Mood music at Birmingham's Symphony Hall
May 14 2010 By Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley looks at the highlights of a busy week ahead in the region’s classical calendar.
Symphony Hall will be the venue for a variety of moods, some of them sombre and thought-provoking, some of them optimistic and life-enhancing, this weekend
A particularly interesting programme from the City of Birmingham Choir on Saturday brings a piquant pairing of two religious pieces written by composers very different in their attitudes to Christianity.
Gabriel Faure composed his well-loved Requiem in 1886, soon after the death of his father. In it he expresses a profound sense of acceptance and ultimate calm “In Paradisum”, but deliberately avoids accentuating any sense of judgment, damnation and eventual glory.
This is a vision of tranquillity for all, believer and non-believer alike, and it is ironic that this composer of one of the greatest requiems ever written, as well as smaller pieces of church music, and an active church organist, should himself have been an agnostic.
At the opposite end of the belief-spectrum is the Scottish composer James MacMillan, whose intense engagement with his deeply-held Catholic faith bursts out of so many of his works.
Premiered at the Proms in 1990, his powerful orchestral piece The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (a Catholic martyr during the horrors of the post-Reformation in this country), introduced this extraordinarily communicative compositional voice to the widest possible public, and his output since then has been consistently interleaved with works reflective of his religion.
Premiered on BBC television (now there’s a thought for these dumbed-down times) in 1994, MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross is scored for eight-part chorus and string orchestra, and brings reflections upon the utterances of Jesus at the Crucifixion. Bravely, it follows in the footsteps of Haydn’s great masterpiece under the same title, and does not pale in comparison.
These two choral works are separated on Saturday by the Romance for string orchestra by Gerald Finzi, a slight but endearing work which took a surprisingly long time (almost a quarter of a century) in its composition. During that time Finzi was writing many works with Shakespearean connections, and the Romance quotes from some of them.
Adrian Lucas is the conductor on Saturday, and the City Choir is joined for the first time by the Orchestra of the Swan, Stratford-based but increasingly popular as honorary Brummies thanks to their residency at Birmingham Town Hall.
After the somewhat elegiac tone of Saturday, Sunday brings exuberance and youthful vitality to Symphony Hall, with a CBSO family concert.
