Photo Credit: Dale Hodgetts 2024
The Three Choirs Festival has brought outstanding music-making to Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester and the surrounding areas in turn every summer for over 300 years – with the aim to share music-making opportunities and the finest musical experiences with everybody.
This year, the festival is in Hereford. Find out more about what’s in store below!
Welcome to the 2025 Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, featuring the festival’s own choirs and internationally recognised ensembles and soloists, as well as the world-renowned Philharmonia Orchestra.
Experience flagship evening concerts, laid-back late-nights, daytime recitals, and lively family programme, and see for yourself why so many people come back year after year!
From Three Choirs Festival:
Our feast of music opens with a performance of William Mathias’ exciting cantata This Worlde’s Joie.
Its early English texts reflect both the seasons and the span of human life.
It’s a work of strikingly colourful orchestration which we are combining with Dvořák’s exuberant Te Deum and the overture to Ethel Smyth’s operaThe Wreckers, which she conducted at the 1925 festival.
A highlight of the 2025 season will be a significant revival of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor‘s oratorio, The Atonement, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
This trailblazing composer commissioned the libretto for the piece to be written by local journalist and author Alice Parsons.
The libretto shifts the focus of the standard passion to the Women in Jesus’ life.
The evening concert series will also include enduring masterpieces such as Mendelssohn‘s powerful Elijah and Fauré‘s poignant Requiem.
The Festival remains committed to the evolution of musical expression and will present world premiere performances of newly commissioned works by Richard Blackford and Bob Chilcott, alongside a new composition by Roderick Williams.
The participation of the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir, National Youth Orchestra of Wales, National Youth Choir and the National Youth String Orchestra underscores the Festival’s dedication to supporting emerging musical talent.
In addition to the evening concerts, the Festival’s series of daytime recitals features celebrated vocalists and instrumentalists, including The King’s Singers, Emma Johnson and Stile Antico.
Experience intimate late-night recitals, exploring the Brandenburg Concertos with the Musical and Amicable Society, join the Lay Clerks in an atmospheric close-harmony concert and find calm in Night Songs – a recital of music by Vaughan Williams, Dove, Clarke and Britten. A perfect close to a day of timeless music.
For more information please visit – https://3choirs.org/hereford-2025
