Leeds Town Hall audiences are not best known for their empathy towards anything composed in the last 50 years, so that the prolonged ovation that greeted the choral work, Harmonium, by the American composer, John Adams, must have surprised and delighted the combined Leeds Festival and Philharmonic choruses.
It had been a brave venture with the technical demands obviously requiring much detailed rehearsal, while the fact that they were for long periods harmonically contrasting with the orchestra was a severe test of their intonation.

They emerged wonderfully secure, unscathed and triumphant, the work’s long, quiet ending as absorbing as the many passages that required a shiver of excitement to race through the music.