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| Geraint Bowen conducts Dvořák’s Requiem in Hereford Cathedral at Three Choirs Pageant with Anita Watson, Catherine Carby, Ruairi Bowen, Stephan Loges (Picture: Dale Hodgetts & James O’Driscol) |
This 12 months’s Three Choirs Pageant has drawn to an in depth in Hereford, after eight days of choral concert events, chamber music, household occasions, theatre and extra. Round 800 performers took half throughout the week, with virtually 150 composers represented, over a 3rd of whom are nonetheless alive as we speak.
The competition introduced a collection of firsts together with the competition’s first ever point out on Girl’s Hour because of Luke Kinds and Jessica Walker’s competition fee Voices of Energy, a primary UK efficiency for Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving, and premieres of fourteen totally different items throughout the competition programme.
2022 noticed revivals of Dyson’s cantata Quo Vadis and Dvořák’s Requiem, each rarely-performed works which had been effectively acquired by competition audiences. Dyson’s cantata was deliberate for the 1939 Three Choirs Pageant, however was cancelled and the premiere lastly came about on the 1949 competition. Dvořák’s Requiem was composed for the 1891 Birmingham Triennial Pageant, the second time the composer had been commissioned for the competition, and the primary textual content he thought of setting was The Dream of Gerontius (an intriguing may need been).
‘The Three Choirs Pageant does George Dyson’s Quo Vadis proud‘ – Seen and Heard Worldwide;
‘The Three Choirs Pageant Refrain beautifully navigated Dvořák’s turning the music inward, changing into quiet devastation‘ – Bachtrack
Younger performers had been a spotlight of this 12 months’s competition, with the headline competition fee Voices of Energy sung by the Pageant Youth Choir, the kids from Gloucestershire Academy of Music giving a wonderful efficiency at Tewkesbury Abbey, and a implausible live performance by the Nationwide Youth Orchestra of Wales carried out by Kwamé Ryan at Hereford Cathedral.
The Three Choirs Pageant strikes to Gloucester in 2023, the place the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams might be celebrated in his a hundred and fiftieth anniversary 12 months. Earlier than then, on the composer’s birthday itself this October, the competition will current two days of occasions showcasing a few of his best-loved music, together with the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Full particulars can be found the competition web site.
