Podcast #4: Belshazzar’s Feast with the TFC

In this episode, we commemorate a performance of William Walton’s composition, Belshazzar’s Feast, as sung by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus out in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts in July of 2017, under the preparation of our new choral director James Burton and one of the chorus’s favorite orchestral conductors, Bramwell Tovey.  While I personally didn’t get the chance to sing this concert, I did get to spend the weekend out there listening to many of my friends in the chorus rehearse and internalize this piece, and give a phenomenal performance on that Sunday afternoon.

So to capture the love and joy poured into preparing this piece, on the weekend before the concert I interviewed four chorus members about the experience.  I’ve also included appropriate clips from the final performance.

I hope you enjoy listening to everyone’s insights as much as I enjoyed talking to them and witnessing their work that weekend.  My thanks again to Diane Droste, Joy Emerson Brewer, James Gleason, and Diana Gamet for taking some time out of their Tanglewood residency to talk to me.

You can hear a playback of that performance on ClassicalWCRB.org website here.