The Three Choirs Festival has wrapped up in Worcester after an eight-day musical event.
The festival featured a range of choral concerts, chamber recitals, and family events all themed around nature's influence on music.
Composers, Judith Weir and Bob Chilcott, were in attendance to hear their pieces performed.
Samuel Hudson's programme met with enthusiastic response from the audience.
Highlights included the opening concert featuring Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus and Stanford’s Stabat Mater.
Richard Bratby of The Spectator described it as 'looking and feeling like a community expressing itself musically on the largest scale.'
Roger Sayer's late-night concert brought sounds from Interstellar to Worcester Cathedral.
The BBC Singers and Anna Lapwood's concert was labelled 'challenging, rewarding, and superbly performed' by John Quinn of Seen and Heard International.
The Festival Chorus concluded the week with a powerful performance of Elgar’s The Kingdom.
Throughout the week, three new festival commissions were performed, including Nathan James Dearden’s response to Holst’s The Cloud Messenger, deemed 'genuinely moving' by Ivan Hewitt of The Telegraph.
Tributes in honour of the late Steve Martland were presented by Luke Lewis and Joe Duddell.
Rian Evans of The Guardian praised the festival's tribute as a rewarding celebration of connectivity spanning generations of composers.
Paul Mealor’s beautiful Ring’d with the Azure World was premiered by the three cathedral choirs.
Early-career composers also had their moment with a week of workshops, ending in a performance of their works by the Carice Singers.
Chief executive Alexis Paterson said: "Wow!
"What an incredible eight days of music-making (and more) this has been.
"I’m so grateful to our wonderful audiences, outstanding artists and composers, fantastic volunteers, committee, board, cathedral and venue teams, and our simply brilliant staff and crew for making this such a memorable festival.
"But most of all congratulations must go to Samuel Hudson on his first ‘normal’ Three Choirs in Worcester post-lockdown.
"What a triumph it’s been.”
Looking ahead, the festival moves to Hereford in 2025.
Artistic director Geraint Bowen has an exciting programme in store, including a revival of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s oratorio The Atonement, celebrating his 150th birth anniversary.
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