Tag Archives: Paisley Abbey

BBC SSO: Dream of Gerontius

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Paisley Abbey

There are moments in the life of a music critic when a concert is thrust into the musical stratosphere by a performance that is literally out of this world. These are precious occasions, few and far between, and it happened on Thursday when the RCS-trained mezzo soprano Beth Taylor unleashed her first subliminal utterances as the Angel in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. 

Up to that point, this account by the BBC SSO and joint singing forces of the Huddersfield Choral Society and RCS Chamber Choir in a voluminous Paisley Abbey had paced itself steadfastly under chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, who treaded positively but carefully in likely reaction to the building’s tricky geography. 

For it was a major challenge asking the distantly-placed choirs to successfully penetrate the foreground welter of a full symphony orchestra. Details were inevitably lost, but there was a stalwart precision in a delivery that gave this Gerontius enough spiritual fruitiness and physical space to satisfy its religious theatricality. 

The demons and troubled souls expressed within the high-minded Catholicism of Cardinal Newman’s text may have lacked absolute full-blooded venom or visceral pain at times, but there was plentiful sincerity of purpose, Wigglesworth’s unhurried deliberations urging genuinely liquid sonorities from the SSO and a tidy sense of the music’s operatic scope.

Much of that was down to a well-matched solo team. As Gerontius – the sinning soul whose final journey takes him before his God before finding eventual peace through redemption – tenor Brenden Patrick Gunnell was a towering protagonist. His eye-contact with the audience – he sang predominantly off the book – was as compelling as the calculated vocal engineering and nuanced phrasing that together ensured such a commanding portrayal. Neal Davies’ profound and penetrating bass performance as Priest and Angel of the Agony offered an powerful foil.

Crowning all this, however, was Beth Taylor’s mesmerising performance as the Angel. Here was a voice that instantly transfixed, reverberating with voluminous magnitude in its gravelly lower reaches, effortlessly thrilling at its soaring climactic heights, served by crystal clear annunciation and unceasingly intuitive musicianship. A former grand finalist in the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World, she’s undoubtedly a name to watch.

So much to enjoy in a Gerontius that was only marginally constrained by the challenges of the venue. That’s unlikely to be the case in Sunday’s Edinburgh Usher Hall repeat. Worth catching if you can.

Ken Walton

This programme is repeated at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on Sunday 2 March at 3pm, which will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Full information at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcsso. 

BBC SSO / Brabbins / McPhee

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Paisley Abbey

By sheer coincidence, a concert scheduled to celebrate George McPhee’s 60th year as organist and director of music at Paisley Abbey, also happened to fall on his 86th birthday. The former achievement, in this age of lesser commitment to life-long jobs, is admirable enough, the latter all the more remarkable, given the alertness of McPhee’s starring role on Friday with the BBC SSO and an assortment of choirs – a home game for the much respected octogenarian who has not lost his devilish wit. 

After a  tear-inducing organ and orchestra encore arrangement (by SSO violinist Alastair Savage) of Auld Lang Syne, McPhee was coaxed into saying a few valedictory words. They were characteristically pithy, and anything but valedictory. “Despite the title of the last piece, I’m not leaving,” he snapped with immaculate comic timing. 

It was a full house, or church, that honoured this gratifyingly warm celebration. The opening half centred on church-related music, some of it radiating pomp and circumstance, some of it spiritually intimate, but all of it joyous and respectful.

For that, the SSO and conductor Martyn Brabbins were joined by three cathedral choirs – McPhee’s own Paisley Abbey choristers, and the Edinburgh choirs of St Giles’ (where he was once assistant organist) and St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedrals. At one end of the spectrum was the gushing rhythmical verve and dramatic opulence of Walton’s Coronation Te Deum, the majestic sumptuousness of Parry’s I Was Glad, and the florid ecstasy of Gabrielli’s Jubilate Deo a 8; at the other, the melting a cappella piety of William Byrd’s O nata lux, conducted by St Giles’ organist and master of the music, Michael Harris.

Before all that, however, a piece from Hollywood musical royalty, Scots-born film composer Patrick Doyle’s King Charles III Coronation March, first heard at last May’s Westminster Abbey coronation service. The relevance? Doyle, who attended on Friday, learnt his harmony and counterpoint under McPhee at the former RSAMD. His piece bore the hallmarks of his cinematic skills: simple, to-the-point, with the innate ability to send shivers up the spine.

If McPhee played a relatively supportive musical role in the first half, his true moment in the sun arrived after the interval in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony. And how better to appreciate this charismatically French work than with an organ installed originally by the celebrated 19th century Parisienne builder Cavaillé-Coll? Still present, even in its modernised manifestation, are both a fruitiness of tone and a snarling richness from the reeds, which provided oodles of poetic subtlety and fiery retorts in a performance further enhanced by the expansive acoustics.

Brabbins played a cool game, strategically undemonstrative, and by doing so harnessed a biting clarity that might easily have been lost in a more thrusting, impatient approach. The Adagio that closes the opening movement, underpinned by the organ’s gentle cushioning, was a luscious oasis of calm amid the surrounding drama. 

The final movement played its part in cementing the evening’s raison d’être, the cumulative impact of organ and orchestra doing tumultuously what the Doyle had done in miniature, raising the hairs on the back of the neck and, through the catharsis of its sheer volume, and the audience’s obvious affection for the Abbey’s longstanding incumbent, inciting a spontaneous standing ovation. 

Ken Walton

This concert was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland