A week of musical magic

Some of Britain’s finest musicians are set to fill St Davids Cathedral with extraordinary music this May. Concerts Manager Ben Richards reports.

The Annual St Davids Cathedral Music Festival, now in its 44th iteration, returns in May Half Term (23rd-28th) with a lineup featuring both favourite artistes and Festival debutantes.

The Festival begins as ever with a Launch Concert featuring some 120 schoolchildren from across the county, singing a variety of music chosen and led by conductor Suzzie Vango.

A yearly highlight of the Festival programme is the performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, who return on Saturday 24th May. Conducted this year by rising Finnish star Kristian Sallinen, their 2025 programme features Dvorak’s mighty Symphony No. 9 ‘from the New World’, complemented by Welsh composer Grace Williams’ Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes and Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures, sung by BBC Cardiff Singer of the World finalist Claire Barnett-Jones.

This year the Festival welcomes Pembrokeshire-born pianist and conductor Jocelyn Freeman as its Artist in Residence, performing in three concerts. On Sunday evening she joins the Alkyona String Quartet for a performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet, alongside Ravel’s String Quartet, marking the 150th anniversary of his birth.

On Bank Holiday Monday she joins Vox Angelica and the Vicars Choral as a guest soloist for an evening of choral music and madrigals, perfect for a summer’s evening. Bank Holiday Monday also sees local tuba player Aled Meredith-Barrett performing with his brass quintet Connaught Brass, in a programme featuring music from West Side Story and the UK premiere of a new work by American composer Carlos Simon.

<James Gilchrist

Queen's Six (© Gill Heppell)

On Tuesday, Jocelyn teams up with tenor James Gilchrist and his students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in a concert entitled A Poet’s Love, celebrating the work of Dylan Thomas with settings of his poetry by William Mathias, Rhian Samuel and Meirion Williams. Gilchrist and Freeman will complement these pieces with a complete performance of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, one of the great romantic song cycles.

To close the Festival, vocal sextet the Queen’s Six present their programme Mapping the Stars featuring stunning music by Monteverdi and Taverner, alongside arrangements of contemporary hits including Coldplay’s Viva la Vida and Starship’s We built this city on rock and roll. It is sure to be a fitting end to six days of extraordinary Music.

Tickets for the 2025 are on sale from March 8th. For more information, please visit www.stdavidscathedral.org.uk/music-festival