Royal Festival Hall, London
It is hard to explain why The Dream of Gerontius manages to have such a powerful effect on someone who rejects every particle of the religious impulses that nourish it. Equally, it's impossible to predict when a performance of Elgar's choral masterpiece is going to metamorphose from being just another concert into something uniquely memorable, in which soloists, chorus, orchestra and conductor conspire to mug you emotionally in ways that are utterly unexpected.
This was one of the occasions when that chemistry was exactly right ? as good as any live account of the work I've heard in years. The singing of the London Philharmonic Chorus, with the Choir of Clare College Cambridge forming the semi-chorus, was full-blooded and intense, the playing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra utterly secure. The soloists were outstanding. Paul Groves sings the part of Gerontius more convincingly than any other tenor today, his control and range of colour and dynamic fitting Elgar's vocal lines like a glove, while Christine Rice's Angel had the perfect combination of warmth and compassion. The bass Neal Davies, a late replacement for Alistair Miles, was in wonderful voice, inspiring in the first part, magnificently imploring in the second.
There were details of Edward Gardner's conducting that could be questioned: an exaggerated slowing down in the prelude before the grand statement of the Go Forth tune; an underplaying of the theatricality of parts of the great Praise to the Holiest chorus; the pacing of Gerontius's meeting of God and his subsequent Take Me Away solo lacking coherency. But alongside the vivid detail Gardner drew from the score elsewhere, and the blazing certainty with which he steered the whole performance, they became irrelevant.
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