SYMPHONY CONCERT REVIEW. Thursday, 10 April, 2025. At The Cape Town City Hall. CPO, National Youth Choir of Great Britain and Fezeka High School Choir conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, soloist William Berger; Parry: “I was glad”; Traditional, arranged Grainger: Irish Tune from County Derry; Tallis, arranged Chilcott: Canon; Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Walton: “Belshazzar’s Feast”. DEON IRISH reviews.
It is more than three decades since Walton’s splendid choral drama, “Belshazzar’s Feast” was last performed in this venue. The impetus for this performance was the British Council’s sponsorship of a tour to the Western Cape by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, a chorus in excess of one hundred singers between the ages of 18 and 25 years.
Their Principal Conductor is Nicholas Chalmers (who happens to have a South African connection through his father and who has been a frequent visitor to the country since his youth), whose musical background as a choirboy and appointment to organist post in several notable choral establishments (including St Paul’s Cathedral) might almost be thought to have made the choice of works in the first half of this programme something of a foregone conclusion.
A firm favourite of choirs
The programme started with what is undoubtedly a firm favourite of choirs throughout the English-speaking world – and, increasingly, continental Europe, too. It has everything: a text from one of the best-known psalms; a rousing organ part that uses the instrument to maximum advantage; superb melody and assured harmonization; and choral writing (for double choir) that choristers love singing, since even its challenges (and there are many) never tax the singers with unmannerly or unmusical demands.
It was, of course, employed for the entrance of the Royal couple at the fairly recent coronation in Westminster Abbey – replete with the “Vivats” which were, appropriately, omitted on this occasion. It is cunningly written and this cut passes without anyone not familiar with the work being any the wiser.
This was a marvellous account. The chorus, who were joined by the Fezeka High School Choir in this performance, clearly revelled in the piece; Grant Brasler managed to get the aging Norman & Beard to recapture something of its Edwardian grandeur and it was a real treat hearing the full orchestral version. And what a lovely experience for the Fezeka scholars to revel in this massive sound! I have little doubt it will prove to be a formative experience for many of them.
“Danny Boy”
We then had one of Grainger’s five settings of the traditional Irish folk song, “Danny Boy”, the one featuring horns and string orchestra, with added chorus. Pleasant listening for what was essentially a filler.
There followed another arrangement: this time of Tallis’s seminal Canon – seminal because of the canonic hymn tune’s status as one of the formative works of the Anglican liturgical music tradition – by Bob Chilcott. Its historical role was sensitively observed in an arrangement which , whilst pleasing, remains ultimately somewhat unimaginative.
“Unimaginative” would be the very last adjective to be applied to Vaughan Williams’s great essay on Tudor late-Renaissance compositional art. It is unquestionably one of the finest works of the strings-only orchestral repertoire; the programme’s description of it as possessing a “timeless, ethereal beauty” is entirely accurate, yet does not fully capture the extraordinary status of the writing in drawing the listener into an almost visceral appreciation of its musical architecture.
Serenity, intensity
The “Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis” was premiered at a Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral on 6 September 1910, the composer himself conducting the LSO. Clearly conceived for the resonance of that glorious Gothic edifice, the piece is written for three distinct groups of players, all placed separately in imitation of medieval antiphonal practices: the main body of strings; a smaller orchestra of nine players; and a quartet of soloists. This was to an extent achieved in this performance by placing the smaller orchestra up on the organ level behind the choir seating so that a delineation of distance and height was achieved, even if not of direction. The soloists remained in the body of the orchestra, but their very different sonic texture nevertheless achieved the desired auditory distinction. The impassioned solo viola variation of the theme in the central episode was particularly effective.
Chalmers clearly loves this work and directed it with a winning combination of serenity and intensity. The result brought to mind the description by J.A. Fuller-Maitland, the eminent English commentator: “The work … seems to lift us into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling. Throughout its course one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new… It is full of visions which have haunted the seers of all time.”
This performance well captured that innate duality: the dark, pulsing Phrygian mode of the original Tallis metrical psalm tune being subtly offset in the composer’s own answering phrase, its ambivalent semitones creating an altogether more contemporary sheen not entirely removed from Impressionism.
After interval came the great choral work for which the entire stage and choir seats was crowded with singers and players. Walton’s great success with his Viola Concerto of 1929 led to the BBC offering him a commission to write a choral work for the Leeds Festival of 1931. Walton, who had long been a close friend of the Sitwell family, turned to Sacheverell to assist him with a libretto on the subject of Belshazzar’s Feast.
Great waves of sound
Sitwell’s libretto draws on both psalms 137 and 81 and the fifth chapter of the book of Daniel in providing a taut narrative: Isaiah’s prophecy of the Babylonian captivity; the lament “By the waters of Babylon”; the preparations for the sumptuous royal feast and the arrival of Belshazzar, to an ever-intensifying chorus of praise from his courtiers. And then the sudden interruption of the feast by the spectral writing recording the king’s fate and thereafter the sudden destruction of both him and his kingdom. This is followed by the jubilant exultation of the captive Hebrews and their joyful “Alleluias”.
More than one commentator has likened the almost overbearing, expressionist orchestration to the similarly large choral works of Berlioz and, listening to the great waves of sound engendered in this performance and – in particular – the central role assigned the large complement of percussionists, the comparison is not without validity. But Walton’s harmonic palette is much removed from that of Berlioz and, in particular, his considerable experience of jazz arrangements (by which he made a living in his post-student years) gives the work a palette that is predominantly late-Romantic, although with distinctly jazz flavourings.
It is a hard – almost relentless – sing and the members of the Youth Choir can take full credit for maintaining pace and output throughout this taxing work. Sopranos were brilliant in the frequently high tessitura; tenors matched them in what might be termed a keen rather than heroic tone. That is as one expects from relatively young voices.
Full-bodied contribution of altos, basses
It is the lower voices that very often take longer to develop a full resonance and it was accordingly gratifying to experience the full-bodied contribution of altos and basses, ensuring a balanced choral contribution in even the most declamatory episodes. So, if this gratifying blend was immediately apparent in the quieter opening a capella statement of the Isaiah prophecy, it was equally present in the ebullient final chorus, as joyful an outburst as even a Handel might have penned.
William Berger was, as ever, a musically reliable baritone soloist, whose powerful voice was entirely capable of achieving the required projection against frequently unforgiving levels of accompaniment. I waited in anticipation for the dramatic kernel of the work: the account of the finger writing out the words of doom on the palace wall. Berger did not disappoint: his delivery of the narrative had a inner quality of implacable steel that could be traced all the way back to Mozart’s Commendatore. And the chorus’s great shouted outburst, repeating the word “slain”, was as musically shocking as undoubtedly intended.
Chalmers did a marvellous job holding these extended forces together throughout an enormously demanding score, replete with frequent and often sudden changes of time signature, dynamic levels, textures and vocal and instrumental combinations. He also trained the chorus and for that deserves equal admiration; it is a very hard learn and the security of the singers evidenced in this performance speaks to a great many hours of skilled tuition.
That the orchestra rose to the occasion as well as they did is a further testimony to Chalmers’ undoubted conducting abilities. I do hope we will have the pleasure of seeing him on this podium again!
What: CPO, National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Fezeka High School Choir
Conducted by: Nicholas Chalmers
Soloist: William Berger
Reviewer: Deon Irish
WS
