Booking is open for this year's Presteigne Festival, which is committed to the work of living composers

This year, the Festival, which takes place from August 21 to 25, is honoured to welcome Jamaican-born musician Eleanor Alberga as composer-in-residence. 

The programme features a compelling selection of newly commissioned works by a distinguished group of British composers, including Alberga herself, Kerensa Briggs, James Frances Brown, Martin Butler, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Edward Gregson, Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Tayla-Leigh Payne, Huw Watkins, James B Wilson and Derri Joseph Lewis, in conjunction with the 2025 Royal Philharmonic Society composer’s programme.

In addition to newly commissioned works, the Festival presents music by several of today’s foremost living composers, including Thomas Adès, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Cecilia McDowall, Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, Mark Simpson and Judith Weir. 

Their works will be heard alongside masterpieces by J S Bach, Beethoven, Britten, Chopin, Copland, Mahler, Mozart, Piazzolla, Schubert and Stravinsky. 

A particular highlight of the 2025 Festival is a special focus on the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the influential Russian composer’s death.

In addition to the much-anticipated Welsh premiere of Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s new music theatre work, Scenes from Under Milk Wood, and no fewer than 13 exciting concerts held at historic church venues in Presteigne, Discoed, Bleddfa, Leintwardine and Leominster.

Presteigne’s event-packed Festival also offers a wide-ranging programme of cultural events – art exhibitions, film screenings, poetry readings and insightful talks from Stephen Johnson, Gavin Plumley and Peter Wakelin – while ‘Presteigne Open Studios’ is presented in collaboration with local artists and makers; it provides an opportunity for Festival visitors to experience the town’s considerable creative talent at work.

The 2025 Presteigne Festival promises an extraordinary line-up of world-class artists, featuring the hugely popular Leonore Piano Trio, the exciting Euro-American Goethe Quartet and specialist music theatre performers Nova Music Opera. 

Audiences can look forward to captivating performances from the Erda Ensemble, clarinettist Robert Plane, mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons, violinists Emma Roijackers and Laura Rickard, baritone Thomas Humphreys, soprano Elinor Rolfe Johnson and pianist Timothy End. 

The Bath Camerata appears as choir-in-residence, whilst the ever-popular Presteigne Festival Orchestra will again bring its signature brilliance to the Festival.

Online and telephone booking is open at presteignefestival.com or  01544 267800

An updated, digital version of the Festival Brochure can be accessed via

https://presteignefestival.com/events/presteigne-festival-2025/