The Apostles – relatively rarely done because of the number of soloists required – was missing piece needed to complete my performances of the three great choral works by Elgar.
I remarked before that The Kingdom will do its best to convince you that God is an Englishman, but The Apostles, with its Hebrew melodies, quotations from the Talmud and shofar (we had a long trumpet rather than an actual ram’s horn) is altogether a bit more exotic. And that’s not all…
Caravaggio’s penitent Magdalen is rather more subdued than Elgar’s
An orgy scene in an oratorio by Elgar – who’d have thought it? Actually this was one of the trickier passages in the piece. Overall, despite its length, there aren’t that many showpieces for the chorus, a large part of whose role is interjections (probably because of all those soloists). Nevertheless, I would take it over The Kingdom in future. I was particularly impressed by the libretto and how well Elgar must have known his Bible to choose such appropriate texts from other parts of Scripture (and the aforementioned Talmud) to expand the Gospel narratives.
Reviews (and they were of the same concert!):
A text set in The Apostles (window, Gloucester Cathedral cloister)
Seen and Heard International
Bachtrack
So 2023 was of necessity a somewhat austerity edition of the Festival, which made it logistically easier for me, at the cost of reduced opportunities to sing. I was impressed by the standard of the choir, which I felt was higher than in the previous Festival I sang in.
Singing in 2024’s Festival will involve weighing up the repertoire against the things which I could otherwise do which got sacrificed this year.