Choir of Royal Holloway stir the emotions at the Presteigne Festival

The culmination of Thomas Ades' Beethoven cycle with the Britten Sinfonia channels Beethoven's atavistic energies. 

A concert built on the work of composers from Britain, Finland and Latvia formed a rewarding programme of choral, vocal and orchestral music with several gems. 

Embarrassing puns aside, the music of Arvo Pärt is hardly the staple fare of late-night revellers on Bristol’s Park Street, especially on a Friday. Tucked just around the corner, though, St George’s was celebrating the end of the long summer drought of live classical music courtesy of the Choir of Royal Holloway – fresh from their tour of the Balkan states – and the Bristol Ensemble.

While early English Baroque is not an area of music which generally comes to mind when we think of controversial composers, it seems that the scores of composers we now associate with purity and conventionalism had their own streaks of radicalism in their time, political and otherwise, and a fair few were exiled.

Embarrassing puns aside, the music of Arvo Pärt is hardly the staple fare of late-night revellers on Bristol’s Park Street, especially on a Friday. Tucked just around the corner, though, St George’s was celebrating the end of the long summer drought of live classical music courtesy of the Choir of Royal Holloway – fresh from their tour of the Balkan states – and the Bristol Ensemble.

Malgré le choix étonnant de l'amplification des voix qui restera une énigme pendant toute la soirée, le programme révèle les charmes d'une musique rarement donnée avenue Montaigne.