A Midwinter Feast: Britten, Elgar & Walton

A Midwinter Feast: Britten, Elgar & Walton transports Melbourne’s music lovers to a grand, cold‑weather banquet of sound. Under the baton of Chief Conductor Jaime Martín, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the MSO Chorus perform three emblematic works of England, each as distinct and vivid as the others. The evening opens with Benjamin Britten’s *A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra*, opus 34, a sparkling, educational piece originally penned for a 1946 film accompaniment and famously featured in the Oscar–nominated *Moonrise Kingdom*. The orchestra’s bright families of instruments are invited to sing, each section gracing the stage with its own virtuosity, and the music blooms into an eagerly welcoming opener that instantly invites the audience into the concert’s heart. Next, the stage turns to the cello’s soaring voice in Edward Elgar’s *Cello Concerto*. Played by the brilliant Li‑Wei Qin, the opening phrase commands the room with striking immediacy, and his performance weaves through the concerto’s sweeping, melancholic moods that mirror the elder composer’s own contemplations. The cello’s single, soaring lines are framed by the orchestra’s full harmonic colors, creating a heartrending dialogue that touches the very soul of the winter night. The concert culminates with William Walton’s monumental *Belshazzar’s Feast*, a dramatic cantata written for double chorus, baritone solo, organ, and an enormous orchestra, with an added audacious touch of off‑stage brass—a historic foreshadowing of the “big brass band” jab that Sir Thomas Beecham made in the work’s premiere. Walton’s triumphal “Babylonian banquet” fills the hall with thunderous celebration, complete with the eponymous Belshazzar himself. This finale electrifies the audience, leaving them standing in the awe of an immense, glorious climax that, as the old critic noted, “always brings the house down.” Grab your tickets and prepare to experience a midwinter musical banquet that spans artists of brilliance, from the inviting orchestral playground of Britten to Elgar’s deep cello lyricism, concluding in Walton’s cinematic, thunderous feast that will respectingly carry the applause in its wake.