The 2021 Elgar Festival

Sir Edward wants you to know we are back!

In venues across Worcester and the rest of Elgar Country.


Join us for a celebration of
music, friendship and community

Performances include:
(click on the event title for information and booking)

There will surely be electricity in the air as Kenneth Woods and the ESO perform Elgar’s beloved Enigma Variations, a timeless celebration of friendship and community, and the perfect work with which to welcome our friends and listeners back. It’s been over two years since the triumphant 100th Anniversary performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto for a packed Worcester Cathedral at the 2019 Elgar Festival. It’s time to let the music play again and to celebrate the life and music of Britain’s greatest composer.

Cellist Raphael Wallfisch, whose deeply-moving 100th Anniversary performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto was the undoubted highlight of the 2019 Elgar Festival, returns with a sequence of engaging miniatures for cello and strings arranged by Donald Fraser.
The programme opens with Elgar’s much loved Serenade, and concludes with the playful and witty “Little Music” for strings by the English String Orchestra’s former “Composer-in-Association”, Sir Michael Tippett. Finally, there’s a musical after-dinner sorbet, Evan Chambers virtuosic and hilarious setting of two Irish jigs, The Tall-Eared Fox and the Wild-Eyed Man. It’s an evening celebrating the best of English string music with one of the world’s most admired string orchestras, Worcester’s own English String Orchestra.

Another groundbreaking event, proving that the Elgar Festival really means Elgar For Everyone!
Join us for the first of our new, sure to be hugely popular, late night concerts.
We welcome one of the UK’s most innovative and exciting jazz ensembles for an evening of genre-bending music, and surely a healthy dose of Elgar…. as you’ve never heard him before.
“Both his composing talents and his propulsive bass-playing are currently such hot UK jazz news” The Guardian (UK)

One of Britain’s most exciting professional chamber choirs, the all-female Corra Sound performs a vibrant, engaging and accessible programme of works by Gipps, Smyth, Poston, Clarke and Elgar. It’s a rich and rewarding celebration of predominantly female composers from Elgar’s era, alongside contemporary works of great appeal.

Emerging superstar tenor Mark Wilde is joined by one of Britain’s most loved and admired pianists and animateurs, David Owen Norris, for a concert celebrating the rich legacy of English song, from the Victorian stylings of Haynes, through the Edwardian mastery of Elgar, and on to a new cycle by Ian Venables, the man hailed by Musical Opinion Quarterly as “…Britain’s greatest living composer of art songs…”

For many attendees, the Elgar for Everyone Family Concert was the surprise highlight of the 2019 Elgar Festival. Over 130 young musicians, ranging in age from 7-21 joined forces alongside their English Symphony Orchestra mentors for a thrilling evening of music. This year’s return of the E4E concert promises to be an even more moving and poignant concert, as these talented young musicians give their first performance for an audience since the March 2020 lockdown.
Sunday 31 October @ 1:30 PM – The Elgar Chorale in Concert

The much-admired local choir which proudly bears the name of our featured composer returns with a concert that will include favourite part songs by Elgar and Coleridge-Taylor, including the latter’s The Viking Song, as well as a selection of Vaughan Williams’ choral works including A Dark-eyed Sailor and Valiant-for-Truth.