Banish all thoughts of gloomy choral music that you’ve heard too many times! The New Beginnings theme for the 2025 Crickhowell Music Festival will be bursting with life.

Fresh ideas, visionary pieces, and an array of composers both well known and too well hidden. Cherry pickers are spoilt for choice but a Magnificat by Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig, and a Haydn mass seldom heard, but increasingly acclaimed as his best, can’t be missed.

The Festival kicks off on Friday, May 2 at the Clarence Hall with the Welsh Folk Night. Avanc is a band of young musicians from across Wales who specialise in unearthing forgotten musical gems and reworking them in their own energetic image. Expect harps, bagpipes and clog dancing.

Saturday’s ‘Sing a New Song’ theme at St Edmund’s Church is when the choir and five talented solists will explore works from J.S. Bach and Vivaldi but also the less well known Delalande, Kuhnau and Matthew Locke. Four pieces will be performed for the first time in Wales, including the Kuhnau Magnificat, and Delalande’s superbly uplifting Cantate Domino.

‘Awakenings’ are Sunday’s target, also at St Edmund’s, and led by Joseph Haydn’s Creation Mass, written soon after but not to be confused with his better known Creation Oratorio. There are hints from the oratorio but the mass digs much deeper into Haydn’s pool of talent - high time it moved up his playlist.

Haydn’s brother Michael also features with an Easter Motet, and there are works by Mozart and C.P.E. Bach, not to be confused with his better known dad.

On Monday the Festival moves back to Clarence Hall and closes with a rare treat for Crickhowell, the return of the internationally acclaimed tenor, James Gilchrist, accompanied by pianist Anna Tilbrook. The concluding high will be Beethoven’s glorious song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, but songs by Dowland and Purcell with intriguing settings of Dylan Thomas by Rhian Samuel are also high on the list of music not to be missed.

Crickhowell Choral Society was founded in 1981 by a local GP David Hiley who persuaded any of his patients who said they could sing to join him in creating a choir. From this small group, many of whom are still members, a strong society of some 50 to 60 singers has evolved under the baton of musician and composer Stephen Marshall.

In 1995, the choir organised its first music festival in Crickhowell during the first May Bank Holiday weekend and the tradition has gone from strength to strength.

In 2016, the choir was delighted to welcome the outstanding Welsh Soprano, Elin Manahan Thomas as its new president. Elin has been a special part of many of Crickhowell Choral Society’s festival concerts and helps support the aim of bringing exciting performances of often neglected repertoire to fruition.

Much more information is available on the festival website at crickhowellchoralsociety.org and on Facebook. Buy tickets online via the website, email [email protected], call 07980 270449, or visit Webbs of Crickhowell.