trios for five instruments) and Piers Adams who will lure audiences out to the Baroque splendour of Great Witley Church. The Academy of Ancient Music return to perform with the Three Cathedral Choirs in a virtuoso display of music by Charpentier, Bach, Vivaldi and Handel while, on a slightly different tack, The Sixteen offer an evening of music from the Orthodox tradition (Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Chesnokov and Kalinnikov) interspersed with Tavener, Holst, Eben and Pärt. There is a range of chamber music too, spanning the elegance and poise of the Melchior Ensemble, the ‘knockout talent’ (BBC Music Magazine) of cellist Jamie Walton, and 2009 Classical Brit Female Artist of the Year, trumpeter Alison Balsom, to mention but a few.

The festival aims to offer a range of opportunities for young people, both in performance and in educational projects. The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland make its first appearance at the festival with a programme of Mahler, Ravel and James MacMillan. The chapel choir of Royal Holloway College has been described by The Times as ‘truly fabulous’: they will perform their debut programme at the festival in Tewkesbury Abbey, which will include music by Peter Phillips and John Bull accompanied by sackbutts and cornetts. The Eton Choral Course has become an established and hugely popular part of the programme, a position in which it will surely soon be joined by our own Festival Youth Choir. The brass masterclass, led by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra, will doubtless be oversubscribed, and there is a wide range of talks and lectures for all tastes.

For the more ecclesiastical festival-goer, there will also be the usual musical excellence from the cathedral choirs of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester, both individually and together, while the much-praised Kenneth Tickell organ plays host to Italian organist superstar Paolo Oreni. We look forward to seeing you at the festival.

Adrian Lucas  artistic director