Carlo Maria Giulini was the main visiting celebrity in the years 1961, 1964 and 1967. He conducted performances of Verdi’s Requiem, Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Beethoven’s Ninth and Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces, Beethoven’s C Major Mass and Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, all with the Philharmonia or New Philharmonia Orchestra. For the Chorus, he was inspirational.
Separately from the Festival, in 1966 members of the Chorus travelled to London to contribute to a professionally recorded performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.8 – the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. This took place in the capacious Walthamstow Assembly Hall. With the London Symphony Orchestra and the singers from Leeds were the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Orpington Junior singers, Highgate School Boys’ Choir and Finchley Children’s Music Group. The concert followed a previous performance at the Royal Albert Hall which was televised. The Walthamstow concert is available as part of a CD box set (Columbia Masterworks – S2BR220317).
In 1961, Chorus Director was Herbert Bardgett, with George Stead as Chorus Master of a Huddersfield Section. Festival Organist was Donald Hunt. The programme for this year contained excellent articles by Ernest Bradbury and Neville Cardus, who wrote brilliantly about music and cricket for the Manchester Guardian. This anecdote from the Cardus article bears repetition:
The Chorus performed in Britten’s Cantata Academica as well as his brand-new version of the National Anthem, Bach’s cantata Christians, Grave Ye, Verdi’s Requiem, and Alexander Goehr’s specially commissioned Sutter’s Gold. In the Yorkshire Post, Bradbury complained about the disturbance and heat caused by the arc lights of ABC television at Verdi’s Requiem:
Goehr’s Sutter’s Gold was, according to the Earl of Harewood (writing in 1974)
The 1964 Festival, in April, included films with interesting music and the Chorus now sang under Donald Hunt. Choral works included Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces and Poulenc’s Gloria. Britten’s War Requiem received excellent notices, and Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts was the final concert. The programme, as always, printed each Chorus member’s town of origin after his or her name. In 1967, evening performances included Haydn’s Creation, Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Janacek’s Diary of a Young Man who Disappeared and the première of Richard Rodney Bennett’s Epithalamion.
