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5 unusual facts about Three Choirs Festival


Ernest Gambier-Parry

He was a member of the Gloucester Committee of the Three Choirs Festival.

Herbert Brewer

As organist of Gloucester Cathedral from 1896 until his death, he contributed a good deal to the Three Choirs Festival for 30 years.

In 1913, at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, Brewer was entrusted with conducting the premiere of Sibelius's tone-poem for soprano and orchestra, Luonnotar, Op. 70.

Rosalind Ellicott

Her father had no interest in music whatsoever; however it has been suggested that it was his position that enabled her to have some of her works performed at the Three Choirs Festival which was held in rotation in Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester.

Three Choirs Festival

Herbert Sumsion, organist at Gloucester between 1928 and 1967, particularly helped to promote the works of native composers, including premiering works of Howells, Finzi, and others.


Bertram Luard-Selby

At the Three Choirs Festival of 1877, Luard-Selby's Kyrie Eleison was premiered at a concert together with two other novelties, Sullivan's In Memoriam and Brahms's German Requiem.

Clara Novello

In 1833, she performed at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester and in 1834 she performed at the Royal Musical Festival at Westminster Abbey.

Francis Pott

In the same year and in the same columns his oratorio A Song on the End of the World, named after a Czesław Miłosz poem from Nazi-occupied Warsaw and written as the last pre-millennial Elgar Commission of the Three Choirs Festival at Worcester, was hailed as "thrilling, apocalyptic and profoundly affecting".

GWR 4900 Class 4936 Kinlet Hall

The fitting of OTMR has allowed it to provide motive power for various mainline excursions, including Vintage Trains' Shakespeare Express and the Three Choirs Express excursion, double-heading with 5029 'Nunney Castle'.

Robin Milford

In September 1931 his oratorio A Prophet in the Land Op. 21 was performed in Gloucester Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival - the work was somewhat overshadowed by the splash made by William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast performed the same year.


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