‘Our fans worry they’ll be too old next year’: why a delay to the Three Choirs Festival is so cruel

The prestigious Three Choirs Festival, which celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2015, was one of numerous cultural events to fall victim to Covid in 2020, holding a small online version instead. But surely it could come roaring back, in full voice, this summer? That was certainly the plan, until the Government changed the Step Four date on the roadmap from June 21 to July 19.

Suddenly, the 2021 festival – due to take place from July 24 – was thrown into doubt. The difficulty is that the very name, Three Choirs Festival, explains its appeal: the bringing together of numerous singers and musicians, including more than 250 from the three cathedral choirs, Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester (the event alternates between those three host cities), and the 150-voice Festival Chorus. That does not fit with social distancing and reduced capacity.

“While most of the festival’s 70+ smaller-scale events, and those involving professional choirs, will go ahead as planned, the marriage of an ambitious and dedicated amateur chorus with a professional orchestra on stage almost every night is what makes Three Choirs unique,” says Three Choirs Festival chief executive Alexis Paterson.

She continues: “The delay to reopening and particularly stringent restrictions on non-professional singers, coupled with the lack of information about what, if any, rules there might be for events in Stage Four puts us in a terrible dilemma. Do we cancel the chorus – and all the freelance musicians who work alongside them – now, or hold our nerve till the week the festival is due to begin?

“We’re going to be upfront with our audiences and artists about two possible programme options – one with, and one without, these larger events – and keep on rehearsing in hope. This festival means too much to too many people for us to give up now.”

However, there is a particular poignancy in any delay to the festival given the older age of some of the attendees. “We have literally had people saying they hope we go ahead because they think they might be too ill or old (or worse) to attend a festival they’ve come to for decades if we don’t go ahead this year,” adds Alexis. “We also have ￡100,000-plus freelance fees at stake.”

Three Choirs is hugely meaningful tradition for 75-year-old supporter and regular attendee Penny Moore. She and both her late husbands, Alan and Terry, shared a great passion for music. But they had no idea what they would find when they decided to try the Three Choirs.

“We assumed it would just be an amateur thing, but we turned up and realised, ‘Wow, this is absolutely wonderful,’” recalls Moore. “You’ve got a lovely cathedral, fabulous music, this enormous choir, and the best thing is you have it for a week. It’s very sociable too: they put the Ludlow gin cart just outside, so you roll out after a performance, get a glass of G&T and chat to your chums.”

Moore’s second husband died just under three years ago, and she’s been trying to find a pattern in her life again. Concert-going is a big part of that. “My chums have been incredibly supportive.” But, she notes, she hasn’t been out of the house for the past 18 months other than to walk the dog. “My sister got Covid. I’ve not been to the shops. I’ve not been anywhere. It’s been bloody awful.”

Performances online have kept us going, but “sitting in your office, watching a little screen with tinny music coming out just doesn’t do it for me,” she confesses. “Last week, we were back with a live audience for the Hallé, with Mark Elder conducting the Enigma Variations, and as soon as they started to play, I thought ‘I know now why I come.’” It made me all the more excited for Three Choirs. Now, I’m not sure if it can go ahead – or at least not on the same scale.”

But it’s not just the music, explains Moore. The Three Choirs Festival is “a big part of my social life. There’s fun things like the three deans having a cricket match, and the most important announcement of the week is who won! Besides, it’s such an historic event. If they played the telephone directory, I’d be there to support them.”

She’s also worried about how this Step Four delay will affect the artists. “Friends of mine who are freelance musicians are leaving the profession. Others have been practising on their own for months. They need an audience.”

And it’s a blow for host city Worcester. “I’m going to have to call up and cancel my hotel booking. They normally have a week of full hotels, plus we all eat out, and they hire coaches to take us on trips. The knock-on effect on the local economy is dire.”

Moore is confused as to why there can be big crowds at football games and other sports events, or a close-contact barbecue at the G7, but not musical performances like Three Choirs. “It offends the British sense of fair play.”

Besides, every year of an event like this is precious to older patrons. “I’ve been lucky enough to go in past years and it’s become part of my life – as it has for many people. But how many more years will we be able to go?”

Richard Hall is also a long-term Three Choirs supporter: he’s been going for about 25 years. “Not having it last year left a huge hole,” he says. He was keenly anticipating its return for 2021, but is now concerned about the uncertainty around large-scale choral works.

As a big Elgar fan, he was particularly looking forward to The Music Makers in this year’s programme, as well as “a new piece by Gabriel Jackson [The World Imagined], which is being premiered, and I also love all the song recitals and chamber music. It’s usually a busy week.”

Like Moore, the 70-year-old Hall appreciates it as a social event, too. “There are friends you might only see at Three Choirs.” Since retiring as an archivist seven years ago, Hall has been able to indulge his passion for classical music, and he had been looking forward to a summer of both culture and socialising – “getting back into the swing of it”. Now, he’s waiting to hear which events have been affected by the Step Four date change.

He, too, is “fed up” with watching shows online, and thinks the ambiguities in the official approach to choral work are deeply unhelpful. “Most choirs are quite alarmed by the attitude that the Government’s been taking.”

Hall has friends who have been ill, and who he hopes will still be able to go to Three Choirs – either in some form this year, or “when we’re back to normality next year, I hope and pray! It’s in the lap of the gods. This wonderful event has lasted for over 300 years; it’s a remarkable thing. We don’t want to be the people who drop the ball.”

There’s keen overseas interest, too, thanks to support group the American Friends of the Three Choirs Festival. Its chairman Rich Arenschieldt, who’s based in Houston, Texas, explains that it was founded in 2014. “I was asked if I wanted to support the festival – I think they thought I’d give ￡50. I asked how much it would cost to support an evening, which is more like ￡10,000. In Texas, we do things the big way!”

His group spans America, and even extends into Canada, with about 50 to 100 keen festival-goers making the annual transatlantic trip – at least, until 2020. “Three Choirs is like a dear family friend that you only see once a year, but you think about all the time. It’s not just travelling somewhere, or even just the music, it’s about a group of people who share a really significant commonality. Not forgetting the cathedral aspect: I always tell the Americans ‘This is a sonically unique experience.’ You won’t get it anywhere else in the world.”

There’s a spiritual element, too, muses Arenschieldt. “I found myself at sixes and sevens this spring, and I realised it’s because I miss Three Choirs. It’s a period of renewal and restoration for me.”

Arenschieldt, who is a singer and composer himself, first stumbled upon the festival as a student in the mid 1980s, “walking into Gloucester Cathedral with a backpack. It was the opening service of the festival, with all the pomp and circumstance. I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven.”

A kindly chorus member put him up and helped him find tickets, and, amazingly, the pair reunited when he returned for his 50th birthday in 2010. “That’s the way the festival is. The music brings me here, but the people keep me returning. It must be the smallest arts organisation with the biggest impact.”

However, for the past few months, Arenschieldt’s group have been on tenterhooks as they waited for each new roadmap announcement. “We thought June 21 would be plenty of time. Now it’s July 19, it’s just a few days, so we’re wondering how it works: if we’ll have to quarantine when we come over, whether there’s testing available. No one’s reticent about attending the actual festival – it’s just figuring out the rules and regulations around it. Especially now that we know the roadmap can be very changeable.”

But if Three Choirs is “gutsy enough to present a festival”, Arenschieldt will be there. “We miss it acutely. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. We only lost a year of Three Choirs and it’s gobsmacked all of us.”

The Three Choirs Festival 2021 runs July 24–August 1. Info: 3choirs.org