Three Choirs Festival review – 300-year-old festival celebrates the past and looks to the future

The Three Choirs festival had already been in existence for well over 150 years when Gustav Holst was born in 1874, and this year it marked his 150th anniversary with a rare performance of his choral ode The Cloud Messenger. In the composer’s own translation of an ancient Sanskrit poem, a water spirit exiled from his homeland implores a passing cloud to carry a message of love to his wife in the faraway Himalayas. Tarry not! is the refrain, but Holst himself definitely tarried too long in his chorus’s perorations. The Festival Voices acquitted themselves admirably under conductor Geraint Bowen, with the Philharmonia underlining the expressive beauty of the orchestral interludes with their Wagnerian inflections, but it was the gorgeous mezzo and perfect articulation of Beth Taylor , as the voice of the pining wife, that registered most strongly.

Nathan James Dearden’s new work, Messages, commissioned to match Holst’s forces, set moving texts written to speak out and inspire hope. All were simply and atmospherically set and here too, the power of Taylor’s solos carried wonderfully in the cathedral acoustic.

It was the calm authority and exquisite precision with which percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys – who together form the GBSR duo – delivered their late evening recital that made an immaculately conceived programme so memorable. Tiny gems of pieces, including two by Louis Andriessen and The Garden of Gethsemane by the Ethiopian Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru, were paired with longer works written in homage or honouring the influences of other composers or teachers. The ethereal haze of Lucio Tasca’s DSFC – Domenico Scarlatti and François Couperin – was mesmerising. Luke Lewis ’s O Dreamland, remembering what would have been the 70th birthday of Steve Martland this year, took its title from the Lindsay Anderson documentary, much admired by Martland. The interpolation of recordings of a sea shanty, The Leaving of Liverpool – Martland’s home city – and samples of Martland’s own voice added highly evocative layers to Lewis’s own lucid interweaving of melody and rhythm.

GBSR’s collaboration with the Heath Quartet the following morning, featured another premiere in tribute to Martland, the sextet A Life Cycle by Joe Duddell , a student of both Martland and Andriessen. Over three movements, which Duddell suggested could be thought of as Energy, Elegy and Joy, there was a natural fluidity and vibrancy, with the vibraphone adding gorgeous iridescent colour. The deeply felt central movement, opening with a reflective cello solo, gave the work its emotional heart and proved the perfect sequel to Martland’s Patrol, played with intensity and dedication by the Heath Quartet. It’s much to the festival’s credit that this sense of connectivity, carrying the flame and crossing generations of composers, could not have been more fittingly celebrated.

• Three Choirs Festival continues until 3 August.