FOR their Saturday concert at the Great Hall, Royal Masonic School for Girls, Rickmansworth, it was sound thinking by the Amersham Festival planners to precede one of the profoundest symphonies ever composed with a humorous romp, namely Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, Opus 80. Essentially it is a series of neatly wrapped student tunes, originally sung in Breslau bars as “rugby songs”.

After its performance, the South Bucks Choral Society was invited to sing the final “Gaudeamus Igitur”. Then the audience joined them, having been handed the words - so there was no danger of any rugby interpolations. (As if we would?) Now for Beethoven’s mighty Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125 (Choral).. Nowadays, thanks to the EU naming the Ode To Joy as its “anthem”, it tends to be considered commonplace, whereas once I recalled every performance as being something “special”.

So it delights me that conductor Iain Ledingham treated it as “special” and gave it a thoughtful rendering with the (augmented) Amersham Festival Chamber Orchestra, who shoulder the first three magnificent movements.

To summarise briefly, the first is the epitome of Wagner’s description of the “fight of the soul struggling for happiness”, played with fine balance and formidable power. The second is a scherzo, indeed almost a “scherzo to end all scherzos“, that had absolute clarity in performance. The third is an adagio of rare beauty and sometimes splendour, though not without occasional menace.

Then comes the fourth, the Choral movement, including The Ode to Joy, notorious as probably the most formidably difficult 20 minutes in the choral repertoire. Some members of the (supplemented) South Bucks Choral Society told me beforehand they were frightened stiff about the “fast” tempo, being drowned by the orchestra and singing in German.

These challenges and fears seemed to “gird their loins” and urge them on to new heights of determination, power and authority. Indeed their fears were groundless.

Of the four young soloists baritone Elias Benito set the final climax admirably, with tenor Peter Davoren also contributing strongly; while soprano Rebecca Goulden and mezzo Natalia Brzezinska managed to survive their horrendously difficult final moments.

In summary, Iain Ledingham welded together a very fine team, contributing his own individual mark to boot - I’ll not forget the delightfully vulgar introduction to the so-called “Turkish March”.