The Music Makers * * * *
at Birmingham Town Hall
Review by Christopher Morley

CBSO music director-elect Andris Nelsons may have been the first to conduct the orchestra in the restored, refurbished Town Hall, but that was a private performance designed to check the acoustics of the venue.

It was fitting, then, that Monday's first public outing for the CBSO in its old home was conducted by Simon Halsey, the CBS Chorus director who will have worked alongside three principal conductors by the time Nelsons takes up the mantle next September.

It was fitting, too, that the major work in the programme should have been the last choral commission premiered at the Town Hall in 1912, before the First World War brought an end to Triennial Festivals.

Elgar's The Music Makers both sums up the era and speaks to generations beyond. His treatment of the text is imaginative, retrospective yet visionary, and the amazing sound of the CBS Chorus, always fabulously projected wherever they perform (including Symphony Hall), but here with spine-tingling clarity of diction, delivered it with immediacy and involvement.

Jane Irwin was the mezzo soloist, her resourcefully expressive timbres recalling the great Janet Baker's interpretation of this work whose reputation grows deservedly.

The concert began with Parry's I was glad, the choral lustre threatening to overwhelm the CBSO. But this acoustic, so spectacularly improved, affords the orchestra a full, expansive, neat and clear sound (lower strings never emerged so well here before).

Another adroit link with the old festivals came with the Violin Concerto of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (he of the Hiawatha which had upstaged Elgar's Gerontius in 1900 here).

Anthony Marwood was the sweet-toned soloist in this attractive but weakly-structured piece, and Michael Seal conducted with alert sympathy.
* Concert is broadcast tomorrow (Thursday) on BBC Radio 3 (7pm).