VoxCarnyx

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.