Herbert Howells Missa Sabrinensis, revealed in its true glory

At last, Herbert Howell's Missa Sabrinensis (1954) with David Hill conducting the Bach Choir, with whom David Willcocks performed the piece at the Royal Festival Hall in 1982. Willcocks commissioned the Mass for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester in 1954, when Howells himself conducted the premiere. "Such was the level of intricate detail of Howell's counterpoint", noted Wilcocks, "that he was like a medieval stonemason carving high in a cathedral, knowing that his details would be perceptible only to the composer."  This new edition by Paul Spicer and David Hill, recorded irded by Hyperion using modern sound technology, reveals those details in their full intricate glory.

In Missa Sabrinensis, Howells adapts the Mass format to celebrate the river Severn, (in Latin, "Sabrina") and by extension its role in British history, and specifically its connections to British music. The 1954 premiere of Howells’s Missa Sabrinensis was paired with Vaughan Williams' Hodie, dedicated to Howells in his maturity.  By extension, the Mass  also celebrates the Gloucestershire landscape and its personal significance for Howells and Ivor Gurney, with whom he would go walking in the surrounding countryside.

Nonetheless, Howells breaks away significantly from conventional choral tradition in the sophistication of this Mass. As Jonathan Clinch writes in his notes "the Mass can be heard as more of a choral symphony, in which he gradually builds up significant blocks of sound, using the soloists, chorus and orchestra as contrapuntal forces. This is the main reason that the work was considered so difficult, as the orchestra was not there to support the chorus in the traditional manner, but rather to build more and more lines of polyphony.  The river metaphor is appropriate as Howells writes such long lines, which are subsumed into the overall mass of sound, surging forward through the first four movements and gradually dispersing in the final two; thus, despite the complexity and number of Howells’ parts, it is the overall symphonic arch that dominates." 

The surging lines of the Kyrie with their complex melismata suggest vast horizons, such as the flow of a mighty river, or plainchant under the vaulting of a cathedral.  Soprano (Helena Dix) and tenor (Benjamin Hulett) function as an extension of the chorus. Their lines undulate, creating dense textural patterns, as if the search for faith were greater than the need for simple resolution, the final movements ending in diminuendo. Though Clinch identifies elements of Debussy and Ravel in this Kyrie, as well as Parry and Vaughan Williams, the synthesis is distinctively Howells’, closer to the spirit of Howells' English Mass, from the following year, 1955 (Please read more here )  In the Gloria, Clinch notes "ecstatic fanfares and constant dotted rhythms... creating a texture teeming with life, reinforced with bright high brass and percussion.". Again, the image of a great river, fertile and fertilizing,  while the underlying flow remains strong and unhurried.

Of the Credo, Howells wrote "this movement is begun in full cry, chorally and orchestrally, using a theme that will return at all cardinal moments.....At ‘in Spiritum Sanctum’ the theme of ‘Qui sedes’ and that of ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Agnus Dei’ are quoted. Thereafter the movement’s climax is reached through the style of opposed diatonic chords (‘et apostolicam Ecclesiam’), recapitulation (‘Confiteor’) and coda (‘Et vitam venturi saeculi’).". This Credo is a statement of hope and faith : all four soloists (Dix, Hulett, Christine Rice and Roderick Williams) join in, their voices reflected by the their counterparts in the choir.  For a moment the soloists sing with relatively little accompaniment, but on "et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas" all voices combine. Here, too, the orchestra (the BBC Concert Orchestra) comes to the fore, in glorious finale.

Howell's Sanctus begins with reference to Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms,  which he regularly cited in his teaching at the Royal College of Music. The Symphony of Psalms is a hybrid, its texts drawn from Psalms 38, 39 and 150, blending the form of ritual religious music to orchestral style, at once ancient and modern, with the unmistakable austerity that would mark Stravinsky's later style. Huge blocks of sound, hewn as if from a rockface, yet moving forward with slow but monumental pace. There are connections between the two works. Howells creates a wall of sound,  building up dense, complex textures culminating in an outburst where the organ leads voices and orchestra. textures building up in density : "Osanna in excelsis" before yet another return to pregnant stillness, from which the Benedictus emerges.  The voice parts here are spare, resembling plainchant, enhancing the purity of the text, creating luminous contrast with what has gone before. 

In the Agnus Dei, Howells reiterates themes from the Kyrie, emphasizing the cyclic symphonic structure of this Mass.  It is as if Howells were looking back while at the same venturing forward to new musical territory.  It reminds us of the tragedy that generated the Hymnus Paradisi, as if the offering up of the life of Michael Howells, so many years previously, had made the tenderness and resolution of this conclusion possible.  Howell's Missa Sabrinesis is a masterpiece, its true genius revealed in this exceptionally sensitive performance, recorded so lucidly that it defies its reputation for being difficult to perform.   This is essential listening for anyone into Howells and the true greatness of his work. 

This recording pairs the Mass with Michael, written one morning whern Howells was having breakfast with his son. It's a joyous hymn tune employing youthful voices, highlighting the simple joys of life. The brass fanfares might evoke adventure, hope, and promises that tragically, would never come to pass.

Mystic Trumpeter blasts Brexit bar on Beethoven - Three Choirs Festival

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.

Three Choirs Festival, Worcester 2017

Members booking has now started for the Three Choirs Festival, this year inn Worcester, in the heart of "Elgar Country". The first Cathedral concert on Saturday 22nd July will begin with Elgar (Great is the Lord),  and there will be, as always, the Dream of Gerontius (Roderick Williams) but its highlight, conducted by Peter Nardone, should be Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, written in wartime, confronting  violence, in the belief that good can vanquish evil.  Benjamin Britten will be on the programme too (Four Sea Interludes) : not a composer normally connected with the Three Choirs, but included because the Festival reaches out to all.  Fundamentally, the Three Choirs Festival is Christian Communion, though you certainly don't have to be Christian to be welcome,  and this year's themes deal with issues of faith and hope in troubled times.

Thus Mendelssohn St Paul on the evening of Sunday 23rd July, where the forces of the magnificent Three Choirs Festival Chorus will be heard in full, magnificent glory, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Geraint Bowen.  In the days of the early Church, the faithful were oppressed. But Paul switched from persecutor to convert, remaining firm in his mission, even unto martyrdom.  Bach's influence runs powerfully through this oratorio. There are wonderful chorales, ideally suited to the Chorus, and strong, dramatic parts for the soloists, all built on an austere bedrock that connects to the concept of a radical new faith whose adherents were prepared to die for what they believed in. 

Even more rough-hewn and almost savage, Janáček's Glagolitic Mass on Wednesday 26th July. In early Czech tradition, thousands of worshippers would gather together to sing in communal affirmation. Janáček, an atheist,  who played organ in churches, aimed for something quite unorthodox. Thus his use of an old Slavonic dialect, rather than Latin.  His passion for the outdoors inspires the piece. "My cathedral ", he said, was “the enormous grandeur of mountains beyond which stretched the open sky…...the scent of moist forests my incense”. I've written extensively about the Glagolitic Mass and its composer, please see HERE and HERE.    This evening's concert will also feature Torsten Rasch A Welsh Night and Richard Strauss Metamorphosen. 

"An English Farewell" for the final night of the season on 29th July, a superb programme with Gerald Finzi's Die Natalis with Ed Lyon, whom I should really like to hear in this piece as  he's very impressive.  Dies Natalis is transcendental, mystical and ecstatic by turns : utterly unique, and one of the quirkiest masterpieces in English music. Again, it's a piece I've written a lot about over the last 20 years. Please see HERE and HERE for example.  Lots more on Finzi on this site, too.  Dies Natalis addresses the miracle of birth, but Herbert Howells' Hymnus Paradisi addresses the horror that is death, particularly the death of a child.  Heard together, Dies Natalis and Hymnus Paradisi should be quite an experience.  One a star  turn for a soloist, the other a star  turn for choirs.  Please read HERE what I've written about Hymnus Paradisi in the past.  Also on the programme, Raloh Vaughan Williams's Serenande to Music, which will give sixteen singers a chance to shine.  The Philharmionia will be conducted by Peter Nardone.

But the Three Choirs festival is much more than  big Cathedral concerts.  Part of its appeal lies in the friendly, community atmosphere, where people come together for smaller-scale concerts, talks, events, excursions and meals. Literally, breaking bread and sharing in the spirit.   Choral Evensong every evening,  organ recitals (including Saint-Saëns Symphony no 3), early and Tudor music, premieres of new work, Shakespeare plays, a visit from the Choir of King's College Cambridge, and this year an unusual afternoon of Tudor Symphonies (with Andrew Carwood and the Cardinall's Musick).  .Visit the Three Choirs Festival website for more. 

On Chosen Hill Gloucester, with Gerald Finzi

On Chosen Hill,  in Churchdown outside Gloucester, in summer.  Chosen Hill is one of those "power spots", like Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury, which seem to have the power to draw out positive energy.  Perhaps they connect to sites of prehistoric cosmology, to leylines or force fields or whatever; they seem charged.  For me,  it's a kind of "sacred site" with its connections to music and creativity.  Nearly every evening, Ivor Gurney used to trek up Chosen Hill from the city of Gloucester five miles below. You can still hike the path up through the wooded slopes he might have used: it's too steep to build on, and rather overgrown, but safer for walkers than  using the road for cars.  

Chosen Hill isn't really just a hill, but  a hill reconstructed as a mound during the Bronze Age, possibly a fort or site of religious significance, commanding a panoramic vista over the plains and estuary.  At its summit, the Normans built what is now St Bartholomew's.  Once I visited when the slope beside the church had collapsed in a  landslide.  The church was cordoned off, "Danger" signs warning people to keep away from the crumbling cliff.  When you're young, you think you're immortal, so I climbed over,  peering precariously over the buttress and looked at the exposed foundations.  Now the area is restored, and safe, and there's even a bench where you can sit and look out towards the ocean, but on this last visit, I got stuck on the steep grass verge where you're not supposed to walk. Luckily, I was saved – ordinary people can be guardian angels when they are in the right place at the right time.

In the early 1920's, shy, repressed city boy Gerald Finzi visited the Cotswolds for the first time. He met up with Detmar Blow and other arts and crafts types, who introduced him to exotic things like yoghurt and alternative living.  In the 1930's Finzi and his wife Joy, who knew herbal lore, set up Ashmansworth (near Newbury)  as a haven of natural self-sufficiency.  Decades later, when  Daniel Barenboim visited Jacqueline du Pré (Hilary Finzi's sister), he was horrified  by their hippie ways!

But first, back to Chosen Hill.  Below the church is a tiny cottage, low slung, almost invisible from the road. On New Year's Eve, 1925, Finzi went to a party there.  At midnight, the guests came outside, into sharp frost, the night sky filled with stars, and "heard bells ringing across  Gloucestershire from beside the Severn to the hill villages of the Cotswolds". Stephen Banfield, Finzi's biographer, calls this the "hilltop epiphany", for it released in Finzi a surge of original music. This was the inspiration for In Terra Pax and Nocturne whose sub-title is in fact New Year's Music, filled with bells and joy. Finzi needed an impetus to find himself and something happened that night under the stars. "I love New Year's Eve," he told a friend later, "Though it's the saddest time of the year..... a time of silence and quiet". And soon after asked himself "must knowledge come to me, if it comes at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by the familiar process (of reading other's work)?" ie,  Finzi was learning to trust his own artistic instincts.

Chosen Hill remained so dear to Finzi that in 1956 he took Ralph Vaughan Williams up the steep hill.  Presumably they drove in Finzi's big 50's car, since RVW was 83.  There are several photos of the two composers taken that week outside Gloucester Cathedral, where they were attending the Three Choirs Festival. The new tenants of the cottage in the churchyard had young children who were suffering from some childhood malady. Finzi's  immune system was weak, as he had cancer. He caught the children's illness, and three weeks later died in the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.  For Finzi, Chosen Hill marked a beginning and an end.  For me, being there this summer was also a kind of pilgrimage.  How blessed I felt! Please read my review of Mahler's Symphony no 8 at Gloucester Cathedral, highlight of this year's Three Choirs Festival. 

Photos: Roger Thomas

Mahler Symphony No 8 Three Choirs Festival, Gloucester Cathedral

"The Three Choirs are the Three Choirs Festival", said the Very Rev Stephen Lake, Dean of Gloucester Cathedral, introducing Mahler Symphony no 8.  The combined chorus of the three cathedrals that make up the Three Choirs Festival are the epitome of excellence in their genre. Every Sunday, most Holy Days and at Evensong, members of the choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford sing together: no professional choruses can quite do the same. Moreover, members of these choirs sing for the sheer joy of singing, and as a communal celebration of faith.  The Three Choirs Festival is very much "value added music", because performers and audience come together for something even greater than music: a belief in higher ideals and in the Life Everlasting.  Ideal, in many ways for Mahler, a composer whose whole output dealt with the transcendence of mortal life.

Mahler's Symphony no 2 "The Resurrection" features regularly at the Three Choirs Festival, as has his Symphony no 3, but his Symphony no 8 is an altogether more formidable beast.  I've heard it many times live, and nearly always, when it's become unstuck, it's been because the choral forces don't cohere.  No chance of that happening with the combined choirs of the Three Choirs Festival!  Three hundred years of coming together for common purpose does make a difference. Although I've heard many excellent choirs in Mahler's Eighth, never have I experienced more unity and intense focus.   Such sharpness of attack, such alacrity: hundreds of voices singing together with absolute clarity. An ideal balance of voices, not easily achieved with disparate  forces with different ways of doing things. Absolutely, this Mahler 8 will be one to remember for the sheer brilliance of the choral singing. Good music deserves no less.

Structurally, Mahler's Eighth is not a "symphony" and its spiritual cosmology is highly unorthodox. It's a hybrid that defies conventional form.  The first part uses a medieval Latin hymn attributed to  Rabanus, Archbishop of Mainz (c780-856) which describes how Jesus's disciples wondered what would happen to them since Jesus had gone on ahead.  In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven upon them in the form of holy flames, inspiring them to go forth into the world, spreading the Gospels. But The Apostles this is not.  Mahler adapts the Pentecost as a metaphor for divine inspiration and, by extension, the mission embraced by a truly original, creative artist.  "Veni, Creator spiritus" connects the spirit of creation with the Spirit of the Creator, who may not necessarily be God in a Christian sense.

At the Three Choirs Festival, it's perfectly acceptable to hear an interpretation of the piece from a Christian perspective, and why not?  Thus the resounding chords of the vast Gloucester Cathedral organ, with its magnificent "personality". Yes! Organs have unique voices and this one is very distinctive indeed. Though organists travel, organs don't, so it does matter when a player knows the particulars of the instrument as intimately as Jonathan Hope does.  Far too often Mahler 8 performances are diminished because concert hall organs are lesser creatures, and even big brutes like the Royal Albert Hall organ don't have the innately warm character of the one at Gloucester Cathedral.  Moreover, at Gloucester, the choruses are used to singing with this organ, avoiding the problems of balance that can happen elsewhere. The natural affinity between this organ and this combined chorus was a wonder to experience, probably not something we'll hear anywhere else.  Even if the "bells" sounded rather too church-like, again, why not? Gloucester Cathedral is a church, so context is perfectly valid.  It seemed that the bells might indeed have been the bells of Gloucester Cathedral itself, a unique touch. 

The First Part of this Mahler 8 zipped along with such brio that details were lost, but the glorious choral singing and organ were more than compensation. Indeed, this performance, conducted by Festival Director Adrian Partington, a supremely experienced choral conductor, made me realize just how strongly the choral parts are written. Because so many well-known recordings of Mahler 8 were made by conductors with an opera background, we've become accustomed to listening to the piece as if it were quasi-theatre, assuming the soloists are roles in a drama.  That's a valid way into the piece, but its meaning is far more esoteric and mystical.  So I was delighted that, for a change. the soloists, while good, especially favourites like Hye-yoon Lee and Catherine Wyn-Rogers,  didn't overdominate.

After the tumult of the First Part, Partington observed the pause for reflection before the long, ruminative section where the orchestra sings, not the voices.  Although this section isn't showy and no voices are present, it is critically important to meaning. "Accende lumen sensibus" refers to the concept of light rising upwards linking to heaven, illuminating those it touches, cleansing them of ego, selfishness and petty concerns.  Truly original creativity, like meditative prayer, comes when the pollution of toxic detritus is expunged. Goethe's anchorites live in humble isolation, communing only with  God.  Thus this part is like quiet prayer. It's not an interlude but the soul of the symphony.  Please read my article Mahler, silence, creativity and Holy Saturday.  (click for link) Since Partington is a magnificent choral conductor, I was happy enough that, on this occasion the Philharmoinia Orchestra didn't play with the refinement they gave for Esa-Pekka Salonen, their usual Chief, when they did Mahler 8 in 2014, when some parts of the choirs seemed to be thinking about their chorus masters, not following the conductor.  

With the return of the choruses, this Three Choirs Mahler 8 flared once again into blazing glory.  Such wonderful singing banished all quibbles.  In this final section, the Veni Creator Spiritus shone magnificently. The Three Choirs Youth Chorus sounded particularly fresh and innocent, underlining the critical importance in this symphony of concepts of birth and renewal: creativity as continuity of life as well as of artistic regeneration.  Some of the boy singers looked extremely young. I very much  appreciated their vulnerability and piping English accents. Perhaps one day these boys will carry on the Three Choirs Festival's values, whether as musicians or in the audience.

Gloucester Cathedral has the strongest acoustic of all the three Cathedrals, maximizing the impact of this performance. "I could hear the rehearsals" said the Dean, "in my garden".  In a way I was glad to be seated where one of the vast Gothic pillars shielded me from the force of direct impact, so I could hear the music, not just the noise.  This piece was dubbed "The Symphony of a Thousand" not by Mahler, but by a canny promoter who knew that some audiences prefer quantity to quality.  In a relatively small performance place like Gloucester Cathedral, a little goes a long way.  But the choirs were so wonderful, and their enthusiasm so infectious, that I was carried away by the "spirit of creativity".

Bottom photo: Roger Thomas

Three Choirs Festival Gloucester Elgar Parry

The Three Choirs Festival 2016 launched in glory at Gloucester Cathedral with Parry's Jerusalem and Elgar's The Kingdom. The "Holy City and The Heavenly Kingdom", a brilliant pairing which expresses what the Three Choirs Festival represents.  For three hundred years, the Three Choirs Festival has stood not only for musical excellence but also for communion, in the deepest sense of the word, bringing people together in the celebration of a glorious ideal.  

This wasn't the usual Jerusalem in its famous setting by Elgar but Parry's original, believed lost for decades until uncovered by Jeremy Dibble, whose 1992 biography of Parry restored Parry's status and reputation – essential reading.  Parry's orchestration isn't as lush as Elgar's, but the original is worth hearing for that very fact: Parry focuses on the questioning and on the irony in Blake's visionary poem. By setting the first verse for a single singer, Parry's setting emphasizes the provocative nature of Blake's conception. "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?".  In the full choral version, we get so carried away by crowd enthusiasm that we don't question. In Parry's version, however, Blake's irony is made more clear.  And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?" Bluntly, the answer is "No" So much for simplistic certainties. We may not get the glorious flourishes of Elgar's orchestration, but we do get an insight into Parry. Please read my piece on Jerusalem HERE.

In  Elgar's The Kingdom, the apostles are about to embark on their journey which still continues 2000 years later. For all the grandeur and vast forces involved, at its heart,  the piece is humble though assertive. The apostles are ordinary men serving a higher cause. Saints aren't superhuman beings but human beings inspired to do extraordinary things, inspired by faith and love.

Elgar dreamed of writing a trilogy of oratorios examining the nature of Christianity as Jesus taught his followers, using the grand context of the Edwardian taste. In The Apostles, Jesus sets out his beliefs in simple, human terms. Judas doubts him and is confounded. In The Kingdom, the focus is more diffuse. The disciples are many and their story unfolds through a series of tableaux, impressive set pieces, but with less obvious human drama. The final part would have been titled The Last Judgement, when World and Time are destroyed and the faithful of all ages are raised from the dead, joining Jesus in Eternity. The sheer audacity of that vision may have stymied Elgar, much in the way that Sibelius's dreams for his eighth symphony inhibited realization. Fragments of The Last Judgement made their way into drafts for what was to be Elgar's third and final symphony, which we now know in Anthony Payne's performing version.  There are familiar themes from The Apostles in The Kingdom, so context helps. But the fact that the trilogy wasn't completed is in itself a refection on the fact the mission isn't complete and won't be until the End of Time, hopefully not in the foreseeable future, though things might not quite seem that way sometimes.  Please read  HERE about The Apostles at the Three Choirs in Worcester in 2014.

The Kingdom unfolds in a dignified procession, a series of tableaux each savoured witha measured pace, the intervals between them providing pauses for contemplation.   Interestingly, The Kingdom focuses on female figures. Does this reflect Elgar's Catholicism, and his personal beliefs? The contralto has lovely passages, and the soprano has the glorious "The sun goeth down" and dialogues with the solo violin.

At Gloucester Cathedral last night Adrian Partington conducted the combined choruses of the Three Choirs, the Philharmonia Orchestra with soloists Claire Rutter, Sarah Connolly, Ashley Riches, and the youthful Magnus Walker, replacing James Oxley at short notice.  I booked my tickets months ago, but unexpectedly couldn't attend. You'd think ticket returns would be as valuable as gold, but I was so fortunate to be able to give mine to very cherished friends, not Elgar aficionados, but good and decent people, who had a wonderful time. For me, sharing the gift of the Three Choirs is almost as good as being there! 

C H Sorley A Swift Radiant Morning - Roderick Williams

Roderick Williams and Susie Allan  gave the world premiere of A Swift Radiant Morning commissioned for theThree Choirs Festival. Listen here, because it's an interesting work that extends the canon of British song. "A swift radiant morning" aptly describes Charles Hamilton Sorley, a young man of outstanding promise, killed by a sniper at Loos, seven months short of his 21st birthday.  At that age, few fulfil their potential, but  C H Sorley must have been quite a personality.  In this photo he stares at the camera without flinching, unfazed by the knowledge that he was going to war.  We can see why Sorley's father said "he looked upon the world with clear eyes , and the surface did not deceive him".
 
Sorley was in Trier when war was declared in 1914. On his return to England, he did his duty and joined the Suffolk Regiment . Yet in his poem To Germany, he writes of war with maturity way beyond his years. The poem is worth reading because it shows his inner strength. He could resist the hate games around him.  This lucid intelligence marks him out as a person with vision. Notice too his direct, yet highly distinctive, way with words. How he would have relished the freedoms of the 1920's and 1930's. Many good poets were destroyed by war - Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney, but John Masefield said that Sorley was the greatest loss.

In A Swift Radiant Morning, Rhian Samuel (b 1944) sets two poems and four texts by Sorley, which has a bearing on her musical conception. Sorley left only 37 complete poems, but a large body of letters. They make fascinating reading, since Sorley was an acute observer and processed ideas with great originality.  Here's a link to the full collection of letters published in 1916. Letters are like a conversation, where one party speaks and the other responds. The voice leads, but the piano comments, unobtrusively. Sorley's texts are so expressive that the piano can't quite compete, but that's no demerit.  Samuel respects Sorley's syntax and turns of phrase, editing the longer texts with sensitivity.    Roderick Williams is an ideal interpreter, since he has the uncanny ability to make what he sings feel personal and direct. A natural match for CH Sorley !  At times, Samuel forces the voice above its natural range. Williams manages extremely well, but I wonder if this cycle could be transposed for tenor.  A Swift Radiant Morning is a well-crafted, sensitive work which deserves attention, and not just because the subject himself was so singular. I've subscribed to a source which features a lot of Rhian Samuel's work. Lots worth listening to.

At Hereford, Roderick Williams and Susie Allan also did Tim Torry's The Face of Grief (2003) to poems by Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) but the setting is minimal and the poems not  in the same league as Sorley's.  Please also read my piece on the rest of Roderick Williams's  recital, which highlighted Elgar's Sea Pictures, in the piano version, transposed for baritone. 

Exciting Three Choirs Festival Gloucester 2016

Gloucester Cathedral hosts the 2016 Three Choirs Festival. Click here for my review of Mahler Symphony no 8.  "The Holy City and the Heavenly Kingdom" is the theme of the opening concert on 23rd July, a pairing  of Parry's Jerusalem with Elgar's The Kingdom. Especially exciting because this Jerusalem won't be the familiar version but Parry's original, uncovered a few years ago by Parry specialist Jeremy Dibble, whose 1992  biography restored Parry's true status. By setting the first verse for a single singer, Parry's setting emphasizes the provocative nature of Blake's conception. "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?".  In the full choral version, we get so carried away by crowd enthusiasm that we don't question. In Parry's version, however, Blake's irony is made more clear.  And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?" Bluntly, the answer is "No" So much for simplistic certainties. We may not get the glorious flourishes of Elgar's orchestration, but we do get an insight into Parry. Please read my piece on Jerusalem HERE

The Three Choirs Festival, though, is Elgar territory par excellence  so devotees will be out in force for Elgar's The Kingdom, which follows on from The Apostles  and would have culminated in a piece about the Last Judgement, which was never completed. It helps to imagine it, though, because it puts the Kingdom into context. The apostles are about to embark on their journey, a mission which still continues 2000 years later. For all the grandeur and vast forces,  the piece is humble though assertive. The apostles are ordinary men serving a higher cause.  This will be a showcase for the magnificent Three Choirs Festival Chorus, probably the finest flowering of the whole British choral tradition. Adrian Partington will conduct The Kingdom  with the Three Festivals Chorus, the Philharmonia Orchestra and soloists.  Read  HERE about The Kingdom at the Proms with Andrew Davis. and  HERE about The Apostles at the Three Choirs in Worcester in 2014. In the TV broadcast of the BBC Proms The Kingdom, I'm on screen a lot, a tiny figure dressed in white in the stalls near the choirs, participating in spirit.

 Although members of the three constituent cathedral choirs have been meeting annually since around 1719, the Three Choirs Festival is infinitely more than about music. It's a communal celebration of those who believe in the spiritual ideals of fellowship. Every performance starts with prayer, there's evensong each evening and the eucharist is celebrated on Sunday. Indeed, for many, singing is a form of prayer. "For God is in all things". Although I am not C of E - neither was Elgar - one of the things I love about the Three Choirs Festival is how genuinely nice  the people are. The staff could not be more helpful, and audience members welcome you like you belong.   
 
More landmarks of the choral  tradition follow: Mendelssohn's Elijah on Monday 25th, conducted by Peter Nardone, Berlioz Grand Messe des morts on Wednesday 27th conducted by Edward Gardner. On Friday 29th, Rossini Petite Messes solonnelle, 11,am conducted by Geraint Bowen,  A fascinating juxtaposition that evening with  "Carmina and Enigma"  Carl Orff  Carmina Burana plus Elgar Enigma Variations and on Saturday 30th,  Mahler  Symphony No 8, conducted by Adrian Partington.  

The Three Choirs Festival is also a celebration of British music and composers.  In the Cathedral on Tuesday 26th "England's Glory", music by Vaughan Williams and Butterworth, plus numerous concerts in other venues featuring composers like Gurney, Finzi, Howells, Ireland, and others, plus talks thereon. Most interesting, for me, the concert on Sunday afternoon in Cirencester which features Howells's Requiem and Philip Lancaster's new work War Passion.  As always with the Three Choirs plenty of talks on history, the Three Choirs heritage, Shakespeare (Hamlet this year), plus movies and the society lunches. For more details,  HERE IS THE FESTIVAL BOOKLET

Mendelssohn Elias (Elijah) Rheingau Festival

Thomas Ollemans sings the title part in Mendelssohn's Elias (Elijah) Op 70  at the Rheingau Musik- Festival in 2015, with the Akademie für Alte Musik conducted by Hans-Christoph Rademann, with the RIAS Kammerchor and soloists Marlis Petersen, .Lioba Braun and Maximillian Schmidt. 

I'm hoping to hear Elijah at the Three Choirs Festival this summer in Gloucester Cathedral with the Three Choirs Choir, which combines the formidable forces of the combined choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester which make the Three Choirs Festival a momentous experience. Mendelssohn's oratorios are very much a part of the English choral tradition. Elijah was written for and premiered in Birmingham in 1846. But I have a weakness for Elias, sung in German, having learned it from the wonderful 1993 recording with Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and choir and soloists Theo Adam, Elly Ameling,  Annalies Burmeister and Peter Schreier.  In German, Elias just seems to sound craggier and more uncompromising than in English: important, I think, to interpretation, for Elijah was a hardbitten prophet of the Old Testament, having more in common with the Lutheran values of the Reformation than with the established Church of England, despite the superlative choral singing we so often get with English Elijahs (especially at the Three Choirs Festival). 

With its period instruments and spare textures the Akademie für Alte Musik creates the spare gritty texture I love so much in Mendelssohn, a composer much tougher and more assertive than many give him credit for. It helps, too, that this performances employs only 34 chorus members, nothing near the 270 at the Birmingham premiere. Also, the abbey at Rheingau is small enough to concentrate sound: the cameras focus thoughtfully on its rough-hewn stone columns and walls.  Elijah connects to something much deeper and more personal in Mendelssohn's spirit. Ollemans is striking: from the very first, his Elias carries authority "So wahr der Herr, der Gott Israels lebet, vor dem ich stehe" The Overture that follows feels like an extension of this message.  

A drought has descended on the land, the people are dying. Elijah appears in the desert, revives the widow's son and prays, successfully,  for rain. The people are happy, but as so often, success attracts jealousy. Ahab prefers Baal. On Mount Horeb, Elijah is joined by angels. In this performance, the singing in Part 2 is gently lyrical: this beauty contrasts well with the resolute firmness that has gone before.  Thus the kindness that permeates the final chorus, where the emphasis is on enlightenment, not triumphalism  "Alsdann wird euer Licht hervorbrechen wie die Morgenröte, und eure Besserung wird schnell wachsen, und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn wird euch zu sich nehmen". Quite close, I think, to Mendelssohn's core values.