The Presteigne Festival 2017 programme has been announced. Set on the Powys/Herefordshire border, the Festival has gained a reputation for delivering a broad range of contemporary music, especially British music. This year the Festival features seven works by from Composer-in-Residence, Edward Gregson, including two world premieres.

The first of the seven works by Gregson, Six Little Piano Pieces, will feature in an afternoon piano recital given by Tim Horton at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Presteigne on August 25. Later that evening, the Presteigne Festival Orchestra will perform Gregson’s energetic Goddess for string orchestra.

In the evening of August 26, the Nightingale Quartet will give the world premiere performance of Gregson’s String Quartet No 2, a commission from the Festival.

On August 28 at 2 pm Rebecca Afonwy-Jones and Timothy End perform the second of the Gregson world premieres, Five Songs of Innocence and Experience, which sets poems by Robert Kent, Siegfried Sassoon and C Day Lewis. The new version of this cycle brings together new works and unpublished juvenilia (the premise from which the piece takes its title). Concert-goers can join David Wordsworth in conversation with Gregson as he discusses his life, music and influences at the Assembly Rooms, 4pm. Following this, a performance of Gregson Serenata Notturna will feature in the Leonore Trio’s memorial concert for Mary Nolan at 7pm.

On August 29 Katherine Baker (flute) and Tim Horton perform Gregson’s hypnotic Aztec Dances in the Festival’s penultimate concert, and after a staggering twenty-seven events spanning just six days, the Festival concludes with a concert featuring Gregson’s cello concerto A Song for Chris.

For further details, visit the Concerts page. For full Festival listings and to book tickets, visit Presteigne Festival.