A blazing hymn of praise to liberty pouring scorn on the BBC, plus, the best of April’s classical concerts
LSO/BBC Singers, Barbican, London EC2 ★★★★★
It’s rare for the unruliness of politics to invade the calm precincts of classical music. But these are not normal times. Some top-rank institutions face an existential threat, and hardly any have escaped unscathed from recent budget cuts. The sector feels under siege, and audiences too are fearful.
So when Simon Rattle mounted the podium to excoriate recent actions of the BBC and Arts Council of England (see feature, left), he got a fervent response from the jam-packed audience at the Barbican. His speech was aptly timed, as we’d just been given the most vivid reminder of how nourishing to the soul the art form can be. The London Symphony Orchestra and Rattle together had delivered a performance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony that reached lovingly into every corner of this strange, exasperating, seductive work of genius. It stood nakedly revealed in all its vulgar jollity, monstrous bombast, and seductive half-lights.
That should have been it for the evening. But in a late addition to the programme, Rattle offered a moving gesture of solidarity with the BBC Singers, which a few weeks ago was threatened with extinction, and whose future is still uncertain. He led them in a performance of the blazing choral work the Singers first revealed to the world back in 1945: Figure humaine, a 22-minute choral shout that was Francis Poulenc’s defiant fist-shake at the Nazis occupying his beloved France.
It should be said Poulenc’s great setting of eight poems by his friend Paul Éluard is not all excitement and defiance. The moment from the BBC Singers’ wonderful performance that still haunts my inner ear is the fourth song, You my Patient One. The harmonies from the women’s voices were tender yet aloof, resigned to the necessity of the “vengeance” named in the final line.
Later came burning anger in the movement memorialising an air-raid, flung out by the singers with adamantine firmness. Poulenc’s harmonies veer between austere coolness and almost-jazzy sultriness, and it takes a fine performance like last night’s to reveal the nobility underlying his almost-too-rich, almost sentimental palette.
But there was no lingering in these emotional byways. Rattle had his eye firmly on the final movement, where Éluard lists in a spirit of mounting elation all the places he will write “your name”, ie the name of Liberty. Faster and faster but always perfectly in control the Singers and Rattle drove onwards, until the hoped-for “Liberté” was finally named in a blazing chord. After an evening of Mahlerian strangeness and political anxiety, it felt like a perfect catharsis. IH
Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sage Gateshead ★★★★☆
Every orchestra wants to make its concerts stand out from the crowd, and last night the Royal Northern Sinfonia certainly succeeded. They promised not one but three young soloists, perhaps the starriest in the country: violinist Nicola Benedetti, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, brought together for almost the only concerto that could make use of them all, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
As it happened Benedetti was indisposed, but young Korean violinist Hyeyoon Park proved to be a more than worthy substitute. The concerto in true Beethovenian fashion begins with an introduction that moves from stealthy anticipation to glorious affirmation and sunshine in the space of a few seconds, an effect made hugely vivid by the Royal Northern Sinfonia under its newish Principal Conductor Dinis Sousa.
And then came the all-important moment when the cellist announces the glorious melody. How should one describe the mood of that melody? It’s martial yet somehow timid, elegant yet tender, and above all aspirational, its eyes fixed on the stars. Cellist Kanneh-Mason seemed to capture all those different feelings at once, and though he did indeed have his eyes fixed on the stars – or at least the Sage Gateshead ceiling – it was his subtle sound and phrasing that did most of the work. Then came Park with the same melody, more extrovert and brilliant as befits the violin, and finally Grosvenor at the piano, more assertive yet still light and somehow filled with sunshine.
And so it went on. Sometimes the three players engaged in a dance with a Chopin-like elegance and energy; sometimes coming together for a concerted drive towards a blazing climax; and just occasionally retreating together for a moment of stillness and introspection. It was a marvel, and if anyone in the audience wasn’t melted they certainly would have been by the encore, an especially sentimental arrangement of Danny Boy.
It's a tribute to the Royal Northern Sinfonia’s wonderfully incisive playing and Sousa’s energised direction that Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony seemed in no way a let-down after the excitement of the concerto. Indeed the whirling Tarantella that ends the piece launched off at such a crazily fast pace I feared the whole thing might go off the rails, but I needn’t have worried. And let’s not overlook the opening piece, A Walk to Beethoven by 40-something Swedish composer Britta Byström, in which the outline of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony seemed to approach and retreat through a surprising, subtly-hued musical landscape. All in all it was a feast for the heart and mind.
St Matthew Passion, Britten Pears Arts ★★★★☆
Bach’s Passions, those great retellings of Christ’s Trial and Crucifixion, have become such a familiar part of the concert season it’s easy to forget how strange and radical they are. The same singer can be at one moment the disciple Peter, angrily denying that he will deny Christ, the next a grieving onlooker interpreting the scene. The time-scale shifts in a moment between the noise and anger of the courtroom and the calm of Lutheran hymns, where everyone gazes down at the scene with compassion and awe from a vantage point beyond time.
At last night’s performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion at Britten-Pears Arts Easter Weekend, that mysterious quality was restored - but in the gentlest possible way. There was no “immersive” video, no electronic sounds, just some minimal interaction between the singers conceived by opera director John La Bouchardière. As the tremendous opening chorus began we saw the 26 players of the “period instrument” orchestra Solomon’s Knot, with no director, divided into two symmetrically arranged groups, with the lone figure of the Evangelist who tells the tale seated centre-stage.
But where were the singers? Seated among the audience, it turned out, to symbolise that they were “one of us”. There are just eight of them, doing duty for the two four-part choirs, the grief-stricken onlookers, and the characters of the drama. As they sang they came on to occupy the centre of the stage, in front of the orchestra, dressed in sober black.
As the drama unfolded these eight were like personages who performed in body-language and gesture to each other, as much as in song to us in the audience. It was a reminder that a Passion is an act of teaching and persuasion. In each aria the singer, joined by their accompanying instruments for added rhetorical effect, tried to convince his or her neighbour of a vital truth—not always successfully. One especially telling moment was when the bass pleaded “Give me back my Jesus” to each singer, and one by one they turned away guiltily.
All this was wonderful. However it has to be said that while the instrumental playing was uniformly excellent the singing was distinctly patchy. Soprano Zoë Bradshaw and bass Alex Ashworth stood out for their vibrant strength of tone, but everyone, above all Thomas Herford as the Evangelist deserves praise for singing the entire work from memory. It allowed the dramatic human element to shine out, in a way that paradoxically illuminated the divine mystery at the heart of this incredible work.
St John Passion/Britten Sinfonia, Barbican ★★★★☆
Bloodied but unbowed, the Britten Sinfonia – deprived of all its Arts Council of England funding at a stroke – just goes on making great music. Last night it appeared at the Barbican with the choir of Merton College Oxford and a cast of mostly young soloists for one of the great musical retellings of the Easter story, Bach’s St. John Passion.
It has one of the great beginnings in music, the basses throbbing like the heart of some penitent sinner, the oboes keening dolefully above, while the choir hurls out its affirmation “Lord, show us you have conquered death”. On the page the words seem triumphant but the music sounds panic-stricken, as if the victory might actually be in doubt.
It was all in place but somehow this opening didn’t quite seize me by the throat as it should. The choir, the newest choral foundation in Oxford and the only one to have sopranos in place of boy trebles were fresh-voiced and impassioned as ever, but those rushing notes didn’t have the implacable clarity they needed.
As the drama unfolded one could discern that all the elements of a fine performance were there, in particular the two central roles. Young tenor Gwilym Bowen was winningly fervent as the Evangelist who tells the story, and bass Michael Mofidian as Christ had the gravelly voice and stoical presence that marked him out as the immoveable, imperturbable centre of the drama. But the elements took a while to cohere. In the opening scenes where Christ is betrayed and then arrested in the garden, the pacing seemed a little rushed.
Eventually, under the firm but gentle guiding hand of violinist Jacqueline Shave – making her final appearance as the leader of the Britten Sinfonia – everything settled, and the performance began to glow. The trial scene in this Passion is famously urgent, and it often rushes by in a fever, each number treading on the heels of the one before.
Here the pacing was subtly varied, and certain details stood out from the flow, as if they were momentarily surrounded by a halo. These came often in the exchanges between Christ and Pontius Pilate, played by Malachy Frame who was psychologically the subtlest singer on stage. When he asked his prisoner, “Where are you from?” you could feel the Roman’s half-suppressed sense that this man standing before him really had something divine about him. Michael Mofidian’s enunciation of Christ’s death had a similar luminous stillness.
Surrounding these were the purely human responses to these awe-inspiring events: mezzo-soprano Anita Montserrat’s delicate rendition of the aria “It is finished”, soprano Rachel Redmond’s ecstatic “Dissolve My Heart”, and that extraordinary aria where Malachy Frame and the choir urged us to fly to the suffering Christ’s side, while the violins thrillingly evoked a sense of cosmic urgency. It really made us feel that this “flight” cannot be too fast, and that the fate of the world is at stake. It was one of the moments when this performance really hit the heights. IH
