Worcester Festival Choral Society

GERONTIUS is one of those works which you might never tire of, yet I wasn’t quite sure before this concert whether it would be a good idea to perform the piece again so soon after the Three Choirs performance.
But a listener may well find things in it that he or she doesn’t appreciate without repeated hearings so it makes it fresh every time. This is surely what partly defines it as great choral music. As usual, there were passages where the music makes your hair stand on end such as in 'Praise to the Holiest' from the chorus and the well-known 'Take me away' from the soul.
The Chameleon Arts Orchestra, Worcester Festival Choral Society and soloists were very well-balanced and it is this that makes it flow so easily and be so moving.
In the first half, I found Gerontius’s voice (with Tenor Adrian Thompson) rather forceful. There were more subtle nuances in the voice of the Priest, but all soloists including Gerontius, the Angel (Mezzo Catherine King) and the Priest (Bass-Baritone) were stirring in Part Two, making this, the 150th Anniversary Concert another memorable occasion.

Elgar’s Sea Pictures in the first half used Catherine King’s special low register voice to enhance the poetry of the songs. Her higher register notes created goose pimples on my skin. Elgar’s usual habit of creating sudden increases in volume followed by decreases was in the work too and this also seemed to affect its audience.

Charles Villiers Stanford’s Songs of the Fleet was creditable more than thrilling, mostly to do with Stanford’s composition and not the performers …….. What was likeable and laudable, however, was the way William Clements’s voice was very audible with clear words and moving sentiments.

Thunderous herald to anniversary celebrations

This concert was a glorious fusion of spiritual imaginations spanning half a century and featuring two of the greatest composers of the modern age. It was something else, too – the marriage of the boundless enthusiasm of the county’s choral singers and the skills of some of Britain’s top musicians.

Conducted by the irrepressible Adrian Lucas, the night began with Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss… Soprano Naomi Harvey quickly asserted her authority in these pieces…a brief interlude was summarily brought to an end by a veritable tidal wave of sound announced by the opening chords of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony. And it was here that the members of the Choral Society proved their worth as they found themselves matched with the Chameleon Arts Orchestra, an ensemble of freelancers who have played with the best in the land. Crashing timpani and cymbals carry this unstoppable surge, the woodwind and strings shrieking and moaning like the myriad lost souls of the sea. And all the time, Miss Harvey appears as some latter-day Britannia, her eloquent soprano matched by the rich baritone of fellow soloist Paul Carey Jones.