" Powerful performance of Walton work
| WHEN William Walton
‘wrote Belshazzar’s Feast
he wrote in a far more
direct and powerful way
about the events than his
classical forebears in
| their oratorios, but then
he did choose one of the
Bible’s more colourful
happenings.
_
The
work
needs
thrust,
| power and an overall feeling of
| size in the Berlioz mould and
| this it received from
a perfor. mance last Saturday by Guild| ford Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Guildford Phitharmonic Choir, performing in the
Civic Hall.
_
" In a programme of British
‘music it was unfortunate that
Vernon Handley was unable to
conduct the concert due to a
kidney infection. Apart from
the obvious feelings which the
audience had for the health of
a well-loved musician, there
was also a pretty morbid feeling among members of the
choir, many of whom did not
know of the forthcoming .
with all the necessary force
and, as if they had discovered
that, yes, they could indeed hit
this work with the necessary
verve, they unburied their
heads from their scores and
produced music which was well
projected, well balanced between the voices and never
sounded, unlike other occachange of conductor until they
sions, as though it was a futile
-saw Brian Wright on the podibattle between the choir and
um for Saturday’s final re- - the orchestra. The Praise ye...
hearsal. He being the fourth’ section was a rich and rhythconductor they had faced in - mically alive sound and the
the inadequate time scheduled
work’s one reflective passage,
for preparing this tricky Waljust before the momentous
ton music, there was an underfinal impressive dash, was a
standable lack of security
smooth and well shaped choral
which lasted from a steady but
line. It was good to hear this
unspectacular first Thus spake
choir realise its potential.
Isiah until the blockbusting
Brian Wright controlled his
Yea, drank from the sacred
huge forces with a fine feeling
vessels. This latter line arrived
for the sheer weight of the
work. He had, in his baritone
soloist Brian Rayner Cook, a
fierce, almost snarling at times,
interpreter who really brought
his narrative to life in a dramatic, telling fashion.
As for the orchestra, they
revelled in this orgy of notes
(in fact, one or two snare drum
trumpet bars were less than
impeccably controlled), producing the type of virility intended by Walton.
Earlier, Wright conducted
the Sea Interludes from Britten’s Peter Grimes. He
achieved the tautness and textural clarity but sometimes at
the expense of the eerie, haunting atmosphere which should
pervade the Dawn and Moonlight interludes.
In William Mathias’s Horn
Concerto the composer himself
conducted. It is"a piece written
for a festival and, for the
greater part of its length, exercises the technical skills of the
soloist — in this case the proficient Hugh Potts — in his ability to play tricky rhythms and
at speed with more than a degree of tongue twisting
involved.
Although a comparatively
light work, it suddenly stops
and takes a serious look at
itself in a nocturnal third
movement in which soloist
Potts meandered gently along a
smooth, elegaic path, accom-
panied discreetly by the upper
strings while cellos and timpa-
ni provided an almost perpet-
ual grumbling murmur — a
most effective combination of
‘sounds.
Robert Benjafield