26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Powys County Times
Welshpool hosts Montgomeryshire County Music Festival
For the first time in more than 100 years, the Montgomeryshire County Music Festival (MCMF) choir staged its 2025 annual concert in Welshpool.
Over the past decades, the Montgomeryshire County Music Festival concerts have been held in Newtown, with the venue being just infrequently located in Llanidloes. But this year it was Welshpool's Methodist Chapel that hosted the annual event on Saturday, May 10.
Under the baton of resident musical director Patrick Larley, who was conducting the choir for the 15th year in succession, the 56 Montgomeryshire-based choristers were joined by mezzo soprano Samantha Lewis, soprano Sarah-Ann Cromwell, tenor William Smith and baritone Ben Watkins.
The original 1921 MCMF choral society included more than 1,000 voices from 19 north Powys communities, but today it has whittled itself down to two separate area branches: Welshpool and Llanidloes.
True to its century-long reputation of staging quality performances of world-renowned choral masterpieces, two major works - Antonín Dvořák's celebrated Romantic period Mass in D Major (Op.86) and Karl Jenkins ' Sacred Songs collection - were this year performed in front of packed-out audiences.
The evening's musical accompaniment was provided by the highly acclaimed local freelance accompanist and repetiteur Aeron Preston; who masterfully supplied the organ accompaniment for the Dvořák's Mass in the first part, and the equally atmospheric and adept accompaniment on the grand piano, for Jenkins' Sacred Songs in the second part, of the concert.
A spokesperson for MCMF said: 'The appreciative final applause confirmed that an exceptionally splendid musical evening had been experienced by everyone present.
