Our first concert, on the evening of the first day, contained two choral items in the first half.
‘O how delicious are the grapes’ (Blake) Rehearsal refreshments in Gloucester
I’m not sure how I’ve managed to avoid Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas. Actually, I can work out why – it’s because it’s a complex work to put on with three choirs, a large orchestra and two soloists (one of whom has to sing very little to earn his fee. Ours were Roderick Williams and Ruairi Bowen). So it is rarely performed (its only appearance at the Proms wasn’t till 2015) and recordings don’t do it justice for reasons that will become clear.
‘Babylon the great is fallen’ From the Angers Apocalypse tapestries. [PMRMaeyaert, CC BY-SA 4.0
It has that general air of weirdness that attaches to any artistic production based on the Book of Revelation. The text is made more generic (for example by removing the name of Jesus from the closing ‘Even so, come Lord’) and slightly expanded by quoting from other passages such as the vision of Isaiah.
No one does polychoral like Vaughan Williams, and he seems to have gone in for it especially in the early 1920s; as well as Sancta Civitas, the Mass in G minor and the anthem Lord, Thou hast been our refuge date from this time. The main chorus (often in 8 parts) from to time spawns a semi-chorus, and in addition to that there is a choir of upper voices located elsewhere. The intersections of all of these allow for some spectacular effects including bitonality.
This was definitely my favourite of all the pieces I performed in the Festival, but the concert was not over as the second half contained Elgar’s violin concerto, played by Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay from our resident orchestra, the Philharomonia. From the choir setting you don’t get the best balance and I was not very familiar with this piece (one of the longest violin concertos in the standard repertoire at nearly an hour), and also generally in danger of getting Elgared out, but I thought he did it justice.
Review:
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