AURORA LIGHTS UP THE CBSO FESTIVE CONCERT
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★
There's a film and television genre the makers call "feelgood". The works may not be of the highest artistic merit or stay long in the memory but at the end everyone is smiling, uplifted and cheered. This concert was a feelgood occasion bursting with festive spirit with many family groups in the audience, proud parents waving at their children who were members of the choir. The concert included three world premieres, two of which confirming that world premiere does not necessarily mean world class. The concert was the pinnacle of the "Bringing the Light" project, a community-based event which began a year ago with the CBSO's Community Board working with the Canal & River Trust to light up the nearby canal with a Lantern Walk. The emphasis has been on shining a light, literally and metaphorically, on the CBSO's connection with Birmingham and its multifarious, multifaith community. There was surely no better way to do so than giving a starring role to the CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus and CBSO Children's Chorus. I don't believe there are any non-professional choirs in the country that give such consistently professional-quality performances as they do. It's no coincidence that nearly all the CBSO's finest concerts in recent years have featured one or more of these choirs and they are a great credit to their Chorus Master Julian Wilkins. The applause, whooping and hollering when they took their bows was well merited.
Crowning the concert was 'Aurora' by Roxanna Panufnik with words by her regular musical partner Jessica Duchen. She has written a wide range of music including concertos and opera but is perhaps best known for choral works beginning with her 'Westminster Mass' (1997). Her interests in world music and religious music found her using Christian, Jewish and Islamic music in her violin concerto 'Abraham' and that same ecumenical approach, in both religion and music, is found in the thirty-minute 'Aurora'. Religious festivals the world over feature the same primeval themes of light banishing darkness and the renewal of the seasons. Panufnik and Duchen, combining original poems and religious texts, devote each of the first five movements to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism: I. Star of the Sea: Christmas; II. Prophet of the Light: Milad und Nabi; III. Return and Renewal: Diwali; IV: Together Yearning: Hannukah; V: From the Land of Snow: Gaden Ngamchoe. For agnostics, atheists, pagans and others who believe the physical world is amazing enough there is a concluding section VI: Miracle of Nature: Aurora Borealis. Composer and librettist list a whole column of advisors consulted, "To ensure maximum accuracy and acceptance". In her brief on-stage interview with Satnam Rama, mistress of ceremonies for the evening, Panufnik was keen to point out the underlying similarities between the musical traditions, their use of different scales providing the individual flavour, The platform was packed, full orchestra plus five percussionists, and Panufnik utilized the three choirs with dexterity, the opening sighing sounds of the sea, the chill winds and tinkling tintinnabulations of the fifth movement vividly realized. The sixth movement was the finest, coruscating colours and icy beauty suggesting that Panufnik has more than a passing acquaintance with Vaughan Williams' 'Sinfonia antartica'. The CBSO's playing, under Michael Seal, ensured maximum impact. Continuing the feelgood theme Panufnik thanked her mother, who was in the audience, and congratulated her on her birthday - cue 'Happy Birthday to You' played by the CBSO and sung by the united choruses. What a birthday present!
The concert began with singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading's 'Homeland'. She arrived in Handsworth from the Caribbean island St Kitts as a seven-year-old and now, aged 74, has written million-selling albums and songs and been honoured with the Ivor Novello Fellowship as recognition for her contribution to music. She describes 'Homeland' as a "love letter" to Birmingham. The 15-minute piece combines words and music in a city where "industry and nature exist side by side in quiet beauty" and featured soloists Abigail Baylis (soprano), Eli Street (soprano), Suzie Purkis (alto) and tenor Justin Jacobs - all from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - as well as choral forces. The orchestration is rudimentary, opening with gently sawing strings and climaxing, with brass and timpani, in sub-Elgarian grandeur. The work's limitation is its lack of specificity, the text's generalizations about city life applicable to Birkenhead or Brighton as much as Birmingham. As a born-and-bred Brummie I was hoping for words and music rooted in the city's soil. Wolverhampton-born composer Cassie Kinoshi's 'i was in the state of mind to stay' with words by poet and (lower case) playwright lydia luke - hence no capital letters - was even slighter, a five-minute piece which aims to show how even in the most built-up and crowded urban areas we are always surrounded by nature. Rana, eyes fixed on her autocue, thought the piece "quite profound" although the text's "in the centre of life is the centre" didn't strike me as such. The first part of the concert ended with a ten minute suite, arranged by Matt Dunkley, from A. R. Rahman's Oscar-winning score for the hugely popular 2008 film 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Rahman really knows how to use the orchestra to maximum effect, you could see CBSO flexing themselves, in the John Williams and Korngold style of extrovert romanticism. There was a brilliant middle section solo by sitar virtuoso Akash Parekar, meditative at first then building to a driving climax taking the orchestra with him. I'd have happily heard more of this score.
Norman Stinchcombe
There's a film and television genre the makers call "feelgood". The works may not be of the highest artistic merit or stay long in the memory but at the end everyone is smiling, uplifted and cheered. This concert was a feelgood occasion bursting with festive spirit with many family groups in the audience, proud parents waving at their children who were members of the choir. The concert included three world premieres, two of which confirming that world premiere does not necessarily mean world class. The concert was the pinnacle of the "Bringing the Light" project, a community-based event which began a year ago with the CBSO's Community Board working with the Canal & River Trust to light up the nearby canal with a Lantern Walk. The emphasis has been on shining a light, literally and metaphorically, on the CBSO's connection with Birmingham and its multifarious, multifaith community. There was surely no better way to do so than giving a starring role to the CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus and CBSO Children's Chorus. I don't believe there are any non-professional choirs in the country that give such consistently professional-quality performances as they do. It's no coincidence that nearly all the CBSO's finest concerts in recent years have featured one or more of these choirs and they are a great credit to their Chorus Master Julian Wilkins. The applause, whooping and hollering when they took their bows was well merited.
Crowning the concert was 'Aurora' by Roxanna Panufnik with words by her regular musical partner Jessica Duchen. She has written a wide range of music including concertos and opera but is perhaps best known for choral works beginning with her 'Westminster Mass' (1997). Her interests in world music and religious music found her using Christian, Jewish and Islamic music in her violin concerto 'Abraham' and that same ecumenical approach, in both religion and music, is found in the thirty-minute 'Aurora'. Religious festivals the world over feature the same primeval themes of light banishing darkness and the renewal of the seasons. Panufnik and Duchen, combining original poems and religious texts, devote each of the first five movements to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism: I. Star of the Sea: Christmas; II. Prophet of the Light: Milad und Nabi; III. Return and Renewal: Diwali; IV: Together Yearning: Hannukah; V: From the Land of Snow: Gaden Ngamchoe. For agnostics, atheists, pagans and others who believe the physical world is amazing enough there is a concluding section VI: Miracle of Nature: Aurora Borealis. Composer and librettist list a whole column of advisors consulted, "To ensure maximum accuracy and acceptance". In her brief on-stage interview with Satnam Rama, mistress of ceremonies for the evening, Panufnik was keen to point out the underlying similarities between the musical traditions, their use of different scales providing the individual flavour, The platform was packed, full orchestra plus five percussionists, and Panufnik utilized the three choirs with dexterity, the opening sighing sounds of the sea, the chill winds and tinkling tintinnabulations of the fifth movement vividly realized. The sixth movement was the finest, coruscating colours and icy beauty suggesting that Panufnik has more than a passing acquaintance with Vaughan Williams' 'Sinfonia antartica'. The CBSO's playing, under Michael Seal, ensured maximum impact. Continuing the feelgood theme Panufnik thanked her mother, who was in the audience, and congratulated her on her birthday - cue 'Happy Birthday to You' played by the CBSO and sung by the united choruses. What a birthday present!
The concert began with singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading's 'Homeland'. She arrived in Handsworth from the Caribbean island St Kitts as a seven-year-old and now, aged 74, has written million-selling albums and songs and been honoured with the Ivor Novello Fellowship as recognition for her contribution to music. She describes 'Homeland' as a "love letter" to Birmingham. The 15-minute piece combines words and music in a city where "industry and nature exist side by side in quiet beauty" and featured soloists Abigail Baylis (soprano), Eli Street (soprano), Suzie Purkis (alto) and tenor Justin Jacobs - all from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - as well as choral forces. The orchestration is rudimentary, opening with gently sawing strings and climaxing, with brass and timpani, in sub-Elgarian grandeur. The work's limitation is its lack of specificity, the text's generalizations about city life applicable to Birkenhead or Brighton as much as Birmingham. As a born-and-bred Brummie I was hoping for words and music rooted in the city's soil. Wolverhampton-born composer Cassie Kinoshi's 'i was in the state of mind to stay' with words by poet and (lower case) playwright lydia luke - hence no capital letters - was even slighter, a five-minute piece which aims to show how even in the most built-up and crowded urban areas we are always surrounded by nature. Rana, eyes fixed on her autocue, thought the piece "quite profound" although the text's "in the centre of life is the centre" didn't strike me as such. The first part of the concert ended with a ten minute suite, arranged by Matt Dunkley, from A. R. Rahman's Oscar-winning score for the hugely popular 2008 film 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Rahman really knows how to use the orchestra to maximum effect, you could see CBSO flexing themselves, in the John Williams and Korngold style of extrovert romanticism. There was a brilliant middle section solo by sitar virtuoso Akash Parekar, meditative at first then building to a driving climax taking the orchestra with him. I'd have happily heard more of this score.
Norman Stinchcombe