Only someone embarrassed by the expression of deep personal feeling could dislike Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.

It’s much loved by amateur choirs and their supporters, as the palpable air of expectancy before this performance demonstrated.

Elgar’s setting of Cardinal Newman’s poem, which charts the death and passage to the next world of a flawed Christian soul full of fear and trepidation, is heart-rending.

An important part of a choral society’s preparation is therefore the choice of soloists able to convey the heavenly aura that comes to envelop a human drama.

Jon English as Gerontius, Stuart Young as the Priest and pre-eminently Jeanette Ager as the Angel were an impassioned trio. They inspired the chorus to rise to the occasions of their set-pieces, the trick being to make the choruses not independent but integral to the unfolding narrative.

Mr English's Gerontius, though having to rise in a different way in the first part of the work from a tendency to flatten his notes, was exactly the ardent, yearning and earthbound character seeking forgiveness and redemption the work envisages. Mr Young was upright and authoritative, the perfect foil to the wayward soul in the process of being despatched. Ms Ager, the sublime guide and comforter, brought strong maternal and wifely indulgence to the stricken hero and at the end led the way in settling all the varied emotions together with assurance and grace. Rarely does one hear the end of this sometimes troublesome work sung with such a solemn yet emotionally-charged air of finality Augmented by members of the Cantemus Chamber Choir, the choir gave Gerontius an irresistible send-off, relished the invective of the Demons’ Chorus and ignited Praise to the Holiest - Elgar‘s ‘great blaze’.

The Regency Sinfonia showed how essential an orchestra is to a full flowering of this work for an amateur choir, though in what is otherwise a purpose-built acoustic space the Wyastone hall was put under pressure by its populous assembly.

Nevertheless, choir director and conductor Huw Williams did well to coax and release choral and instrumental effects essential to Gerontius’s nobility and greater glory of sound, albeit intended by the composer to ascend the lofty heights of a cathedral.