HALLE
ORCHESTRA AND CHOIR Bridgewater Hall and
live Radio 3
PERFORMING
Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis was a project Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé had long
aimed to do. Both he and chief executive John Summers have spoken of this as
one of the mountain peaks they longed to climb.
And now
they have. It requires a choir at the very top of its game to do this work
justice, but with training by their choral director, Madeleine Venner, the
Hallé Choir are surely among the best orchestral choral bodies in the country.
They are a big group and they pack a punch. Their singing is also nimble,
accurate, nuanced and glorious to hear.
That wasn’t
all there was to praise as the Hallé reached the end of its 2014-15 season with
Beethoven’s visionary and dramatic setting of the liturgical mass. Sir Mark’s
vision of the work was as moving as it was thrilling, and fascinating in its
attention to detail.
His team of
soloists – Elizabeth Llewellyn, Susan Bickley, Allan Clayton and Reinhard Hagen
– were outstanding in their individual contributions and smoothly integrated in
ensemble. Beethoven gives them some glorious music to themselves, such as the
Amen to the creed, in the Benedictus and in the agonized cry for mercy of the
Agnus Dei, and we heard lovely singing and real emotional commitment, the
soprano soaring to angelic heights, the tenor voicing assurance, the mezzo
pleading for humanity and the bass noble and profound.
There were
also glimpses of transcendence in the orchestral playing: leader Lyn Fletcher’s
violin solo and the richness of viola tone in the Gloria’s Gratias Agimus Tibi,
and again in the Benedictus, among them, and the wind players made the music of
Et Incarnatus Est in the creed a magical, pastoral sound, like a nativity
scene.
Sir Mark
did not neglect the need for vigour: we had a dancing tempo for Et Ascendit and
throbbing treatment of the fugue subject in Et Vitam Venturi which was finally
hammered home in the manner of the Ode To Joy. Some of the sound-world created
was almost like hearing Mahler - some vividily operatic (horns' contribution in
particular).
And I can’t
end without a mention of the distinctive sound of the period kettle drums,
played (by Erika Öhman) with appropriately hard sticks that sounded at times
like a menacing death rattle and were superbly effective in the noises of war
that Beethoven allows to challenge his vision of peace. For him, only sheer
determination could win.
*****
Robert
Beale
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