CBSO
Symphony
Hall ****
With everyone’s mind, Government excepted, focussed upon
saving our planet, Brett Dean’s substantial cantata In This Brief Moment was an
apt choice for the latest premiere of a CBSO commission, originally intended
for the orchestra’s centenary, but postponed during lockdown.
It is written for a huge orchestra – some might say extravagant
– including a vast array of percussion, two harps, organ, piano, contrabass
clarinet, drum-kit, and for a brief moment a striding double-bass, two choirs
and soprano and countertenor soloists, here Jennifer France and Patrick Terry,
melding beautifully with each other.
Dean’s score makes powerful points, always impeccably imagined
from this ex-Berlin Philharmonic violist, but the problem is with the text. We
could already smell a rat with the Pseuds’ Corner candidacy of the
programme-note, but once the piece got going, surtitles assisting, we really sensed
the midnight oil burning as Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto took us through however
many billion years of the earth’s development, including an interminable recitation
of its various evolutionary periods.
In his attempt to encapsulate the entire evolution
literature, Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Haydn’s Creation included,
Jocelyn has landed Dean with a text which weighs down any musical inspiration,
and I cannot see this huge work getting many more performances beyond the
premieres from its co-commissioners across the world.
Under Nicholas Collon’s tight control the CBSO did a splendid
job of delivering the score, as did the CBSO Chorus and Halle Choir, gamely
tackling the gimmicks Dean and Jocelyn required of them.
After this, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (another
evolutionary piece) came as a breath of welcome fresh air, Collon conducting with
elegance and clarity (he made the concluding Sacrificial Dance look so easy –
it isn’t), and the CBSO players responding with an almost chamber music-like
transparency.
With that masterpiece still ringing in my ears, I turned on
the car radio for my drive home and caught the end of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder
from the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner. What a bonus nightcap
that was!
Christopher Morley