|
An Absolute Triumph
RODERIC DUNNETT listens enraptured to
Ireland and Smyth at the opening night
of the 2018 Three Choirs Festival
'People will stay away, unless you give them repertoire they know, or know about.' How wrong one can be. The opening concert of this year's Three Choirs Festival proved what courage and daring can achieve.
For it, Artistic Director Geraint Bowen and his bold Hereford committee opted for, not Elgar or Vaughan Williams, but John Ireland — his marvellous and profoundly affecting short cantata These Things Shall Be, heard at the Festival only once before (in 1979); and then the Mass in D by Dame Ethel Smyth...
Copyright © 30 July 2018
Roderic Dunnett,
Coventry UK
|
