Philarmonia/Daniels, Brighton Dome, Brighton

Brighton's resplendently restored Dome concert hall was packed for the final grand celebration of this year's Festival – the transformation of this former royal stables is quite remarkable, and the city finally has an appropriate setting for such major occasions. Visually, at least. The problematical acoustic has certainly been tamed – from the former indistinct barn-like effect, the sound has been concentrated and focused effectively, but there is a flatness and lack of reverberation that is distinctly bothersome in some music. Particularly pieces such as Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia.

The conductor Paul Daniels took the music quite a lot faster than he presumably would have somewhere like Gloucester Cathedral, for which it was written, but though this was a perfectly respectable performance, the effect was unsatisfactory – all the joins were showing. The new acoustic is not enormously flattering to choral singing, either, but it does have the virtue of great clarity. Which demonstrated how very well the Brighton Festival Chorus were singing – their diction and intonation were excellent in the two big choral works that made up the rest of the evening.

They were joined briefly by the new Festival Youth Choir in the world premiere of Kubla Khan by an unusual composite composer called James Morgan and Juliette Pochin. The fact that this evocation of "stately pleasure domes" was apparently suggested not by Coleridge's poem, but by the Eighties pop group Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "quotation" from it, together with the team's extensive background in TV and film music, prefigured a piece of slick would-be trendiness, but actually what we got was a rather jolly, festive work, full of pastiche, pleasant on the ear and colourfully responsive to the ecstatic imagery of the text.

Apart from obvious references to Star Wars, etc, there was a curious suggestion of mid-20th century British choral writing – one repeatedly had the strange impression of listening to music by Bliss or Constant Lambert. Still, the large forces were handled most professionally, opening flourishes and closing peroration were impressive, and it all went down very well.

Not that anything could stand up to the competition of Walton's ever-astonishing Belshazzar's Feast. In this setting, some of the massiveness of the thing was lost, but from the disciplined male-voice opening declamation, this fast and furious interpretation was exciting, and you could hear every detail of Walton's orchestration. Christopher Maltman made a fine solo impression – melancholic at first, then magnificently barbarous in the feast scene. Daniels controlled all those driving rhythms superbly, and the Philharmonia clearly enjoyed themselves.