VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

Helen Grime’s skill as a song writer has been well aired in 2024. In March with the SCO her settings of Philip Larkin, Sandra Cisneros and Jane Hirshfiled, under the collective title It will be spring soon, explored the notion of joy. In her latest song cycle, Folk, commissioned and premiered last week by the BBC SSO in its season opener with charismatic soprano Claire Booth as soloist, the subject matter was alluringly sinister.

With texts rooted in Manx folklore, adapted for the composer by Zoe Gilbert from her eponymous novel, Folk invites exactly the kind of hyperbolic performance that Booth invested in it – outwardly quixotic, inwardly dark, seductive qualities instantly triggered by the incendiary clarion call that introduced the opening Prick Song. Its folksy playfulness gave way to the crystalline virtuosity of Fishskin, Hareskin, Booth’s electrifying versatility matched by the captivating sparkle that conductor Ryan Wigglesworth elicited from a pliant, invigorating SSO.

Water Bull Bride proved the most excitable, at time most brutal, of the four songs, its quick-fire narrative inspiring the fullest theatrical showmanship by Booth before ceding to the final song, Long Have I Lain Beside the Water, a telling lament overlaid by a persistent brass motto not dissimilar to the one that opens Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

If that was in fact Grime’s intention, it was to be be tested after the interval in that very symphony, the connection strikingly articulated in Mark O’Keeffe’s declamatory trumpet solo. Where Wigglesworth had demonstrated alertness and illuminating exactitude in the songs, however, he was less convincing in his nurturing of this Mahler.

The opening two movements struggled to establish their onward purpose, critical gear changes prone to awkwardness and uncertainty, the conductor’s attention centred more on overzealous management than directorial overview. Even when the Scherzo took flight, inspired by increased fickleness of spirit and magically countered by the luxurious spirituality of the pivotal Adagietto, there was still a lingering sense of containment that threatened to stifle the Finale, albeit swept aside by the emergent power of its liberating climax. Too often, such crowning moments were sadly neutered by a clunking framework. 

Ken Walton

(Picture: BBC/Martin Shields)