As far as I am aware, all this week's classical music activity is centred around the Three Choirs Festival.
Today begins in Worcester's charming and quirky Huntingdon Hall, where the Hagley-based pianist Mark Bebbington, now gaining much international admiration for his recordings as well as his live performances, plays a recital of Ravel's Miroirs and sonatas by Prokofiev and Liszt (11am).
Though Worcester is the festival's base this year, various events are taking place further out from the epicentre, such as this afternoon's concert in Tewkesbury Abbey from the Stratford-based Orchestra of the Swan (2.30pm).
David Curtis conducts a programme of Elgar, Finzi, Tippett and Britten, with David le Page violin soloist in Vaughan Williams' muchloved The Lark Ascending. The only non-English work on the menu is Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.
Then tonight all the excitement will be in Worcester Cathedral, when the Festival Chorus and CBSO give the first performance in modern times of Elgar's arrangement for choir and orchestra of "The Holly and the Ivy", unheard since its premiere at Worcester Philharmonic Society on January 7 1899, and only rediscovered at the back of a bricabrac shop in Bewdley at Christmastime 1970.
A combination of well-known (Introduction and Allegro for Strings) and less well-known Elgar (Psalm 29 "Give unto the Lord" and Psalm 48 "Great is the Lord") makes up much of the rest of conductor Andrew Nethsingha's programme, which also includes the substantial Creation Canticles by Festival director and Worcester Cathedral organist Adrian Lucas (7.45pm).
An evening of religious emotionalism is completed by a late-night performance in the Cathedral of Rachmaninov's headily devotional Vespers, subtitled All Night Vigil.
Hearing this always provides an unforgettable experience, and tonight's account should be especially moving in the grandeur of this setting. Kings Singer and one-time Ex Cathedra member Nigel Short directs the acclaimed vocal group Tenebrae - suitable name for a performance in the Cathedral gloaming (10.30pm).
Meanwhile, at the King's School Theatre in Severn Street, not too far from the Cathedral, the versatile Armonico Consort gives the first of a run of performances of Purcell's opera The Fairy Queen. Puppetry, dance and circus also feature in this theatrical experience, which is repeated tomorrow and Saturday (7.45pm).
Tomorrow morning Festivalhoppers can find themselves at Hartlebury Castle for a history of Worcester given in words and music by the local vocal group Dec-verse (11am), going on to Pershore Abbey for an afternoon programme of "Gunpowder, Treason and Plot", when The Cardinall's Musick marks the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot (2.30pm). At the same time the Barkham Harp Quartet demonstrate their instruments and their skills in a wide-ranging programme at Huntingdon Hall.
Back at Worcester Cathedral base, Adrian Lucas conducts festival forces and the CBSO in Britten's War Requiem. The soloists are soprano Elena Prokina (who made such an impression in Sunday's performance of Rachmaninov'sThe Bells, Worcester-born tenor John Mark Ainsley and the remarkable young baritone James Rutherford (7.45pm).
The concert is sponsored by Chris Tarrant in memory of his father Major Basil Tarrant MC, who died earlier this year.
As this splendid week winds down, the legendary choral conductor Sir David Willcocks returns to the Cathedral where he was such a well-respected organist and choirmaster to preside over a "Bring and Sing" attack on Handel's Messiah on Saturday. The rehearsal runs from 2pm to 5pm, with the performance beginning at 7.45pm.
The orchestra accompanying this event is the Malvern-based English Symphony Orchestra, and it is the ESO which wraps up proceedings on Sunday in the Cathedral with a programme carrying the title which would win the Morley Prize for the most unoriginal labelling ever imagined: "Music for a Summer Evening" ("Summer's" would be even more cringe-making).
Adrian Partington conducts a pleasant sequence of orchestral favourites, ending with Mendelssohn's exhilarating Italian Symphony, and BBC1 favourite Kay Alexander is the presenter (7.45pm).
Details of all these Festival events are available on 01905 610538, or www.3choirs.org. Meanwhile Hereford beckons in 2006, and Gloucester the year after, before a return to Worcester in 2008.
