Cantores Olicanae, St Margaret’s Church, Ilkley on Saturday, November 15, 2014 THIS programme had a strong local flavour given that Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Towards the Unknown Region was premiered at the 1907 Leeds Triennial Musical Festival and both Elgar and Parry had strong links with these great choral meetings of yesteryear.

RVW composed his exhilarating piece for the awesome 300-strong Festival Chorus. It is however just as potent when sung by a smaller body of singers trained to the high standard of Cantores under their conductor Jonathan Brigg. Following a couple of hesitant entries, the 42 well-blended voices soon got into their stride and infused Walt Whitman’s text with a sense of immediacy.

The rich sonorities of the St Margaret’s organ played by Christopher Rathbone made the absence of a full orchestra barely noticeable. The versatile Mr Brigg then put down his baton to accompany soprano Susan Young at the piano. Young had selected six songs by Parry and Frank Bridge beginning with Parry’s Weep You No More, Sad Fountains which she sang with warmth and humanity. This artist’s gift for colouring words was particularly gratifying in the Bridge songs O, That It Were So, and Golden Hair supported by Brigg’s delicately shaded and rippling accompaniment.

York-based Christopher Leedham has composed a setting of verses from the Book of Proverbs Happy The Man That Findeth Wisdom. This short unaccompanied movement was delivered by Cantores with secure intonation and crystal-clear diction. The jingoistic character of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 4 formed a contrasting precursor to his underrated choral work The Spirit of England. Elgar himself conducted the premiere of Parts 2 and 3 in Leeds Town Hall on May 3, 1916, and the second performance of the complete work in the Town Hall in November 1917. The composer dedicated his piece “to the memory of our glorious men, with a special thought for the Worcestershire Regiment”. Although the misleading title summons up images of patriotism and imperialistic pomp, this work is effectively an elegy. Laurence Binyon’s poems The Fourth of August, To Women, and For the Fallen inspired Elgar to compose with restraint a score that captures the desolation and sadness of war without being tearfully emotional. Cantores’ performance with organist Christopher Rathbone and conducted by Jonathan Brigg came across with great conviction. Soloist Susan Young and the chorus softly projected the immortal words “At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them” The final section “As the stars shall be bright when we are dust....” built up to a huge crescendo before dying away to a lovely pianissimo on the concluding line “To the end, to the end they remain.”

by Geoffrey Mogridge