Lauded as ‘Critic’s Pick’ in both The Guardian and The Times, the Elgar Festival is an annual live celebration of the life and music of Worcester’s most famous son and Britain’s great composer, Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934). Set in and around the composer’s home city, the event comprises concerts given by the resident English Symphony Orchestra (ESO) under their Principal Conductor and Festival Artistic Director, Kenneth Woods, with guest artists including violinists Zoë Beyers and Esther Abrami, and featured composer Steve Elcock.
Embodying the ethos ‘Elgar for Everyone’, the Elgar Festival engages with those of all ages and backgrounds in music and legacy at a number of integral venues of both historic interest and personal significance to the composer, including Worcester Cathedral and Guildhall.
This year’s Festival is built around Elgar's Violin Concerto – one of the composer’s most intimate works – and explores the composer’s personal inspirations, alongside those of his followers, with the theme ‘The Origins of Inspiration’. A performance will feature in the Gala Concert when Kenneth Woods conducts the English Symphony Orchestra in Worcester Cathedral, with Zoë Beyers as soloist, alongside another of Elgar’s finest works, his ‘Cockaigne’ Overture.
This year’s featured composer is Steve Elcock, with whom the ESO has enjoyed a long and fruitful association. Elcock’s residency as John McCabe ‘Composer-In-Association’ resulted in premiere performances and recordings of his Symphony No 8 and Violin Concerto.
Elcock’s ‘Wreck’ Op.10 from 1998 and premiered by the ESO features in the Gala Concert and brings to life a ship at sea, battered by the elements, in what the composer refers to as a ‘‘symphonic allegory’’. The “wreck” leads to a haunting if inaudible off-stage voice - ‘‘a message of salvation beyond despair, of consolation beyond grief”.