"Thou art weighed in the balance... and found wanting..."

This is the point (just before "SLAIN!") at which we started Belshazzar yesterday, and I must admit I thought it was possibly an ominous place! But as it turned out it wasn't too bad at all, and there were places that were incredibly thrilling by the time we came to the performance. This line was one of them, actually, as was the very beginning. The men just sounded FANTASTIC. True, there may have been a few wrong notes on "howl ye", but on the whole the harmony was pretty close to what it should have been, and the sound was wonderful.

EDIT: Because there seem to be loads of people searching for the title phrase and ending up here, I should clarify that it's a quote from the Bible, from the book of Daniel (chapter 5). Belshazzar, king of Babylon, has a feast during which all sorts of false gods are worshipped. During this, a hand appears, writing on the wall words that Daniel explains means "thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting". And that night Belshazzar is killed. ("Slain!") There is a famous musical version of this called "Belshazzar's Feast" by William Walton, and that's the Belshazzar that this post refers to.

The end of the "trumpeters and pipers" bit did go extremely flat in performance, justifying Jamie's decision to tell the lower strings not to play their chord that points this out. But in the rehearsal it wasn't all that far out - less than a semitone the last time, I think. And even in the performance there were several other places where the orchestra came in after an a cappella bit and we'd stayed bang in tune. Quite impressive, when you think about it!

I suppose I ought to backtrack a bit. There were noticeably less people in the hall this year. I guess this was maybe because it was Belshazzar and not Fauré's Requiem - people who didn't know Belshazzar possibly didn't come because they weren't brave enough to sing something they didn't know, and people who did know Belshazzar possibly didn't come because they know how hard it is! But I think it was a good decision to choose it, because most of the people there will never get another chance to perform it - it's not exactly a work that amateur choral societies do very often - and even though many of them were terrified, they all seemed to be having a whale of a time. (The Parry and the Mendelssohn did reassure them, though. It was great to hear "I Was Glad" with that many voices, and the cellos in the Mendelssohn did indeed sound as lovely as Jamie had promised!)

I spent much of the time (when I wasn't singing) running around on Jamie's behalf. (You will be amused to hear that he arrived for the day in a chauffeur-driven car with darkened windows. I suggested that maybe being on BBC Radio Lancs had gone to his head!) Also I got to meet the very lovely baritone soloist, Roland Wood. Sadly I didn't get to use any gaffer tape, but I had some with me just in case...

Anyway, I'm sure there are other things I could say about the day, but I'll let the pictures tell the story. Thanks to Liz and Graham for taking them. They're all now online.