We have been very busy the last couple of days, so I'm getting a little behind on this blog. Saturday (August 6) the coach took us to Worcester Cathedral, the site of the 2011 Three Choirs Festival. This festival, which rotates yearly among three of the great cathedrals in England -- Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester -- has been in existence for 284 years. We arrived in time to attend the opening service on Saturday morning -- a service full of ceremony and beautiful music. The choirs, joined by the brass of the the Philharmonia Orchestra, performed an anthem by Andrew Carter, and Charles Villiers Stanford's Te Deum.
In the afternoon the coach took us to a girls' school in Malvern for a few hours of rehearsal time. Malvern is a lovely town nestled near the Malvern hills.
We returned to Worcester Cathedral in time to attend the choral evensong service there. This provided the opportunity to hear one of the Worcester Cathedral choirs in the world premiere of a new anthem by Donald Hunt, "Quam dilecta", as well as Stanford's Service in A.
After a quick dinner many of us returned for the evening concert -- Edward Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius". Edward Elgar (1857-1934), the most important English composer of his era, grew up in Worcester, where his father ran a music shop. The Dream of Gerontius is based on the poem by Cardinal Newman. Elgar's work was premiered in 1900; the first performance was not a success, due to insufficient rehearsal time, but critics saw merit in the work, and it has since become Elgar's most popular choral work.
Laura S.
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