First performed in Birmingham at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival in 1900, the 95-minute work launched the orchestra’s 2025-26 season to a full house in a profoundly moving way.

It was also a first for music director Kazuki Yamada in conducting this piece. Its local connections extend to the poem of the same name on which it is based by Cardinal John Henry Newman, the high-profile Victorian convert to Catholicism who later founded the Oratory on the Hagley Road in Birmingham.

More of a spiritual journey than an act of liturgy, the singing and orchestration tells of how Gerontius, a dying old man is sent fearfully on a journey to the afterlife in which he meets angels and demons, finally arriving in purgatory after being given a glimpse of God.

Tenor Benjamin Hulett (pictured), one of the three soloists, was a late replacement to sing Gerontius. After visibly sifting through pages of his score during the long orchestral introduction he delivered a bravura performance, singing with clarity and heft during the heroic moments, and sensitivity in the soft lyrical sections.

Jess Dandy sang the role of the Guardian Angel, and the Angel of the Agony, with sympathy and compassion, with a contralto voice not far short of heavenly, especially in the languid angelic farewell. While Roderick Henderson’s rich baritone provided the perfect guise for a Priest guiding Gerontius on his journey.

The other voices came from an ever-dependable CBSO Chorus, all 180 of its members assembled on high behind the orchestra as of choir of judges and a host of angels, the Chorus’s male and female voices each delivering a magnificent contrast between the angelic and the demonic.

Their warmth and heft were also a fitting tribute to Simon Halsey CBE, in his final concert after more than forty years as CBSO Chorus director, for which he received warm applause on stage.

Kazuki Yamada meanwhile conducted the orchestra and singers with a moving insight into the nuances of the score, giving full rein to the great choral set pieces and a wonderful tenderness to the almost ethereal moments.

It was a perfect start to the new season.

BBC Radio 3 recorded the performance of The Dream of Gerontius live for broadcast at a future date.

The CBSO will perform Elgar’s Symphony No 1 in a programme that will also include Benjamin Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, with Vilde Frang and Lawrence Power as soloists, and Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face: Hotel Suite, conducted by Nicholas Collon at Symphony Hall at 7.30 pm on Thursday, September 25th.