ANDREW CORNALL, artistic director of Chester Summer Music Festival, made an inspired choice by settling on Vaughan Williams’s Five Tudor Portraits as a festal finale. The suite is exhilarating, witty, pithy, funny, melancholy and contemplative – not all at once, of course.

Premiered in 1936, they’re not often heard, so the opportunity presented by Chester Festival Chorus and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the ever energetic John Wilson was not to be missed.

The choir was disciplined in tricky musical moments, the men particularly so, though in the Burlesca – the third movement – they sounded a little overwhelmed by the orchestra.

The ladies were quite magical in the rather tongue-in-cheek Romanza, a particularly touching lamentation for Philip, the pet sparrow killed by the errant cat Gib. Mezzo soprano Kathryn Rudge, a rich voice which has considerable character, was well placed in the rather drunken opening ballad, The Tunning of Elinor Rumming. Baritone Christopher Purves’ strong, crystal clear diction and his rich tones particularly in upper registers blended in well.

The first half included Parry’s I Was Glad, which suffered not only from being forte throughout but also rather plodded along. The section O Pray for the Peace needed to be whispered, not declaimed!

A fine performance of Walton’s Crown Imperial matched an almost surreal, glass-like interpretation of Delius’s Walk to the Paradise Garden, where Wilson kept a tight rein on the RLPO, allowing orchestral colours to blossom forth.

Add to that Elgar’s symphonically conceived Overture: In the South which exuded warm sunniness, as well as a beautiful Neapolitan song on solo viola, this was, surely, a perfect postlude to a highly successful Summer Music.

Glyn Mon Hughes