Three Choirs Festival 2025: meet Samuel Hudson

There’s an exciting historical background behind this evening’s concert. It’s Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 150th anniversary year, and the piece was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival for a performance in 1903. How does it feel to be conducting this work at this year’s Festival?

It’s a tremendous privilege! It’s really quite humbling to think we will be on the very spot of the premiere of this piece all those years ago, and in my case the very spot on which Coleridge-Taylor stood to conduct it. This is just one extraordinary thing about the Three Choirs Festival – you feel a real connection with our country’s wonderful musical heritage, and can draw a direct line from us in 2025, back to our greatest composers, and of course their compositions. I’m also acutely aware of the responsibility we carry in bringing this work – left unperformed for so long – to a new audience. I hope it will be a thrilling concert for everyone!

Is there a particular moment audiences should listen out for in The Atonement?

It’s a very dramatic work from start to finish, right from the opening bars of the Prelude – listeners should pay careful attention to the themes which are aired in these first 5 minutes, as they all come back throughout the whole piece to bind it together. In terms of particular moments, there’s a very impactful section towards the end of the second movement (Gethsemane) when the bass soloist (singing the part of Christ) is interrupted by the angry cries of the chorus singing “away with him”. You can’t help but get swept along in the action of the narrative. I think the ultimate moment to wait for is in the final movement, after a very poignant section for the soloists, when the piece concludes in a brilliant triumphant climax. It’s quite an ending!

You’re the Artistic Director of the Worcester Three Choirs Festival. What especially excites you about Three Choirs and why?

Well, it has to be the music! There’s something about the large scale choral repertoire we perform which is particularly exciting, and for me it’s about achieving something as a group which you can’t do alone. I think that’s often what draws people to be involved in the festival on stage, but I think it also contributes to the spectacle which draws people to come and join the audience. The buzz of hearing this music performed live, and of being part of that performance is an excitement which I hope will keep the festival alive for years to come!

Elgar was a champion of Coleridge-Taylor’s music and many audiences are discovering his music today. Which works of his would you suggest new listeners explore beyond The Atonement?

There’s so much to choose from! At my first home Festival in Worcester in 2021, we performed a rediscovered work by Coleridge-Taylor, his Solemn Prelude, written for the Worcester Festival in 1899. That was particularly exciting, as the manuscript had been lost for so long! For some more choral music, why not try his Sea Drift, for unaccompanied choir, written just a few years after The Atonement. For something different again, have a listen to his Clarinet quintet. There really is a piece for everyone in Coleridge-Taylor’s catalogue!

What three things are you listening to at the moment? 

Songs by Roger Quilter (my favourite to accompany on the piano!)

Richard Strauss’s Capriccio

The theme tunes from various Disney films (with my 2-year old son, usually at meal times!)