Delights at Hereford

If neither as rose-red as Petra, nor quite as old as time,the sturdily elegant pile of Hereford Cathedral glowed a pleasant pink every balmy summer evening last week as we, the Three Choirs Festival faithful, poured out on to its parched lawns, Daily we enjoyed the usual mixture of ancient and modern, sacred and secular, in an atmosphere that is unique.

Some things belong to it, of course, as, for example, Elgar's Cello Concerto. Beautifully played by Julian Lloyd Webber and the RPO under Donald Hunt, with every Elgarian rallentando and pause in place, it sounded like an emanation of the building itself.

Felix Aprahamian