All of the three works performed in this concert have literary aspects, and the music cannot be fully appreciated without taking this into account. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, published in 1855, is the first section of a longer poem by the American poet Longfellow, loosely based on the life of a 16th Century Native American chief.

Half a century later, it was set by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), a composer of mixed English and African ancestry. With this background, this and his other works were very popular until the mid-20th Century, since when they have been heard less often. Nowadays it is the music that counts (Longfellow’s poetic style has gone out of fashion), but the piece is very suitable for a choral concert such as this, and the Watford Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra did justice to it.

Generally they achieved good tone and balance (though sometimes the orchestra was too loud), and the choir sang confidently. The tenor soloist, Andrew O’Connor, has a pleasant voice and good operatic and concert experience – and we can claim him as a Watford man!

This year is the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt, important in English history and prominent in Shakespeare’s play Henry V. It was appropriate, therefore, to play a suite from the incidental music by William Walton to the 1944 film. It is one of several Shakespeare films directed by Laurence Olivier, and is a classic. Explanatory extracts from the play were read by Frances Pyatt and David Griffin – there was a different fashion of reading Shakespeare in Olivier’s time.

The suite expresses the different moods of episodes from the play: among them are the death of Falstaff and the particularly vivid battle sequence – though the increasing excitement of the knights’ cavalry charge did not really come off. Walton’s music creates the differing atmospheres of the scenes, including passages reminiscent of the 15th Century.

As thoughout the concert, the conductor, Michael Cayton, gave clear leadership to the musicians, though perhaps, in rehearsal, he had given less attention to Walton than to Coleridge-Taylor.

After the interval, the one work played was The Music Makers by Edward Elgar, first performed in 1912. It is highly characteristic of his musical language, which is just as well, because it is a setting of a poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1844-81), who is now almost entirely forgotten: what does his poem mean to a modern audience? His attitudes are strange to us, and he uses Victorian archaisms that are now only distractions.

So again it is the music that counts. It has reminiscences of other works by Elgar, such as the Enigma Variations.

The choir made a good start, though later they were sometimes a bit muddled, and they were not always comfortable with variations in rhythm. The work has nine verses, and some of them are sung by a mezzo-soprano. Helen Stanley has a pleasant voice and operatic and concert experience; generally she was well matched with the choir and orchestra, though sometimes she was drowned out by the trombones, for instance. The structure of the last verse suited her better, with apt dynamic variations. The concluding diminuendo brought the concert to a sympathetic conclusion.