Details
Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd
South Bank
London
SE1 8XX
England
Programme
Charles Hubert Hastings Parry – I Was Glad
Ottorino Respighi – The Pines of Rome
Maurice Ravel – Daphnis et ChloĆ©, Suite no.2
~ Interval ~
William Walton – Belshazzar's Feast
Performers
Ashley Riches – baritone
Ivor Setterfield – Conductor
Barts Choir
Philharmonia Orchestra
Programme Note
Since its triumphant premiere at the 1931 Leeds Festival, Walton’sBelshazzar’s Feast has been considered one of the great modern British choral works, and Walton one of Britain's leading composers.
Large orchestra, offstage brass, organ and double choir paint a vivid picture of the Hebrew exiles and the decadence and ultimate fall of the Babylonian Empire.
Ravel's Daphnis & Chloe Suite No.2 and Respighi's The Pines of Rome similarly use their brilliant orchestral palettes to conjure up the worlds of Greek myth and ancient Rome – hold onto your seats as the legions march up the Appian Way at the end.
The grandeur of a British state occasion is evoked by the dramatic opening fanfares of I Was Glad by Parry (the centenary of whose death falls in 2018), which inaugurated every 20th century Coronation.