It must have been grand to live at a time when the golden age lay ahead rather than far behind, and the sentiments expressed in John Addington Symond's 1880 poem A Vista remind us how remote we are even from dreaming of a "loftier race / Than e'er the world hath known". More impressive, perhaps, is the way in which John Ireland harnessed the poem's unsettlingly naked idealism when composing an anthem based on the text for the coronation of George VI in 1937. The result – These Things Shall Be – is a fabulous blend of musical grand gestures couched in rich, bright harmonies; any bombast is undercut by the detail in the word-painting, and by the troubled idiom of the opening, which returns just before the transcendent conclusion. The poem's utopian gaze has a strongly socialist element, and admirers of Danny Boyle's paean to the NHS in the Olympics opening ceremony would have been interested to note John Ireland's slipping a reference to The Internationale into his coronation anthem.

Ireland's piece was the rarity on this programme of English music, performed with finesse and intensity by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Tadaaki Otaka, with the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC National Chorus of Wales creating an impressively coordinated 250-strong choir. The concert also took in Delius's orchestral interlude The Walk to the Paradise Garden (from a Village Romeo and Juliet), less convincingly rendered but still winningly conveyed, framed by an achingly beautiful performance of Vaughan-Williams's Tallis Fantasia (with the quartet ensemble up in the gallery) and an action-packed Belshazzar's Feast. The soloist for both Ireland and Walton was Jonathan Lemalu who, during the two brief moments he chose not to sing through his nose, made his contribution well enough.

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