"If all the
inhabitants of Kladno were to visit that enormous hall where I conducted
my Stabat Mater, there would still be plenty of room – for that
is how huge the Albert Hall is." So wrote Dvorak to his father
after he conducted the Stabat Mater in London in March 1884;
118 years later it received its first Proms performance (a scandalous
omission) under Richard Hickox.
The work, one of the composer’s
masterpieces, has recently undergone something of a revival, this being
its second concert outing in London this year. Yet, how conductors approach
the work is not at all clear-cut. Some, such as Giuseppe Sinopoli, brought
an overpoweringly operatic scale to the piece, others, such as Rafael
Kubelik a more oratorio-like feel to the work’s tragic dimensions. Either
way is valid, but Richard Hickox’ failing was to fall between two stools.
He transposed vast choral forces against a quartet of soloists who,
with the exception of John Tomlinson, treated the work in a much more
reductive manner. Paul Charles Clarke, for example, has too bright a
tenor’s voice for his part and too often his tone simply wasn’t dark
or sombre enough. Janice Watson found it difficult to project satisfactorily
and the breadth of her register simply lay outside the span of the notes,
so much so that she smothered her bottom notes and her notes above the
stave were barely articulated. At moments, such as the close of the
‘Stabat Mater dolorosa’, she was just overwhelmed by the chorus. Catherine
Wyn-Rogers was richer of tone, beautifully so at the opening of the
quartet, yet it was John Tomlinson who impressed most with a deeply
sonorous bass which scaled the monumental heights of the work’s tragedy.
Richard Hickox’ conducting was often
deliberate and the performance hang fire far too often for it to be
an arresting experience. Those terrifying F sharp octaves which open
the first movement should above all be evocative but here they were
underplayed, not helped by a less than trenchant string tone. Some sour
brass and woodwind playing brought an earthiness to a movement which
above all else should mirror the image of the virgin looking up at the
cross. Poor brass intonation also marred the bass’ solo, ‘Fac, ut ardeat
cor meum’. Making the most lasting impression was the choral contribution
– incisive, often moving and in its solo chordal passage in the ‘Quando
corpus morietur’ simply coruscating.
The sense of epic tragedy in this
work might have been more heart-felt had the Stabat Mater been
the only work programmed. Inexplicably, the concert began with Christopher
Palmer’s arrangement of Walton’s Christopher Colombus Suite.
A coarse, cliché-riven work, with artificial, sprayed on Spanish
colouring, its anodyne scoring does little to warrant its inclusion
in any Prom, let alone one containing one of the most sublime choral
works of the nineteenth century. Such programming is little short of
objectionable.
Marc Bridle
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