St Davids will be filled with the sound of music
ST DAVIDS will be filled with the sound of music This May Half Term, as the St Davids Cathedral Music Festival makes a triumphant return from 24th-29th May. Following a hiatus last year, the Festival is back and as strong as ever, with six days of extraordinary music from orchestras, choirs and folk artists.
This year’s programme places Pembrokeshire musicians at its core, with the opening concert (Friday 24th) featuring 150 schoolchildren from across the county in the Children’s Festival Chorus, accompanied by a live band. Later that evening, upper voices group Vox Angelica, alongside the Cathedral’s adult singers, the Vicars Choral and Choral Scholars, will perform a late-night candlelit concert titled ‘Seasons and Love’.
The centrepiece of any Festival programme is the annual performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (Sat 25th), who this year return under the baton of Martyn Brabbins for Whitland – born composer William Mathias’ Festival Overture, Brahms’ 2nd Symphony and Sibelius’ ever-popular Violin Concerto, performed by award-winning violinist, Inmo Yang. Their performance marks the first in Pembrokeshire for their new principal trumpet and former Greenhill student Corey Morris.
The following night (Sun 26th) sees the first UK performance for Trio Preseli, who are based in Santiago de Compostela. The horn player, Simon Lewis is also a local boy, having been a pupil at Sir Thomas Picton School, and deriving the Trio’s name from the rolling Pembrokeshire hills. Their programme also has a local flavour, with music by Welsh composer Anthony Randall, set to poems by Dylan Thomas and Haverfordwest poet, Geraint Jones, who lost his life at Normandy in 1944.
On Bank Holiday Monday (27th), the renowned Choir of Royal Holloway make their Festival debut in a concert titled ‘Orchestral classics for choir’. The programme includes choral settings of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Ravel’s Pavane among other works. This promises to be a scintillating programme from one of the UK’s top choirs.
Clarinettist Emma Johnson makes her anticipated return to the Festival (Tues 28th) alongside her Orchestra for the Environment in a programme of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams and Paul Reade’s music for the 1987 television series ‘The Victorian Kitchen
Garden’. The concert will also feature Emma’s own composition, ‘The Tree of Life’, written as a response to the Climate Crisis. A retiring collection will be taken for Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm, who will give a pre-concert talk alongside Emma at Twr y Felin hotel.
There are a number of morning ‘coffee concerts’ as well, with performances by the Cathedral Choristers, Choral Scholars and the Young Musician of Dyfed, pianist Raphael James. The final day of the Festival (Weds 29th) sees the Cathedral Choir performing Evensong live on BBC Radio 3, followed by a final flourish from the Welsh folk Trio Alaw, who will be sure to get the audience dancing in the aisles (or at least tapping their feet).
Tickets start at just £8, with evening concerts starting at £15. Tickets for under 18s are free with an accompanying adult. Residents of St Davids Ward are eligible for a 20% discount on all tickets, by emailing festival@ stdavidscathedral.org.uk.
Full programme details and Tickets are available at www. stdavidscathedral.org.uk/ music-festival, by calling 01437 722002 TuesdayFriday, or from the Box Office on the Pebbles in St Davids from Monday 20th May, 10am-4pm. Any unsold tickets will be available on the door.