Andrew Davis : British Prom - Hugh Wood, Elgar, RVW

An all-British Prom with Sir Andrew Davis, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. All three pieces are classics and also classic Andrew Davis territory, which he's conducted many times and has made memorable recordings of in the past - Ralph Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, Hugh Wood Scenes from Comus and Edward Elgar The Music Makers.

Hugh Wood's Scenes from Comus Op.6, (1965), brought the young composer to fame. Inspired by John Milton's Comus : a Masque presented at Ludlow Castle 1634,  it's a large scale dramatic piece, for orchestra, soprano and tenor (here Stacey Tappan and Anthony Gregory). Andrew Davis made the first recording, also with the BBCSO for NMC way back in 2001.  A magical introduction - horns leading strings in an evocation of a dense forest. This might be the primordial forest, where subconcious desires are released : the source of so many legends from the Hexe Loreley to Pelléas et Mélisande and beyond.  Though the strings shimmer, the horns, with connotations of hunting, suggest violence.  The Lady is lost and calls for her brothers, but who are they, and who is she ?  The sounds of the forest overwhelm her, and Comus appears.  Savage dissonances, piercing brass, and rumbling undertones : what has he unleashed ?  "Venus awakes, unwakend love!" . His herioc declarations are met by an interlude of relative stillness, as if the forest, or nature were observing.  Flurrying notes, jerky rhythms, like the frightened heartbeat of cornered prey.  The pace picked up again, angular "running" staccato underlined by percussion, woodwinds flying forwards, then a return to mysterious, brooding strings.  This dynamic contrast suggest the opposition of two forces : strident fanfares interrupted by heavy ostinato.  A dark conclusion , lit by delicate winds. The soloists duet, their voices entwined, but the ominous timbre of bassoons, oboe and trombone suggest that something's awry. The winds sang again, the flute in very high tessitura, the piece concluding with a single note.

Hugh Wood (b 1932) is two years older than Harrison Birtwistle. Both share a fascination with English history and myth, and music as theatrical drama.  Though their work is very different,  there are connections.  Please see my piece on Hugh Wood's Epithalamion which Andrew Davis conducted in 2015. And of course, lots more on Birtwistle and modern British music.

 Elgar's The Music Makers op 69 premiered in July 1912, but had been long in gestation. Elgar knew of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode when he was in his twenties, when he was isolated, scraping a living as teacher, organist and conductor of the very limited orchestra at Powick Asylum, not far from his home, with no obvious prospects. Thirty years later, his status solidly established, might he portray himself in this piece, just as he had portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations, incorporating references to his own music, not so much for their own sake but because, as he wrote, they expressed "my sense of the loneliness of the artist".  Though this piece is not in the same league as the Enigma Variations, largely due to the turgid doggerel of the text, it captures levels of Elgar's personality which put the image of Elgar as Edwardian fuddy duddy to rest.  No-one believes that, anymore.

 Despite his success and acclaim, Elgar identified creativity with alienation. Artists are "dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams". The slow orchestral introduction gave way to a more forceful section, where the chorus burst forth "One man with a dream, at pleasure. Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down." The orchestra surged in full flow, but animato fades to più lento. Only halfway through did the contralto (Sarah Connolly) emerge, heralded by harps. "They had no vision amazing.....no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going" The music makers proceed towards uncharted territory with calm assurance. Yet again, tranquility gives way to con fuoco and back to lento. Ironically, it is the chorus, not the soloist, who sing of "dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye." as if isolation is still too uncomfortable to sing about without ensemble, despite the confident crashing chords in the orchestra and raised voices. A quiet transition to the finale, when the mood rose again, Connolly singing forcefully. "Great hail! " The artist shall "teach us your song's new numbers; And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more." Though the soloist faded to stillness, the chorus continued to hold the line.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis was an excellent overture to a very good programme, masterfully executed. 

Andrew Davis : Tippett Szymanowski Debussy Barbican

Andrew Davis photo: Chris Christodoulou, bBC

Andrew Davis conducted the BBC SO at the Barbican Hall in London. Top billing to Michael Tippett's The Rose Lake, almost exactly a year after Simon Rattle conducted it with the London Symphony Orchestra, with whom it has been associated since its premiere with Colin Davis in 1995. The Rose Lake is a video in music, inspired by Le lac rose in Sénégal, which Tippett visited in 1990.  As the angle of the sun changed, the colours in the landscape changed, a concept that translates well into a study of orchestral colour.  It was "a continuous five part composition, in essence a set of variations .....a song without words for orchestra", as Tippett wrote at the time.  The sections with programmatic titles mix with sections where only tempo gives clue to meaning, the twelve short segments moving forward in sequence, suggesting the passage of time. Dense but lucid layers of sound as beautifully structured as mosaic.  Andrew Davis, though, brings out its descriptive nature. The panoply of marimbas, vibraphone, and xylophone rustled, suggesting breezes, grasses, rushing water. The massed percsussion even suggested "African" sounds, woodwinds and brass calling like wild creatures against a savannah of strings.  In the organic "earth forms" and especially in the bird and bell sounds, The Rose Lake resembles the music of Olivier Messiaen. Thus the logic of programming it with masters of colour and transparency like Symanowski and Debussy.  A pity that Rattle paired it with Mahler Symphony no 10, with which it has almost nothing in common, since Rattle's feel for Szymanowski and Debussy runs very deep indeed, Rattle being one of Szymanowski's modern pioneers.  Rattle would have made the connections more strongly, but Davis presents it on its own  terms, less Messiaen and divine inspiration than tone poem but perfectly valid. 

Szymanowski's Violin Concerto no 1 dates from around 1916, when he was making a creative breakthrough. To quote Jim Samson, the foremost Szymanowski scholar, writing as long ago as 1981, "the orchestra is conceived rather as a reservoir from which may be drawn an infinite variety of timbral combinations....the string body...sub divided into many parts, further characterized by the most delicate combinations of arco and pizzicato, harmonics, sul tasto, sul ponticello and tremolando effects".As Jim Samson said in his book, The Music of Karol Szymanowski (1981), in the Violin Concert no 1 "the formal scheme is totally unique and represents an ingenious solution to the problem of building extended structures without resorting to sonata form". The almost chaotic proliferation of sub groups and themes within the orchestra, contrasted with extended violin cantilenas, soaring high above the orchestra, are so refined and so rarified that they seem to propel the music into new stratospheres, beyond earthly possibilities. Mandelbrot patterns, in music, mathematically precise, yet full of the vigour of natural, organic growth.  Though a contemporary of Debussy, Stravinsky and Bartók, Szymanowski's music defies category and is astonishingly prophetic. No surprise then that Boulez adored him, and made the keynote recording with Christian Tetzlaff and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  I enjoyed Lisa Batiashvili's more romantic approach with Andrew Davis and the BBCSO but to really get the full wonder of the piece you need Tetzlaff and Boulez.  

This concert concluded with Alain Altinoglu's suite on Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.  Please read more about the background HERE. Nothing whatseover wrong with suites. These days there's ill-informed prejudice against them butn they serve a good purpose. In the case of Pelléas et Mélisande a suite arrangement is perfectly valid, since  it focuses on the orchestral aspects of the opera - Debussy's only opera - presenting it almost as tone poem like La Mer. Thus it can be programmed more readily in the concert hall, bringing it to non-opera audiences. The opera itself  is by no means a typical narrative opera, so this orchestral approach has its merits. 

Elgar The Music Makers Spirit of England Andrew Davis, Chandos

Andrew Davis conducts Elgar The Music Makers and Spirit of England Op 80 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Sarah Connolly and Andrew Staples for Chandos, juxtaposing Elgar's private and public faces.

Elgar's The Music Makers op 69  premiered in July 1912, but had been long in gestation. Elgar knew of Arthur O'Shaughanessy's Ode when he was in his twenties, when he was isolated, scraping a living as teacher, organist and conductor of the very limited orchestra at Powick Asylum, not far from his home, with no obvious prospects. Thirty years later, his status solidly established,  might he portray himself in this piece, just as he had portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations, incorporating references to his own music, not so much for their own sake but because, as he wrote, they expressed "my sense of the loneliness of the artist". Despite his success and acclaim, Elgar identified creativity with alienation. Artists are "dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams".  The slow orchestral introduction gives way to a more forceful section, where the chorus bursts forth  "One man with a dream, at pleasure. Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down."   The orchestra surges in full flow, but animato fades to più lento.  Only halfway through does the contralto (Sarah Connolly) emerge, heralded by harps. "They had no vision amazing.....no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going:" The music makers proceed towards uncharted territory with calm assurance.  Yet again, tranquility gives way to con fuoco and back to lento.  Ironically, it is the chorus, not the soloist who sing of "dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye." as if isolation is still too uncomfortable to sing about without ensemble, despite the confident crashing chords in the orchestra and raised voices.  A quiet transition to the finale, when the mood rises again, Connolly singing forcefully. "Great hail! "  The artist shall "teach us your song's new numbers; And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more."  Though the soloist fades to stillness, the chorus continues to hold the line.
Elgar's Spirit of England  op. 80 (1915-17) is so powerful that it draws you into its glorious self confidence  even though we now know where jingoistic bluster can lead.  But for a moment we are spellbound by the sheer extravagance of the piece.  Drums roll, strings surge and the BBC Symphony Chorus explode.  Andrew Staples's voice rises heroically above the wall of sound. "Spirit of England, go before us !" The orchestral writing sets a pulse which supports the chorus, where male and female voices sing alternating lines. This creates an interflow suggesting vast, turbulent forces. Staples shaped the magnificent line "We step from days/ of sour divison/ into the grandeur of our Fate", each key word meticulously articulated, the last word "Fate" ringing out like a clarion.  Staples’s enunciation was sharp, consonants crisp, much more idiomatic than the other three tenors I've heard in this piece in recent years. The English tenor style, at its best, brings out the edge in the language hinting at hidden undercurrents : what really is the unshakeable soul of "divinely suffering man"?   This does matter, since Elgar may well have seen the circumstances more acutely than did the populist poet. A male voice captures an edge of anguish and pain, while female voices express the more conventional Boadicea approach.
In contrast to the first section "The Fourth of August", the second section "To Women" is more restrained.  While the tenor line was integrated with chorus and orchestra, it now stands almost alone. Phrases like "like a flame" and "boundless night" fly upward from the line, Staples emphasizing them with flourish.  A melancholy violin passage introduces a much darker mood.   "For the Fallen" is a funeral procession but proceeds forward with relentless surge, Davis marking the throbbing undertow in the orchestra. The choral line with its clipped, almost staccato tension, evoked, perhaps gunfire.  The woodwind figure, followed by low-timbred strings, was particularly moving. "We shall remember them", sang Staples, his voice carrying above the chorus and orchestra.  "To the end, to the end, they remain".

Gustav Holst Orchestral works vol 4 Cotswolds Symphony - Andrew Davis, Chandos

Sir Andrew Davis is of one of the greatest conductors of British music
in our time, and Chandos is a label that specializes in British repertoire.  This alone should make this new recording of Gustav Holst's orchestral works by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra indispensible. But it is also a signifigant milestone because it includes an exceptionally idiomatic   performance of  Holst's early Symphony in F "The Cotswolds", so convincing that it should at last give this piece the recognition it is due. This disc is valuable too because the programme is cohesive, linking Holst's very early works with later pieces that hint at Holst's wider interests which gave his work a distinct personality.  This disc is also part of  Chandos's long standing series of Holst orchestral works conducted by Andrew Davis, which further adds to its authority. Altogether, a release that's leagues ahead of the market.
Completed in July 1900 and premiered by the Carl Rosa Orchestra in which Holst played, the Cotswolds Symphony (op8 H47) was was not a success.  It would have been unreasonable to expect more from a composer who was barely 25, but there is much more to it than has been revealed in recordings made over the years.  Perhaps the secret is to understand it in the context of the composer and his place in British music.  Davis, like Sir Adrian Boult before him, has an understanding of the full span of Holst's music.  The opening Allegro con brio is free-flowing and confident, evoking Elgar, a composer with whom Davis is so closely associated.  Hence the idiomatic punchiness, and crispness of attack.  This introduces the famous second movement, the Elegy in memoriam William Morris. A tentative, but probing introduction evolves gradually, with suggestions of the more sophisticated Egdon Heath. It rises steadily to a cresendo that is dignified, yet deeply felt. The agitato section surges, like a march, punctuated by brass and percussion. The main theme flares up again, before discreetly receding.  The title "Cotswolds" is something of a misnomer,  suggesting touristy images of cottages, chintz and cream teas. But to Holst, an idealist and a thinker, William Morris was a radical with proto-socialist sympathies. The Arts and Crafts movement predicated on the idea of craftsmen working for themselves, not dependent on commercial capitalism.  This affects interpretation and performance.  Fortunately, Davis understands who Morris was and what he meant to Holst. No false sentimentality here but deep conviction, much closer to the spirit of the piece.  Thus the sudden change of mood in the Scherzo, and the return of the confidence in the Allegro now expanded in much fuller-throated orchestration in the Finale.  Holst's music marches forwards : it's not looking back.  Good use of brass and warm-sounding horns, like wind in the sails, propelling the music onwards.

The Cotswolds Symphony ends on similarly upbeat form as A Winter Idyll (H31 1897) begins.  Again, Andrew Davis's understanding of the idiom makes a diffrence. Winter here is an almost demonic force of Nature, sweeping all before it, craggy peaks and soaring vistas.  The main theme (trumpets and brass) repeats  and string lines swell, as if propelled  by the elements, turning on sudden, capricious points.  One could detect the influence of Nordic saga - Wagner, Grieg or even a hint of Sibelius, nine years Holst's senior.

Davis makes the point further with Holst's Indra (op 13, H66 1903),  a large scale tone poem inspired by Sanskrit literature.  Like so many of his contemporaries all over Europe, "orientalism" fascinated because it opened up new opportunities of tonal colour and form.   Indra breaks new ground, giving Holst a chance to explore a consciousness outside the western mainstream.  For all its lushness, Indra tells a violent story. In the Rig Veda, the god Indra (male) battles a dragon who has seized the rain clouds, throwing the land into drought, its people into ruin.  The brass fanfares are militant, suggesting perhaps the cosmic forces being brought to bear.  Like A Winter Idyll, Indra is a saga. Davis emphasizes the structure and colour - wonderful trumpet calls, dissolving into finer textures,  balancing the warrior with the mystic, bringing out the spirituality in the piece.

Davis's recognition of the spirituality in Holst shapes his approach to Invocation (Op 19 no 2 H75, 1911) for cello (Guy Johnstone) and orchestra.  Subtitled "A Song of the Evening" , the piece begins and ends sensa misura, allowing the soloist to float the line, so the piece moves freely through many smaller incarnations. Johnstone's tone is rich and sensual, evoking allusions to exotic, non-western concepts of sensuality. The obvious connection here is Holst's Lyric Movement for viola and orchestra, but there are links, too, to Holst's other mystical works, including Venus in The Planets, and indeed to works by other composers of the period, such as Szymanowski, whom Holst may not have known but who shared his aesthetic.

A Moorside Suite (H173, 1928), heard here in Holst's 1932 arrangement for string orchestra, was originally conceived for brass band.  The first section is boisterous, but the second, a Nocturne,is more mystical than most repertoire for brass band.  Although it's an interlude before the final March (con larghezza), it is a beautiful miniature, the solo violin line at once fragile and assured.   The Scherzo (H192, 1933-4)  is a worthwhile conclusion to this collection, connecting the early Holst of the Cotswolds Symphony with Holst shortly before his unexpected death,  when he was woirking on what might have been his only other orchestral symphony. Though it lasts but six minutes, it's inventive and covers a lot of material.  

Andrew Davis - Elgar Spirit of England, Raymond Yiu The World Was Once All Miracle.

When Sir Andrew Davis conducts Elgar, it's always an occasion, but this concert  at the Barbican, London, was much more special than most.  Davis conducted the BBCSO in Elgar's Spirit of England, op 80  (1916), which captures the exuberant spirit of England at the start of the First World War.  This was the highlight of a well-conceived programme where the multiple connections between the pieces enhanced the whole. Spirit of England was preceded by Lilian Elkington's Out of the Mist (1921), a bleak reminder of what war really means.  The programme began with Elgar's Starlight Express (1916) a jolly jaunt for children, which may parallel the high spirits of adults who didn't realize where the war would lead, but also worked well with Raymond Yiu's The World Was Once all Miracle, bringing out its inventive personality, while anchoring it in tradition.   A hundred years separate Elgar and Raymond Yiu, but the spirit of creativity shines bright and true.

Elgar's Spirit of England is so powerful that it draws you into its glorious self confidence  even though we now know where jingoistic bluster can lead.  But for a moment we're spellbound by the sheer extravagance of the piece.  Drums roll, strings surge and the BBC Symphony Chorus explode.  Andrew Staples's voice rose heroically above the wall of sound. "Spirit of England, go before us !"    The orchestral writing sets a pulse which supports the chorus, where male and female voices sing alternating lines. This creates an interflow suggesting vast, turbulent forces. Staples shaped the magnificent line "We step from days/ of sour divison/ into the grandeur of our Fate", each key word meticulously articulated, the last word "Fate" ringing out like a clarion.  Staples’s enunciation was sharp, consonants crisp, much more idiomatic than the other three tenors I've heard in this piece in recent years. The English tenor style, at its best, brings out the edge in the language hinting at hidden undercurrents : what really is the unshakeable soul of "divinely suffering man"?   This does matter, since Elgar may well have seen the circumstances more acutely than did the populist poet.

In contrast to the first section "The Fourth of August", the second section "ToWomen" is more restrained.  While the tenor line was integrated with chorus and orchestra, it now stands almost alone.  Phrases like "like a flame" and "boundless night" fly upward from the line, Staples emphasizing them with flourish.  A melancholy violin passage introduces a much darker mood.   "For the Fallen" is funeral ,procession but proceeds forward with relentless surge, Davis marking the throbbing undertow in the orchestra. The choral line with its clipped, almost staccato tension, evoked, perhaps gunfire.  The woodwind figure, followed by low-timbred strings, was particularly moving.  "We shall remember them", sang Staples, his voice carrying above the chorus and orchestra.  "To the end, to the end, they remain".  Hearing Lilian Elkington's Out of the Mist before Spirit of England  intensified the sombre mood with which "For the Fallen" ends.

The title Out of the Mist refers to the heavy fog that hung over the Channel when the ship carrying the body of the Unknown Soldier arrived back in England.  Lilian Elkington's response in music, was dignified and elegaic.  The piece runs just under 8 minutes, but is ambitiously scored for large ensemble . It begins mysteriously : one can imagine the ship materializing in port, out of the mists, docking and unloading the coffin,which was then taken to Westminster Abbey, where it remains today. The Unknown Soldier is "home" at last, carrying with him , symbolically, the memory of millions of others who would never return.  Thus, Out of the Mist ends with transcendent brightness, as if the Unknown Soldier and the men and women he stands for are bathed in glory.  The BBC SO recorded this piece some years ago, but this performance with Andrew Davis was far more,powerful. (For more about Lilian Elkington, please read HERE)

Elgar's Starlight Express was written in the midst of war, but is cheerfully escapist. Life goes on and morale needs boosting.  The extracts chosen for this performance displays the liveliness of Elgar's writing. The music is genuinely free spirited, with no trace of condescension towards a youthful audience.  Elgar even quotes the Christmas carol, The First Noel, decorating it with bells and cymbalds. The soloists were Roderick Williams and Emma Tring.  Incidentally, I have never seen so many kids in an evening performance before, several as young as 7 or 8.  I counted more than 20, and that was just around me.

Elgar is the biggest gun in British music. That Raymond Yiu's The World Was Once all Miracle was able to stand up to such competition says something.  Perhaps that's because Yiu's musical personality is highly individual.  The World Was Once all Miracle unfolds in six sections like a puzzle book, each piece reflecting a different aspect of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.  Yiu's settings are delightfully perverse. "Sick ! Sick ! Sick !" sang Roderick Williams "sick of sycophantic singing".   Jerky, quirky staccato in the orchestra, percussion like exclamation points, almost lyrical flights of fancy, tiny sparkling figures and exceptionally witty writing for voice.  Williams has an unequalled gift for singing with a naturalness thatn communicates like conversation, yet can also shape phrases and colour words bringing out their intrinsic musical character.  Spooky chords in the strings set the mood for the song "For we were all caught in the shame of sleep".  Williams curled his tongue round words, relishing their flavour as sound.  "Forgive us untempered for the day", a play on prayer, against a backdrop of hollow metallic bells.  

Burgess's texts, with their oddball wordgames and images, lend themselves well to Yiu's style. The vocal line curves and meanders in "You were there, and nothing was said" where wooden percussion suddenly gives way to deep booming sound. The next song "I have raised and poised a fiddle" writhes, jokily mocking  the phrase "the music of the spheres". The orchestra then sounds at once exotic (like gamelan) and sleazy, like jazz.  "One looks for Eden in history, best left unvisited", sang Williams, "While the delicate filthy hand dabbles and dabbles, but leaves the river clean, heartbreakingly clean". The last song "Useless to hope to hold off" mimics nonchalant nightclub patter - echoes of bongo drums - then suddenly breaks off into tantalizing silence.  Raymond Yiu's music defies stereotypes, always playful, always elusive.  The World Was Once all Miracle has the advantage of being as concise as haiku, tightly constructed but hinting at greater mysteries.  Please read my piece Why I couldn't write up Raymond Yiu's Symphony til now here).

Photo: Roger Thomas

Elgar, Bliss The Beatitudes Andrew Davis BBCSO Barbican

At the Barbican, London, Andrew Davis conducted the BBCSO in Elgar Enigma Variations and Arthur Bliss The Beatitudes.  A red-letter day for British music fans, because Davis  is a superb conductor of British repertoire.  His insights into Bliss's Beatitudes were thus eagerly anticipated. If anyone can make a case for the piece, it is he.  After an expansive performance of the Enigma Variations, I was expecting great things.  The Beatitudes is an ambitious work,  scored for large orchestra, soloists, choir and cathedral-scale organ, so an expansive approach would, in theory, breathe life into the piece. The background to the piece and its reception has been repeated so  many times that you could fill an entire review regurgitating the details without having to mention too much about the music.  In short, The Beatitudes was commissioned for the consecration of the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1962 and given top billing over and above Britten's War Requiem, the "other" commission.  For reasons still unexplained, it was discreetly shunted aside. The premiere took place in a nearby theatre and was not well received.

Whatever may have happened in Coventry in 1962, it simply isn't true that The Beatitudes was forgotten.  Shortly afterwards, it was performed in a proper Cathedral setting at Gloucester during the Three Choirs Festival, which alone should have ensured its reputation. Bliss conducted and the singing, being the Three Choirs Festival, must have been good.  Bliss also  conducted it himself at the Proms in 1964, another ultra high profile event, with no expense spared.  The BBC SO performed with the immortal Heather Harper, a host of choirs and of course the formidable Royal Albert Hall organ. This was commercially  released five years ago.  There have been other performances, including one at Coventry Cathedral a few years ago conducted by Paul Daniel.   The piece isn't a mystery waiting to be discovered.  Unfortunately, British music is schismatic. Many still can't forgive Britten for being an outsider.  All the more reasons then to engage with The Beatitudes  on its own merits, rather than just blaming its lack of success on fashion and taste.  Sixty years later, we should be mature enough to evaluate the piece on its own terms without pettiness and special pleading.  Bliss is an important composer, who created masterpieces like Morning Heroes. Read more about that HERE when Andrew Davis conducted it with the BBCSO at the Barbican.    

Coventry Cathedral was bombed during the wear, so it's rebuilding was a symbolic act of hope. Memories of the war were still fresh, so Britten was taking risks by not condemning Germans. But perhaps people then knew about war first hand, they realized that working towards peace is a much greater challenge.  The Beatitudes of Jesus, as recounted in the New Testament, address the basic concepts of Christianity. Tonight, the Pope reiterated these fundamentals at Fatima:  "Mercy, not judgement".  Fundamentalists who misconstrue "Blessed are the poor", maybe aren't Christian.  Bliss's Beatitudes presents texts arranged by Christopher Hassell interspersed with settings of seven poems, from the  Prophet Isaiah to 17th century poets like George Herbert to Dylan Thomas. This allows him to expand the scope, making more of the idea of conflict implicit in the Ninth Beatitude, "Blessed are you when men shall revile you", which could be interpreted as relevant to the idea of war though it in fact refers to persecution of the apostles and those faithful to a radical new faith.  Bliss connects the Sermon on the Mount to the Mount of Olives to Easter and to the Crucifixion.   Bliss's Beatitudes are thus a mediation on struggle, illustrated by the strident, almost dissonant music in the Prelude and the Voices of the Mob.  Contrasts are violently dramatic. Loud tutti climaxes but tiny figures (often strings or woodwind) flit past. The soloists (Emily Birsan and Ben Johnson) rise from the massed forces behind them.  The BBC Chorus in good form.  The Beatitudes has the ambience of a great epic saga, with a cast of thousands - what great film music this could have been, with moral absolutes in clear black and white!

Superb performances all round, good enough that it wasn't such a loss that the Barbican organ isn't as huge as, say, Coventry Cathedral's, But, in a way, I was glad that Davies focussed on the music itself, rather than going in for histrionic effects,  He's conducted another Beatitudes - Elgar's The Apostles.  That, too, was conceived on a grand scale with over a hundred choristers, many soloists and a big orchestra.  But perhaps the key to The Apostles (and to The Kingdom) lies in its connection to The Dream of Gerontius.which follows one man's journey from physical life to the life everlasting. In The Apostles the followers of Jesus are about to go into the world, alone, spreading the new gospel in hostile situations.  Hence the inherent contradiction  between their mission, and overblown Edwardian public declarations of Christianity.  Elgar is a master of large form, but his faith, in a loose, non-denominational sense, is fundamentally personal and humanistic.  Not for nothing did he write the Enigma Variations, with its cryptic humour and deliberately non-dogmatic warmth of spirit.  Please read what I wrote about Davis's Elgar Apostles with the BBC SO at the Barbican with Jacques Imbrailo in 2014.  Part of the reason The Apostles and The Kingdom aren't programmed non-stop is because their charms lie not in bombast, but in humility.

Bliss's competition wasn't Britten, but Elgar, and Elgar wins hands down.  The Beatitudes has good moments but it's no masterpiece. Jesus's Beatitudes stress simplicity and the meekness which comes from genuine humility.  The apostles got their reward in heaven, but earned it.  No sense of entitlement, nor self pity, victimhood, or bitterness. Resentments  are values of self, not selflessness.  Tonight, the Pope, who probably has more status than any of us, spoke of respect and compassion.  Though surrounded by thousands, with a big organization behind him,  he cut a frail, humble figure. Now there's a man who knows what The Beatitudes of Jesus mean.  

"Humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong, who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves"  Full text of the Pope's speech at Fatima HERE

Berlioz Romeo and Juliet - Andrew Davis BBC SO Barbican

A foreunner of the Shakespeare 400 marathon to come, Hector Berlioz Romeo and Juliet (Roméo et Juliette)  Op 17 (1839)  with Andrew Davis and the BBCSO at the Barbican Hall.  An inspired choice! Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet defies categories. It is an orchestra-drama, a symphony where voices are part of the orchestral palette. The story unfolds in the vivid musical tableaux, like scenes in a play, but the critical sections are presented without words.  It's an opera without "roles" in the usual sense, pulled together at the end by a long, stunning passage for bass (David Soar).. The mezzo-soprano (Michèle Losier) Juliet has one big aria, and the tenor gets relatively little to sing at all.  Just as Mendelssohn wrote Lieder ohne Worte, Berlioz writes opera without words,

Shakespeare carried no cultural baggage for continental European audiences in Berlioz's time, so the composer could do pretty much his own take on the story, using the Garrick version of the play brought to Paris in 1827 by Charles Kemble, which  Berlioz attended and where he became infatuated with Harriet Smithson.  The picture at right shows Smithson and Kemble in a production in the 1840's. In an age before close-ups and amplification, theatre practice would have to have been more exaggerated than we're used to now. Perhaps Berlioz, a theatre critic, intuited that good orchestral writing had the potential to express feelings in greater complexity than most actors at the time were capable of.

Certainly, the exotic instrumentation would have been part of its appeal. Berlioz employed an ophicleide, which looks as weird as it sounds and adds a wayward malevolence.  The BBC SO, however, isn't a period instrument ensemble so Davis made the most of the flamboyant richness modern instruments can offer.  Big, lush strings, fabulously punchy brass, and even a saxophone, which Berlioz liked so much that he included it in his Treatise on Instrumentation and Modern Orchestration, avidly studied by Mahler and Strauss, who almost certainly didn't actually hear Romeo and Juliet, though Richard Wagner did. I'd forgotten that he'd seen it in Paris as a young man, though I immediately thought of him when hearing the theme in the Introduction that sounds strikingly similar to the motif  "Das Rheingold".

The Introduction reflects the turmoil that forms the background to the play. Turbulent cross-currents, a strange series of choral, solo and instrumental sequences create innate tension. The orchestra creates dance figures, suggesting the gaiety of the ball, and also more brutish themes, suggesting violence. For a moment, the turmoil is anchored by the bass, David Soar. Soar sang the same parts in Romeo and Juliet  at the Salzburg Festival in 2010, and his experience shows: a voice of great authority.  I first heard him as one of the Workmen in Wozzeck in October 2009. He's singing Quince at Glyndebourne this summer. Michèle Losier sang the extended mezzo strophe and Samuel Boden the magical Queen Mab scherzetto.

In the second of the seven scenes, Romeo is alone. This is the Garrick interpolation, which doesn't exist in Shakespeare. So much for the fuss about modern directors changing things! It's more traditional than some realize.  This  gave Berlioz a chance to write more contemplative music,  which is artistically correct, since it distances Romeo from the crowd around him and in  the Introduction. Wonderful oboe melody, evoking, even at this stage in the story, a sense of doom.  Even more beautiful is the Love Scene  where the lovers are depicted as horn and cello and flute and cor anglais, entwined in rondo-like embrace.  In the fourth  scene, Queen Mab, the Dream Fairy, Berlioz takes even more liberties, writing an extended scherzo, whose central significance in the overall design of the symphony suggests that, for Berlioz, enchantment played a greater part in the drama than Shakespeare would have given it.  It's interesting how the three entirely orchestral scenes (2, 4 and 6) are those in which much of the action takes place. Yet Berlioz doesn't need words, only orchestra.

Even in scene 5 Berlioz goes for dramatic truth rather than rigid adherence to Shakespeare's original, though it's based on Garrick. The funeral march allows the imagination to picture proceedings. We can hear the mourners sing, and quiet violin figures suggesting Romeo's hidden presence, waiting for the moment he can at last emerge. In Garrick, Juliet wakes up and then stabs herself when she finds Romeo dead.  A bit OTT perhaps but it makes for good music. Yet again, Berlioz's faith in his vision of the work asserts itself. While Garrick's version ended in the tomb, Berlioz reverts to Shakespeare again, and to the feuding families. The cross-currents of the Introduction revive,  but Friar Laurence intervenes. David Soar sang the long recitative and aria with majesty, for the part is written with such authority that the monk seems more like ancient prophet.  While the Duke couldn't change things, Friar Laurence can. He's got the better music! Maybe the Montagues and Capulets will start scrapping again, but for a moment, the BBC Symphony Chorus (augmented, I think) and BBC SO  made the ending totally  convincing.

Please also see my article on Andrew Davis :  Berlioz and Arhur -- Bliss Brothers in Arms.