to St Cecilia, and then went on to the Herkulesaal in Munich, where Handel's Messiah was performed. 1960s The arrival of William Glock at the BBC as Controller, Music, in 1959, had the same revolutionary effect on the BBC Choral Society as on every other department concerned with music. In addition, the Society suffered a sudden loss in 1961 with the death of Leslie Woodgate, who had guided it through 27 years of its existence. On 15 June 1961, a memorial concert was held, directed by Keith Falkner (who had been a soloist in the first concert in 1928) and by George Thalben-Ball. Peter Gellhorn took over the post of Chorus Master, which he held for some eleven years until 1972. Under the Glock regime new works began to re-assume a vital part in the Society's repertoire. On 1 August 1963 the London premiere of Britten's War Requiem (first performed the preceding year at Coventry Cathedral) was given, with Britten and Meredith Davies conducting. Later that year Alan Rawsthorne's Carmen Vitale was a choral commission; and at the beginning of 1963 the Society faced one of its greatest challenges, a new work by Hans Werner Henze called Novae de Infinito Laudes. This was given two performances under the composer's direction: on 17 March 1965, and again at the Proms on 27 August. Distinguished visitors in this period included Leopold Stokowski (in Mahler's Second Symphony). A return visit by Ernest Ansermet to conduct Honegger's King David had been planned to mark the 10th anniversary of Honegger's death, but Ansermet was ill and Sir Adrian Boult took over at short notice. In what he described as 'an act of faith', Glock promoted in 1967 the first performance in England of the St Luke Passion by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki – a modern re-working of the traditional large-scale Passion setting which made exceptional demands on the choir. The occasion was a great success, and was repeated in the Proms on 2 August 1967. A typical example of the extraordinary demands made on the chorus during the Proms each year was the succession of works performed during that season: in addition to the Penderecki, Mahler's Second Symphony, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Liszt's Faust Symphony, Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, Delius's Appalachia, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, Schubert's E flat Mass and Beethoven's Ninth were all sung. Under Antal Dorati, Chief Conductor of the BBC