THE second week of the Autumn in Malvern festival includes one of the highlights of this year's programme, the concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Kazuki Yamada, principal conductor of the famous Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, will be conducting

the orchestra at the University of Worcester Arena in Hylton Road, Worcester, on Sunday afternoon, October 1.

The University of Worcester and the Autumn in Malvern Festival have designed the concert especially for families.

Festival director Peter Smith said: "The programme includes Benjamin Britten's Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra, Max Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto, with the brilliant youthful soloist Hyeyoon Park, and concludes with Dvorak's New World Symphony, which is full of marvellous and memorable tunes."

The Worcester location of the concert is especially appropriate for the Dvorak performance, as it was at the 1884 Three Choirs Festival that the composer conducted his Stabat Mater as part of the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Worcester Cathedral.

The same evening, at the now-vanished public hall in the Cornmarket, he conducted his Symphony in D major, with Edward Elgar playing the violin in the orchestra.

Two exhibitions start at the gallery in Malvern library on Tuesday, October 3, as part of the central Malvern festival arts trail.

One features the work of Malvern-based Val Pitchford, whose abstract works are held in collections in Britain, Europe and America.

This exhibition, Small, Smaller and Smallest, showcases works ranging from abstract to fairly representational.

The other features original water colours by Birmingham painter John Melville, known as one of the artists who developed the surrealist movement in the UK. This exhibition shows Melville in a much more conventional mode.

And the same day, a further exhibition opens in Great Malvern Priory, showcasing rarely-seen Victorian paintings from the archives of Malvern Library.