Today is the last day of the Three Choirs Festival and we have only scratched the surface on the number of events that are presented. I didn’t want to give you the impression that the only events I wrote about are the only ones that happened — quite to the contrary! I just counted up the number of events that are happening this week, and I got 60! I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to have the stamina to take in everything.

Yesterday we had a leisurely morning before driving to Cirencester, the site of the Stölzel Passion. I cannot brag enough about Joan Ishibashi’s careful driving on the left, navigating all the roundabouts with GPS, and not getting us into any accidents!

We parked the car near the city centre and found Sam & Jak, a restaurant which got good reviews. I ordered the tortellini with squash and zucchini which tasted absolutely delicious to me, especially after having to suck on cough drops most of my time in Gloucester. It turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve had here.

The Parish Church of Cirencester was where the Stölzel Passion was held, and in my opinion, it sounded perfectly fine… but compared to Bach, it wasn’t in the same league. It had arias, recitatives, and choruses like any other Baroque cantata, and it was the same period orchestra which had played the St. John. The chorus was only two quartets (8 people) so the balance between the chorus and orchestra was perfect. Unfortunately we had to leave at intermission because we dared not park longer than we had paid. We put in the maximum — 3 hours, but if you are even one minute late, you’ll be fined! And you cannot “put more money in” — you have to move the car to another lot.

One thing I loved in this church was that there was a model of the building and grounds all made in Legos! They were protected in a glass case, so photos were hard to take without some glare.

In the evening we returned to Gloucester Cathedral for a program which began with Ralph Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs and the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, this time the original instrumental version. You may have noticed that there’s been a lot of Ralph Vaughan Williams works in this Three Choirs Festival, I’m ashamed to admit that I only realized a couple of days ago it’s the 150th anniversary of his birthday!

The second half of the program was a 38-minute piece called “The Age of Aspiration,” composed by Graham Fitkin which had a curious mix of a countertenor soloist, a narrator, chorus and orchestra with a text about the Industrial Revolution. It started and ended with the choir audibly inhaling and exhaling, breathing in and breathing out. Between the beginning and the ending, many musical ideas were presented, mostly simultaneously so that it was impossible to hear the narrator and countertenor, because the choir and orchestra drowned them out. Maybe this was intentional?! Meanwhile the choir was singing words such as “Carbon dioxide. Nitrogen oxide. Alderney cows’ breath.”

This morning there was a small coffee hour with some of the American Friends of the Three Choirs Festival. I’m happy to say we booked our hotel for Worcester for next year’s Three Choirs Festival, in spite of getting a message from Booking.com saying “98% of properties are booked for your dates!”

As Rich Arenschieldt, American Friends president said this morning, “It’s the music which brings us here; but it’s the people who bring us back!”

We took in one last concert before driving back to London: a very enjoyable early music concert by the Linarol Consort of Viols, Héloise Bernard and James Gilchrist, soloists. After all the bombastic music of the past week, it was a welcome relief to hear more intimate music of Josquin Desprez, Pierre de la Rue, Ludwig Senfl and Anonymous!

It’s been a fantastic trip — a long trip home tomorrow!