The Hallé Plays Belshazzar's Feast

A ghostly hand appears and scripts ‘the writing on the wall’ that foretells the fate of Belshazzar, King of Babylon. In Walton’s choral masterpiece, a huge orchestra, choir, organ and extra brass, revel in music that’s every bit as excessive as the Babylonians themselves. Decadent and sacrilegious, gripping and intense, the drama builds to the spine-tingling moment when Belshazzar reads: “Thou...