THE Autumn in Malvern festival opened this year with a pioneering concert at the University of Worcester's new arena which is set to be broadcast on Radio 3.

The concert featured the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and was a great success, said artistic director Peter Smith.

"It was a pioneering concert, the first major arts event at this venue," said Mr Smith. "Since then I've been overwhelmed with the number of positive comments about the concert and the venue."

It was recorded by the BBC and will be broadcast in the next few weeks, though the date has not yet been fixed.

"The BBC recording people were very complementary about the arena's acoustics, describing them as nearly perfect," said Mr Smith.

The concert included Elgar's Cello Concerto and Elegy, as part of the World War One commemorative strand running through the festival.

And this Sunday, September 21, the strand continues with The Path To Peace, a sequence of words and music on the life of war poet of Siegfried Sassoon and his connection with Malvern.

The event, at Great Malvern Priory, is performed by Malvern’s international award-winning chamber choir, Aldwyn Voices.

Bernadette Kearney of BBC Midlands Today is the reader and the Son String Quartet will play Elgar’s String Quartet , written in 1918.

Sassoon is also the subject of a talk at the Quaker Meeting House, Orchard Road, when Jean Moorcroft Wilson discusses her landmark study of his life on Sunday, October 5, at 3pm.

And on Friday, October 17, at Malvern College, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and actor Peter Sutton will presen Poets of the Malvern Hills Countryside, an evening of memories of the Great War plus a performance of Elgar’s Violin Sonata, also written in 1918. Providing are the highly-acclaimed duo of violinist Bartosz Woroch and pianist Sam Armstrong.

On the closing day of the festival, Sunday, October 26, eminent actor Gabriel Woolf will join Linda Hart of he Friends of the Dymock Poets at Malvern Theatres to present Behind The Lines, a World War One anthology of poetry and prose.

Tickets fare available at Malvern Theatres, Grange Road. For details, see malvernfestival.co.uk.