Even in this year of musical-anniversary overload, the Three Choirs festival's was significant. The 1913 festival – held, like this year's, in Gloucester – included the world premiere of one of Sibelius's most extraordinary achievements, Luonnotar, the composer's intensely compacted setting of the Kalevala creation myth. Sibelius offered the premiere to the Three Choirs instead of a choral work, and the soprano Aino Ackté, for whom it was written, was the soloist. Sibelius apparently didn't come to Gloucester for the premiere, and the concert didn't take place in Gloucester cathedral, it seems, because Ackté also sang the final scene of Strauss's Salome, considered far too risque to perform there.

For the centenary, though, Luonnotar was heard in the cathedral, as part of the festival's opening gala concert, with Helena Juntunen as the soloist and Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Philharmonia. Juuntunen's voice isn't ideal for Sibelius's soaring vocal writing, which really needs more sense of power in reserve than she can muster; some of her expressive emphases in the opening section seemed fussy, too. But Ashkenazy built the music in an unbroken arc, and the work's uniquely mysterious power was certainly conjured up.

He had prefaced it with Elgar, a sweeping, surging account of the overture In the South, full of big, bold effects that worked well in the cathedral acoustic. Afterwards, the Festival Chorus made its first contribution of the week in Rachmaninov's The Bells; that was less convincing, as detail was smudged by the resonance, and the textures melted into mush. But Juntunnen rose above it all in the second movement; and though tenor Paul Nilon and baritone Nathan Berg fared less well in their solos, the effect was still magnificent.