all amateurs, struggled to master Elgar's complex, demanding and somewhat revolutionary work. Matters were made worse by the sudden death of the chorus master Charles Swinnerton Heap and his replacement by William Stockley, an elderly musician who found the music beyond him. The conductor of the premiere, Hans Richter, received a copy of the full score only on the eve of the first orchestral rehearsal. The soloists at the Birmingham Festival on 3 October 1900 were Marie Brema, Edward Lloyd and Harry Plunket Greene. The first performance was, famously, a near disaster. The choir could not sing the music adequately, and two of the three soloists were in poor voice. Elgar was deeply upset at the debacle, telling Jaeger, "I have allowed my heart to open once – it is now shut against every religious feeling & every soft, gentle impulse for ever." However, many of the critics could see past the imperfect realisation and the work became established in Britain once it had had its first London performance on 6 June 1903, at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. Shortly after the premiere, the German conductor and chorus master Julius Buths made a German translation of the text and arranged a successful performance in Düsseldorf on 19 December 1901. Elgar was present, and he wrote "It completely bore out my idea of the work: the chorus was very fine". Buths presented it in Düsseldorf again on 19 May 1902 in conjunction with the Lower Rhenish Music Festival. The soloists included Muriel Foster and tenor Ludwig Wüllner, and Elgar was again in the audience, being called to the stage twenty times to receive the audience's applause. This was the performance that finally convinced Elgar for the first time that he had written a truly satisfying work. Buths's festival co-director Richard Strauss was impressed enough by what he heard that at a post-concert banquet he said: "I drink to the success and welfare of the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar". This greatly pleased Elgar, who considered Strauss to be "the greatest genius of the age". The strong Roman Catholicism of the work gave rise to objections in some influential British quarters; some Anglican clerics insisted that for performances in English cathedrals Elgar should modify the text to tone down the Roman Catholic references. There was no Anglican objection to Newman's words in general: Arthur Sullivan's setting of his "Lead, Kindly Light",