Last week it was The
Messiah; this week it’s another major choral work written for an English
audience. Both have accumulated their
fare share of performing traditions which serve more to distract than enhance
the listening experience today. With The Messiah many of those traditions are
obvious (why do audiences persist in
that puerile habit of interrupting the “Hallelujah Chorus” by getting to their
feet during it?), but while they are generally more subtle in Benjamin
Britten’s War Requiem they are
equally irritating.
Many English musicians are passionately proud of Britten –
his more ardent admirers speak of him with a kind of sycophantic adoration
which brooks no dissent – and in claiming ownership of his music, they tend to
(albeit unwittingly) create barriers which those less conscious of his genius find
difficult to overcome. On top of that,
with the War Requiem there has grown
up a belief that the only true interpretation is that which Britten himself set
down in the recording studio some 50 years ago, and few conductors seem
prepared to view the work afresh.
Initial indications for the Singapore performance on Friday
were not good. There was a glutinously
emotive pre-concert talk and an on-stage announcement which left us in no doubt
that we were present at an event which was rather more an act of homage to
Britten and his beliefs than a mere concert presentation of a musical work, while,
in an attempt to ape the Britten recording, soloists were chosen from England
(tenor Barry Banks), Germany (baritone Detlef Roth) and Russia (soprano Elena
Zelenskaya). To cap it all, the
programme book sported a plain black cover.
This looked as if it was going to be yet another display of adulatory
commemoration for a fallen hero.
Amazingly, though, as soon as the performance started, it
was clear that Chinese conductor Lan Shui was in no way prepared to take
Britten’s recording as his model. Almost
every element of this performance showed a freshness of approach and an
individuality which transformed it from the reverential to the stimulating. Shui took a wholly distinctive approach,
passionate and driven, articulate and, at times, terse. The transitions from full chorus and
orchestra to soloists and chamber ensemble to children’s choir and electronic
keyboard (and whoever labelled in the programme booklet the ghastly electronic machine
Shane Thio so masterfully controlled as an “harmonium” clearly had never ever heard
or seen a real harmonium) were seamlessly managed, with Lim Yau, the on-stage
sub-conductor, absolutely brilliant in taking up the baton from Lan Shui and
propelling his chamber ensemble along with vivid drama. In many ways Lim Yau was the true star of the
show; a lesser musician could easily have let things sag, yet not only was he
utterly at one with Shui’s approach, but he also elevated it so that the
soloist/chamber ensemble moments were projected as vivid mini-dramas against
the broadly-sweeping soundscapes of the full chorus.
Perhaps talking of Lim’s taking up the baton from Shui is
not quite right. Amazingly, Shui did the
whole performance with his right arm held rigid due to an earlier
accident. Throwing all hints of accepted
conducting technique aside, he made very clear his intentions through a wildly
waving, batonless, left arm, a great deal of frantic bobbing of the head and
odd little kicks from a very rigid right leg.
It looked strange but, boy, did it get results. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra was on
absolutely top-notch form, playing with marvellous intensity and superb
ensemble. How much of this was down to
Shui and how much down to the Leader I cannot say, but with Markus Gundermann
in the Leader’s chair, I suspect he had a significant part to play in the
ultimate success of this performance.
Gundermann was, in many respects, the perfect choice to be the Leader
for the War Requiem. In one man, he embodies Britten’s
original plan to bring certain nationalities together. Born in Germany and brought up in that part
of the country which, throughout his youth, remained firmly under Soviet
influence, Gundermann has adapted himself superbly to a “western democratic”
life, speaks perfect English and is, most importantly, a divine violinist. He was not responsible, however, for the one
moment of true spine-tingling wonder from the orchestra. That was down to the magnificent SSO brass
who, in their earth-shaking fanfares in the “Dies Irae”, provided the most
awesome moment in the entire performance.
Nowhere in the performing traditions of the War Requiem is Britten’s early recording
more detrimental to modern-day appreciation of the work than in his choice of
soloists. Musically Heather Harper (who sang
in the première in 1962) was far more appropriate than Galina Vishnevskaya (who
sang on the recording), yet in selecting the statuesque Elena Zelenskaya, the
Singapore performance may have accorded with Britten’s desire to have a Russian
soprano, but did not do the performance itself any favours. She was big and forthright, but lacked the
clarity and openness to make any impact.
Far more rewarding were the two male soloists. I have sat through no end
of performances and recordings in which various tenor and baritone soloists
slavishly work to emulate the two iconic soloists of the original recording. Tenors without number have done their
damndest to imitate Peter Pears, managing the unique vocal inflections (cruelly
described by a singing teacher of my youth as being “like gargling in concrete”)
but none of the sublime artistry, while baritones innumerable have attempted
the strangely nasal English pronunciation of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau without
any hope of matching that supremely wonderful voice. What a wonder to hear in Banks a tenor who
gave clear, sincere and precise delivery of words and music; a rare chance to
hear the actual pitches Britten had written delivered with unfaltering
accuracy. For his part, Roth was focused
and strong with unaccented English (although occasionally mangled when the
drama of the occasion seemed to get to him) and a voice which had great presence
but none of the bell-like resonance of Fischer-Dieskau. I very much admired, too, the sense of these
two soloists being within the texture rather than forced out on top, and if at
times their voices were overwhelmed by the instrumental forces around them
surely this is just what Britten wrote (even if, convention has it, he did not
achieve it in his own performances)?
Good, too, to have such a warm and beautifully polished children’s
choir as that assembled by Wong Lai Foon for this performance. Usually performances follow Britten’s lead in
using just trebles and getting them to squawk and rasp in parody of the “Continental
Tone” he so much admired. Wong gave us sweetness
and purity; and it was truly angelic, floating down from a high balcony in the
Esplanade (which, I have to say, got the sound just about right for this
performance. From where I sat in the
stalls I heard everything in fine detail, a very pleasing overall balance and,
most of all, a sumptuous acoustic backcloth.
And, while I’m at it, congratulations to the excellent sur-titler who only
once or twice changed the discreet slides a trifle late in the day; I don’t as
a rule like sur-titles in the concert hall, but these did the job sufficiently
unobtrusively not to cause too much distraction.).
The 140 voices ranged across the back of the Hong Kong
Cultural Centre Concert Hall last week all belonged to a single choir. Stretching across the even greater width of
the Esplanade in Singapore were some 200 (excluding the 50 or so in the
children’s chorus). These were drawn
from five different choirs, including members of the Shanghai Opera House Chorus,
and while no choir made up of bits and pieces is ever going to have the
conglomerate fusion of sound that a single entity does (in terms of attack,
articulation, ensemble and overall choral tone, the Hong Kong Philharmonic were
streets ahead of the Singapore team), Lim Yau had trained them to an impressive
level of cohesion. It was a horribly
top-heavy chorus, men outnumbered by women over two-to-one (and vocally, if I
can put it this way, by almost five-to-one), but it did a splendid job
responding to Shui’s direction with great assurance. Occasionally the sheer physical distance from
one end of the choir to the other led to fuzzy ensemble, but that was a minor failing
in an overall picture of glorious triumphs.
This was not a revelatory performance – Lan Shui doesn’t do
revelatory – nor was it particularly inspiring – with most people on stage performing
the work for the first time in their lives, there were too many moments of
tension for it to break entirely free of its bonds – but it was deeply, deeply
satisfying. How nice that we can, at
last, experience the music of Britten as if it was simply the work of a composer
rather than the summation of a nation’s psyche.
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