Elgar’s great choral work, perhaps the finest composed in Britain since Handel, has now had four performances at the Proms this century, each with a different conductor and trio of soloists. The latest, in a crammed Albert Hall, was given by the London Philharmonic conducted by Edward Gardner, with Allan Clayton, Jamie Barton and James Platt as the soloists and the combined choirs of the Hallé and the London Philharmonic.
The concert always promised to be one of the highlights of the current season, and Gardner’s account, launched with a measured treatment of the prelude, and reserving its moments of greatest power for the set pieces of the second part, generally did not disappoint. The choral sound from in excess of 250 voices was majestic, even if with that number of singers the trickier corners of the Demons’ Chorus were not ideally nimble; the hush of the final pages was beautifully controlled and, like the rest of the performance, was never pushed or overplayed by Gardner.
