Gerontius Dream Team

The Dream of Gerontius may have been Birmingham Music Festival’s biggest flop when it was first staged in 1900, but last night’s Heavenly rendition at Bradford Grammar School brought everyone a little closer to their maker, including the Old Man himself!

Elgar’s finest choral composition – damn all ye that call it an oratorio – is noted for being harder to control than a barrel of snakes covered in Swarfega.

But then again, Thomas Leech, Conductor of the Bradford Festival Choral Society, must also be a graduate of the Royal Society of Mud Wrestlers, and more versed in getting to grips with slippery critters than Crocodile Dundee in a challenge match?

With a massed choir of well over 100 voices, Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra’s 60+ musicians and three soloists, there was barely room for the raffle prize table, let alone the seller, as well as a packed house of enthusiasts!

In the late 1800’s Elgar took on the near impossible task of setting Cardinal Newman’s mammoth poem of the same name to music, something that not even the great Dvořák would contemplate.

It had a faltering start because it was musically complex, the singers largely amateur, the chorus master snuffed it and the rest, as they say, is history. But, thankfully, The Dream of Gerontius lived to see another day due to its successes outside England’s green and pleasant lands.

Now, it is an established choral work in the UK if less so outside these fair shores but, one thing is for sure, it is no less tricky than it was in 1900 only the choirs, the soloists and the conductor know that they are about to be visited by a prize fighter and are ready and rehearsed.

Bradford Festival Choral has been hard at work for weeks bringing this mammoth performance to fruition, and is to be applauded for its near faultless delivery.

Tenor Peter Davoren, as Gerontius, had soul and was a strong musical anchor to mezzo-soprano Hannah Mason as The Angel and Bass, Keel Watson as The Priest and The Angel of the Agony.

But my real praise has to be for those behind them, the massed choir and the monstrously big orchestra which would phase a lesser conductor than Thomas Leech. Controlling an orchestra is one thing, a choir another, but both? Nice one Tom lad, as the say in Slowit, or is it slaythwaite?

This was a performance of contrasts, the beautiful chanted litany of the chorus, the silence that follows Gerontius’ death and the powerful orchestral crescendo as Everyman is sent on his way.

Newman was a great theologian and his poem attracted huge controversy from both Catholics and Protestants alike because of its doctrinal challenges, however, most of those have been forgotten and softened by time and Christian unity.

Last night there were moments of power and passion as the fine orchestra and choir created a great sense of finality in the room, evoking feelings that there must be something better and that we are all destined for a far bigger journey than the one we are currently on.

All the men were dressed in black and white but, thankfully, there wasn’t a dog collar in sight, and the three habit-clad monks in the audience, currently in residence in Bradford, passed up the opportunity for an Elgar style battle in the name of doctrinal supremacy.

The performance certainly packed a punch, on this occasion it was artistic rather than pugilistic! Praise the Lord!

Get yourself along to the Society’s A Yorkshire Christmas in the Grammar School’s Price Hall on Saturday 16th December, 6pm. You won’t be disappointed and you get to join in!