WORCESTER is hosting a festival to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of its most famous son.

The event, which runs from May 30 to June 7, will feature fine performances of Sir Edward Elgar's famous works, but perhaps the highlight will be the Gala Birthday Concert, featuring the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, lead by James Clark, Worcester's Elgar Chorale, world famous cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and more.

Conducted by Donald Hunt, the programme will include the famous Pomp and Circumstance March No 4 in G.

This march was finished almost exactly 100 years ago. Dedicated to GR Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral, it was first performed under Sir Henry Wood on August 24, 1907, when the audience responded with wild enthusiasm.

The Festival Anthem: Give Unto The Lord will also be performed. With the Three Choirs Festival of 1914 in the planning stage, the cathedral organist, Sir Ivor Atkins, pleaded with Elgar to complete the Apostles trilogy, allowing Worcester the first performance, but Elgar refused, saying that the fee offered would be "the only return for a whole year's work".

However, he did respond favourably to a request from Sir George Martin, organist of St Paul's Cathedral, for an anthem for the 200th anniversary Festival of the Sons of the Clergy to be held in the cathedral on April 30, 1914.

Elgar's Concerto in E minor for Cello and Orchestra, or the Cello Concerto, will also feature. Composed in 1918-19, it is Elgar's last major work. Its prevailing mood is sad and autumnal, reflecting Elgar's disillusion during the last years of the First World War, so eloquently expressed in a letter he wrote in 1917: "Everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet is far away - never to return."

It has become one of his best-loved works and received its first performance at the Queen's Hall on October 27, 1919. Rarely has music conveyed such despair.

One of the turning points in Elgar's career was the composition and first performance of the Enigma Variations (also due to feature), conducted by Dr Hans Richter in London on June 19, 1899. Elgar rewrote the ending which, together with other revisions, was first heard under the composer's baton at the Worcester Festival of 1899. This was the finished article that is revered today. The ending could not have been more majestic: an opulent conclusion to one of the great works in the orchestral repertoire. Elgar pointedly wrote at the end of his score: "Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art of ending."

Elgar was made Master of the King's Music in 1924 but had been the nation's unofficial composer for state occasions for some time. Among the works he produced in this role is the Coronation Ode, which will also be performed.

The old-fashioned idea of Elgar as a of tub-thumping jingoistic composer is totally contradicted by this work, a large part of which is subdued and often prayerful.

By Donald Hunt