Tag Archives: BBC Singers

Tippett: New Year

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City Halls, Glasgow

It would be premature, in truth ill-informed, to assess the BBC SSO’s concert-style revival of Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year, as creating a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. For how many of us have actually witnessed this bizarre work in its fully-staged totality? Completed by the ailing septuagenarian Tippett in the late 1980s, it was only ever subject to one staged production, by Peter Hall, with performances in Houston Texas in 1989, transferring to Glyndebourne, then in a modified form by Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Since then, nothing.

What Saturday’s semi-staging by Victoria Newlyn offered was just one facet of the whole – the musical score – predicated on the fact that NMC, as partners to the event, were usefully recording it to create the first commercial recording of New Year. It will be available, rather conveniently, “early in the new year”.

The issue arising from this sharp-edged Glasgow performance, in which the SSO under Martyn Brabbins were joined by a dedicated cast and the BBC Singers, was not so much what we did hear, as what we didn’t see. 

It’s a plot you need regular help with: a tale of two worlds colliding, the urban banality of “Somewhere and Today” and the utopian “Nowhere and Tomorrow” somewhere in space, constructed by Tippett in naively futuristic Wellsian terms. The literal interaction between the two sets of beings – an earthly trio rescued from dysfunction by an otherworldly trio of spaceship travellers – is puzzling enough, but not to witness the actual physicality of the substantial, presumably pivotal, dance scenes leaves the full visual impact of Tippett’s fantasy concept incomplete.

As for the music, this has to rank, if not quite the rantings of an elderly esoteric composer, as an impatiently wild and cathartic compositional exorcism. There’s no limit to the juxtapositional chaos of clashing styles – moments of gorgeous post-pastoral Englishness thrown to the wind by the intervention of crunching 20th century dissonance; the lugubrious twang of an electric guitar enlivened by the onslaught of rap and reggae; the electronic datedness – Blake’s 7-style – of the space ship sound effects; even a stirring Ne’erday chorus of Auld Lang Syne shredded by scintillatingly combatant counterpoints. 

What Brabbins did so successfully was to masterfully harness such fragmentations, making energetic sense of it in the same way a good Bernstein Mass performance makes sense of its stylistic incongruences. He was abetted fully by a trusty cast. Alan Oke – a one-time regular with Scottish Opera in the 1980s – commanded a stentorian central presence as the Presenter; soprano Rhian Lois sang powerfully and alluringly as the chief protagonist Jo Ann, Ross Ramgobin somewhat gauche as her Afro-Caribbean foster brother Donny. Foster mother Susan Bickley bore a stirringly stoical countenance.

The white suited time-travellers offered a potent contrast – Roland Wood typically imposing as computer wizard Merlin; Robert Murray lustrously impassioned as space pilot Pelegrin; with their boss Rachel Nicholls’ radiant soprano powering through, exhilaratingly so. The BBC Singers contributed animated rearguard support. 

For all its crazy merits though, including the nostalgic aura of what is essentially mood music and sound effects of the time, this experience constantly felt as if it were one dimension short. If New Year is already a silk purse, we need full theatrical proof. Anyone keen to test that might be tempted by Keith Warner’s new production for Birmingham Opera Company opening this July. The conductor is another SSO regular, Alpesh Chauhan. 

Ken Walton

This concert was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3, after which it will be available via BBC Sounds for 30 days

BBC SSO / Wigglesworth

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City Halls, Glasgow 

This was a programme that invited multiple layers of curiosity. How does Bach sit full-on, head-to-head with Stravinsky? Is repertoire that uses bits and pieces of a symphony orchestra, but never its full complement at one sitting, an efficient use of resources? Would such a stylised programme from the BBC SSO, augmented by the London-based BBC Singers, pull in the crowds? Under the programme’s originator, SSO chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, these questions were duly answered.

The pairing of Bach and Stravinsky was, indeed, an inspired proposition, especially as the latter was represented by two of his Neoclassical hits – the chilling intensity of the Symphony of Psalms and steely austerity of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments – and Stravinsky’s own arrangement of Bach’s Canonic Variations on “Von Himmel hoch”, originally for organ, here impishly rewired for mixed-bag ensemble and chorus. 

Against that, Bach’s funeral cantata, “Komm, Jesu, komm!”, and his exuberant D major Magnificat offered contrasting visions of a composer whose life’s work was dedicated “to the greater glory of God” – the contemplative genius reaching deep into the human soul, and the unharnessed virtuoso illuminating the famous Song of Mary with inimitable lustre.

It was a juxtaposition well worth savouring and contemplating. Wigglesworth seemed infinitely more at ease with Bach. In the cantata, requiring only a three-man continuo in support of the chorus, he adopted a poetic approach, which certainly gave the singers ample latitude to express the suppleness of the writing. In the wake of the Canonic Variations, a veritable cornucopia of Stravinskian hooliganism, the calming aura of such pure-grained Bach was a welcome touch.

It also cleared the air for the ensuing Symphony of Psalms, now with a larger ensemble in a work that uses near-mystical restraint to power its emotional soul. A cautious start from Wigglesworth had its worrying moments. His grasp tightened as the performance progressed, but not always with enough rhythmic tautness, or that vital sting in attack, to generate the “wow” factor. More a safe performance than a moving one.

Similar issues denied the Symphonies of Wind Instruments the sustained captivation and momentum it crucially needs. Not so with Bach’s Magnificat, though, which earned its place as the evening’s sparkling peroration. Now there was fire in the belly, spirited and stylish Baroque playing from the SSO topped by the nimble virtuosity of the trumpets, deliciously eloquent obligato solos from the woodwind, and a polished, solid performance from the BBC Singers, the solos issued from within its ranks.

So yes, this programme, courageous and ingenious, was also stimulating and coherent. The smooth choreography that eased such extreme switches in orchestration and layout between successive pieces was, in itself, a work of art. And there was enough of an audience to appreciate the boldness of the venture and to play its part in animating the live broadcast on BBC Radio 3. 

Ken Walton 

This programme was repeated in Perth. Listen again on BBC Sounds

BBC SSO / Wigglesworth

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City Halls, Glasgow

Ryan Wigglesworth’s opening programme as new chief conductor of the BBC SSO told us much about what to expect from him as he nurtures his relationship with his new orchestra. It was anything but run-of-the-mill, offsetting the sparkling French textures of Ravel and Messiaen with brand new music by the interesting young Yorkshire-born composer Jonathan Woolgar. The musical journey, which also featured the pitch-perfect BBC Singers, was endlessly adventurous and repeatedly exhilarating. Wigglesworth has set his own bar unquestionably high.

As a composer himself, he has as eye – and an ear – for latent talent. In Woolgar’s new BBC commission, Symphonic Message in memory of L.R. (referring to the drama teacher Lynda Ross whom, the composer writes, inspired so many at his former school), Wigglesworth focused on the frenetic impatience of Woolgar’s musical characterisation, a fast-moving exchange of sharp-textured contradictions that paradoxically spelt completeness. 

Wigglesworth could have pressed a little more to punch out the detail, even where Woolgar’s motivic invention itself lacked a natural spark, but this was a performance that lived by its adrenalin and sense of constant surprise. As such, it served well as a springboard to the French feast that lay ahead.

On their own, Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi – a musical gift to his wife Claire Delbos, pet name “Mi”, rather in the manner of Wagner’s Siegried Idyll – are a 1937 set of orchestral songs fulfilling enough in themselves. But with the BBC Singers to hand, why not offer a scene-setter in the form of the contemporaneous Messiaen a cappella motet, O sacrum convivium? 

It was a magical moment, Wigglesworth’s contained gestures eliciting a mystical perfection from the 36-strong chorus, in both the thrilling unanimity and sustained stillness and slowness of the performance. 

Without a break, Canadian soprano Jane Archibald (replacing Wigglesworth’s indisposed wife, Sarah Bevan, as soloist) unleashed a glowing interpretation of the nine Poèmes pour Mi, probing every expressive possibility, from internalised intensity to outward rapture. It wasn’t always possible to hear every word she sang above the glittering orchestration, but as a whole, and with the SSO extolling the full virtues of Messiaen’s orchestral sweetness and translucence, this was an utterly sublime and moving performance. 

Much of that was down to Wigglesworth’s highly prescriptive conducting. He appears to be something of a perfectionist, each gesture carefully pre-considered and ultra-clear in its intentions. 

That was certainly a prime factor in ensuring that the concluding work in this concert, Ravel’s full 1912 score for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe, shone to its fullest and finest potential. Infinite colours abounded in a performance that variously sparkled and sighed, revelled and acquiesced. Acute textural detail informed mostly every moment, the wordless chorus spreading a comforting glow, like a red evening sky, over the shifting orchestral iridescence. It triggered off instant cheers and applause, and bodes well for Wigglesworth’s future relationship with his new orchestra.

Ken Walton