THE centenary of Sir Edward Elgar's great oratorio The Apostles will be celebrated this week.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) will be performing the work at Symphony Hall, in Birmingham, on Tuesday and Thursday at 7.30pm.

The piece, originally composed for the 1903 Birmingham Festival, will be conducted by Sakari Oramo, who also conducted the centenary performance of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in 2000.

The performance will combine the talents of the CBSO with the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and the City of Birmingham Choir.

A pre-concert talk will be given by Michael Foster, a tenor in the symphony chorus and author of Plotting Gigantic Worx - The Story of Elgar's Apostles Trilogy.

Also marking the milestone, the Elgar Birthplace Museum hosted a lecture by Dr Donald Hunt, entitled Century of an Oratorio on October 2. Dr Hunt is the former organist at Worcester Cathedral and director of the Elgar School of Music. He has conducted The Apostles many times and his lecture, involving live and recorded music, provided a conductor's view of the great work.

To complement the talk, the museum has organised an exhibition on The Apostles, which features some rarely seen archive material.

Museum director Catherine Sloan said: "We've been saving these archives for display in this centenary year and we're delighted that we can now share them with the public."

The exhibition is now open and will run until March. For information and tickets for the talk, phone 01905 333224 or 01905 28613.