SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Stravinsky, Britten, Bruckner:  Jennifer Walker (soprano), Sebastian Field, Dawn Burns (alto), James Atherton (tenor), Peter Wilman (tenor), Nick Perfect (bass),   BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Adrian Partington (conductor), Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 26.11.2010 (GPu)

Stravinsky, Mass

Britten, Russian Funeral

Britten, Hymn to St. Cecilia

Bruckner, Mass No.2 in E minor

Musical life in Cardiff (and beyond) benefits greatly from the work of two high-class choruses: that of Welsh National Opera (which has been the most consistently successful musical contribution to many productions in recent years) and the BBC National Chorus of Wales. It was a real pleasure to have the second of these choruses in the spotlight at this concert – with all the solo singing done by members of the Chorus – supported by selected forces from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The general standard was, as one expected, very high and the Chorus proved persuasive advocates for almost all of the music they sang.

My one slight reservation concerned the first piece performed, Stravinsky’s Mass. Perhaps there were some nervousness at the beginning of the programme; perhaps it was the absence of the boy sopranos and altos that Stravinsky intended; perhaps choir and conductor couldn’t quite reconcile themselves to the unconditionality of what Stravinsky himself said he intended as “very cold music, absolutely cold, that will appeal directly to the spirit” – for whatever reason the compelling textures and rhythms of Stravinsky’s hieratic music had, strange as it may sound, rather too much humanity, too much colouring of human individuality. This performance seemed a little too fully engaged with the quotidian rather than the hieratic. Good as the solo contributions were – notably from soprano Jennifer Walker and alto Sebastian Field – they were not moments in which individuality was (illusionistically) transcended, the effect at which Stravinsky seems to have been aiming. Elsewhere Adrian Partington balanced and deployed his forces excellently, the unusual combination of a four part choir and ten instruments (two oboes, cor anglais, two bassoons, two trumpets and three trombones) articulate in its production of a sound world both ancient (with its echoes of traditional chant of the Russian Orthodox Church) and inescapably modern. In the Sanctus, in particular, the interplay of voices and instruments was presented with fascinating clarity, not least in the four part fugue that leads into the Hosanna. The a capella choral writing in the Agnus Dei was performed with simple beauty, a simplicity not lost as the choral writing grew more complex, and the unresolved instrumental chord which ‘closed’ the work beautifully refused the kind of human arrogance that might be thought to be implicit in too neat an act of closure bounding such a dialogue with the divine.

The programme ended with an outstanding performance of that extraordinary work, Bruckner’s E minor Mass, initially written in 1866 – when the composer was in his early forties – and revised in 1876 and 1882. It is music that prompts memories of Bruckner’s childhood, when he attended Mass regularly in Ansfelden, where his schoolmaster father played the organ, sometimes accompanied by a small band of two violins, one double bass, one clarinet and one horn (Bruckner’s Mass itself makes use of two oboes, two clarinets, four horns, two trumpets, and three trombones). It is music in which one hears Palestrina and Gregorian chant; in which one hears decidedly Romantic harmonies and Beethovenian echoes. It is also music which anticipates so much of what was to come; as Derek Watson has put it, “the work foreshadows an almost twentieth-century concept of vocal and instrumental texture and intimate harmonic subtlety”. And yet, it is important to stress the work is no mere exercise in eclecticism; it is echt Bruckner, above all, intense, austere when it needs to be, and every bar breathes the completeness of the composer’s faith, so that the whole becomes not just a functional ‘setting’ but a kind of prayer, one of those works which persuades one that music is the language in which Man might speak to God. From the radiant opening of the Kyrie to the exquisite blend of voices and instruments in the closing “Dona nobis pacem”, this was a compelling beautiful performance. Singing, playing and conducting were both supple and dignified. If there was any passing moment of unease it was as the textures of the Credo were at their thickest in the setting of “Et resurrexit”; moments before the poignancy of Bruckner’s setting of “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis” was almost heart-breaking; taken as a whole performance of the Credo very eloquently, and unfussily, allowed the Brucknerian interplay of Renaissance polyphony and Romantic harmony to speak at its clearest and most forceful. The interweaving of instrumental and vocal lines in both the Benedictus and the Agnus dei was both technically very accomplished and, more importantly, profound in its enactment of the very spirit of devotion.

Two works by Britten separated these two very different settings of the Mass. The first was the rarely heard Russian Funeral, written and premiered in 1936, but then lost for more than forty years and not performed again until 1983. It was written – pretty quickly – for a performance under the auspices of the London Labour Choral union, conducted by Alan Bush. It is scored for four horns, three trumpets, two tenor trombones and one bass trombone, one tuba, and percussion (so that the chorus got a well-deserved rest during the seven or so minutes of its performance. The piece was originally called (according to the web-site of the Britten-Pears Foundation) War and Death, an impression for brass orchestra. It is in three distinct sections, the two outer ones full of dignified melancholy in their use of the Russian revolutionary song ‘You fell in battle’ (with which some listeners will be familiar from its use in Shostakovich’s 11^th Symphony), while the climactic violence of the central section, full of distorted marches and echoic fanfares, full of aural images of war’s brutality, is built upon a Russian Naval march. The whole doesn’t make for a major work, but it packs a certain punch and certainly deserves an occasional hearing, especially when as authoritatively played and shaped as it was on this occasion; the web-site of the Britten-Pears Foundation also tells the reader that “the piece was offered to Boosey & Hawkes in May 1936, but was turned down as being insufficiently melodious and ‘unsuitable as a Brass Band piece generally’”.

More familiar Britten saw the return of the choir, this time singing unaccompanied, in Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia. Suffice it to say that Adrian Partington drew from the choir a very sure-footed performance, never less than fully responsive to details of music and text alike, while always retaining an evident sense of larger design and onward momentum. One of the fascinations of the work is the way it both echoes and departs from the conventions and traditions of the English Ode to St. Cecilia; another is what the words say about the relationship between Britten and Auden; in the clarity of diction with which it was here performed and choir and conductor’s experienced awareness of the English choral tradition (though welsh they may be!)  one was given food for thought on both counts, as well as many incidental pleasures of tone and balance. It is to be hoped that the existence of a facility like the Hoddinott Hall – big enough for full orchestra and/or choir – but with fewer audience seats than, say, St David’s Hall across the city – will make possible more concerts such as this, in which the BBC National Chorus of Wales can explore repertoire never likely to feature in the necessarily more ‘mainstream’ programmes to be heard in larger venues. The effort of getting through a snowstorm to get to the concert was thoroughly rewarded.

Glyn Pursglove