Review – Songs 0f the Sea – Three Choirs 2026

On what was an unsurprisingly hot day at Three Choirs 2026, Gloucester Cathedral’s generous acoustic added a much-needed and much-appreciated cooling effect to Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. The Philharmonia under the direction of Martin Brabbins, served up lots of resonant cellos and basses underpinned highly focussed and carefully articulated upper strings. The storm wasn’t unwelcome. More of gentle spritz.

The delightful surprise in this programme was the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir, who in Charles Wood’s Never weather-beaten sail demonstrated their choral experience with a warm sound and long, mostly well-supported, melodic lines that blended well with warm celli and pizzicato bass.

The same attention to detail in timbre and colour was evident in Cecilia McDowall’s concise Ave maris Stella. Written in 2000 shortly before 9/11, the short work for chorus and orchestra has added weight given the context, yet the harmonic palette remains fresh 26 years on. At its heart a dissonance makes it feel as though we’re standing on a precipice, looking out towards something, a heady sense of fear and excitement experienced at the same time. With a pop sensibility buried in there somewhere, McDowall still demonstrates a desire to go deeper with a language that belies the years that have passed. All written sympathetically for the chorus (who clearly feel at ease with the score). In the solos soprano Hannah Etherington haunts with sophisticated, seemingly effortless, vulnerability.

Roderick Williams makes a sound argument for a male voice in Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Martin Yates. Performed live with sound reverberating in the cathedral tower, Williams made a valiant attempt in Sea Slumber-Song though by and large his voice was swamped by the richness of Elgar’s score, at other times he even seemed distant. Balance was achieved in the second In Haven, here the challenges of the acoustic compensated for by the excellent live video direction and Williams’ innate camera technique, especially in a head and shoulders shot. Overall it was the detail in the text that was lost. I ended the performance yearning for a contralto who might have stood a better chance of cutting through the mush.

There was more clarity and better balance in Stanford’s Songs of the Fleet, likely because the interplay between chorus and soloist demanded quieter playing from the ensemble. The third movement — The Middle Watch — with its unequivocal scene setting saw all pulling together with great effect. This too is arguably where Stanford’s score is at its most sophisticated in comparison to the more Gilbert & Sullivan crowd pleasers The Song of the Sou’wester and, the comparatively more rocky in execution, The Little Admiral. Everything leads to the concluding Fare Well, balance between orchestra and voices achieved with a rousing if not entirely earned conclusion materially.