Grand finale to the end of this year's Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral 3rd August 2019, with Beethoven's Symphony no 9, with Adrian Partington conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, with soloists Ilona Domnich, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Andrew Staples and David Stout, paired with Gustav Holst's The Mystic Trumpeter op 18 H 71 (104 rev 1912) and David Matthews's Stars. The Three Choirs Festival always ends with a big choral number, and they don't come much more profound than Beethoven's Ninth. For two centuries The "Ode to Joy" has been loved by millions, all over the world, possibly the most-performed choral piece on the planet. Suddenly, on the orders of Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party, it must be shunned. They turned their backs on the European Parliament when the anthem was sung, though presumably not on the money to be made from income, pensions, fringe benefits and lobbying. Like playground bullies refusing to play except on their own rules. When Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted in front of Hitler in 1942, Heinrich Goebbels squirmed with inner rage because he knew what "Alle Menschen werden Brüder"meant. Quietly Furtwängler was making a point since Hitler, who probably didn't understand but liked Beethoven's music. Now it seems to have been decreed by Brexit supporters that , if thei party Leader doesn't like Beethoven, then no-one else should be allowed to hear it. There are reports that activists have denounced its inclusion in the Three Choirs Festival (where it's been heard many times over the years).(Read more here). The Will of the People must be obeyed even if that infringes on other people's rights ! Good for Adrian Partington and the Three Choirs Festival organization for standing up for common sense. And for Christianity, for that matter, since Christain communion is at the core of Three Choirs values. What would Jesus say ?
On pure musical terms (not that such things bother extremists) Beethoven's Ninth and Holst's The Mystic Trumpeter work extremely well together as a programme. Many connections, even if they don't sound the same (which is what Christian communion is about). Beethoven calls on "Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium", Joy, that spark of Divinity which brings mankind together in joyous celebration. Holst's Mystic Trumpeter calls unseen from a vast distance. "Thy song expands my numb'd, imbonded spirit -nthou freest me, launchest me, floating and basking on Heaven's lake" "now pouring, whirling, like a tempest round me, now low, subdued...". The trumpet calls, its melody echoed by the soprano, whose voice should shimmer with just enough vibrato to suggest cosmic ecstasy, as she follows leaving "the fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day" and finds serenity on another plane, the orchestral line expansive behind her as if it, too, were inhaling "grass, most air, and roses". If Beethoven included "Turkish"themes, Holst was inspired by Sanskrit concepts, though the text, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is equally mystic.
In his second movement, Holst addresses "no other theme but love - . knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love". Note the lines, tumbling, flowing, wave after wave, echoed by different sections of the orchestra, the distant trumpet calling still further. The third movement is darker - drum rolls , trombones and bassoons "conjure war's wild alarums"...."Lo! mid the clouds if dus the glint of bayonets, I see the grim-faced cannoniers ....the crackling of the guns". Highly graphic, and dramatic. Beethoven wrote his Ninth when the Naploeanic wars were living memory. Holst was writing in the tense years before the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, when the probability of war would hav been felt by many. Holst's finale is a heroic outburst. though it employs cymbals, brass, timpani and strings in full force it is not militaristic. Thus "exulting, culminating song" is a "Hymn to the Universal God from universal man". The last section is intoxicated with bliss :"A reborn race appears - a perfect world......war, sorrow, suffering gone - the rank earth purged - nothing but joy!" Somewhere up in the Heavens, Schiller, Beethoven, Whitman and Holst are having a cackle at experts who think The Will of the People is more important than God. At the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, Partington will also conduct David Matthews’s Stars, a new work. More connections - Matthews edited The Mystic Trumpeter for perfomance. The notes, on the Andrew Davis recording with Susan Gritton as soprano, are by David''s brother Colin.
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