Performer: George Vass

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. 

The Presteigne Festival went Polish this year with an enterprising perspective of contemporary and post-war works including the world première of Paveł Łukaszewski’s newly commissioned Requiem. 

Benjamin Britten was very precise about what constituted the official canon of his works, but, in addition to his stipulated 95 opus numbers, he composed a huge amount of occasional music.

The classification of composers into those who write tonal music and those who inhabit the harder-edged shores of serialism and atonality raised its head once again at the first of the three concerts given by the Festival Chamber Orchestra at this year’s Presteigne Festival.

The Presteigne Festival has carved out a niche amongst Welsh Festivals (or, indeed, British festivals as a whole) for its largely contemporary programme of work.