United Kingdom ‘Grace’: Emma Tring (soprano, Saariaho), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Martyn Brabbins (conductor, Saariaho and Williams), Emilie Godden (conductor, Lewis). Hoddinott Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 2.11.2023. (PCG)
Sarah Lianne Lewis – The sky didn’t fall (world première)
Kaija Sariaaho – Emilie Suite
Grace Williams – Symphony No.2
This was the first of a series of concerts which we were advised would be devoted to the music of Grace Williams. Its concluding item was her Second Symphony of 1956. For a long time, it was the only work in the genre that she allowed to be performed – after she withdrew the First Symphony from circulation. The event also launched a series of highly enterprising concerts, scheduled for the remainder of the season, of modern music from Wales and elsewhere. There will be no fewer than ten works advertised as either UK premieres or world premieres. I intend to review them all over the coming months.
In my recent review of Fiona Monbet’s Faubourg 23, I commented on BBC economies which had apparently dictated that no programme notes were to be provided to the audience for these enterprising events, other than through the dubious medium of an app accessing online information. I am pleased now to have been advised that this policy has been reversed, and that for future events in this season the omission is to be rectified. But such notes would have been most helpful today.
Take The sky didn’t fall by Sarah Lianne Lewis. It received its world premiere under the baton of Emilie Godden, who made her conducting début with the orchestra with whom she has long played as a violinist. We only learned online that the title derived from a poem by Kerry Hardie. In a preliminary interview with Linton Stephens, the composer read a few lines, but they would have been better appreciated if available in printed form. After all, the music was clearly intended to reflect the emotions expressed in laconic phrases. As it was, we received a generalised impression of a still and chilly atmosphere punctuated by various hints of orchestral effects; those included what appeared to be some highly ingenious employment of the horns in unconventional ways. There ensued a violent explosion of vehemence and rhythm. The overall effect was clear, but in the absence of external references the detail was blurred.
This lack of information was far more serious when it came to the suite from the opera Émilie by the late Kaija Sariaaho. (Even the full name of the heroine, the French natural philosopher and mathematician, was omitted from the advance notification of the programme. The online note also gave the title of the opera incorrectly as Émilie du Châtelet.) Emma Tring’s singing in what I take to have been French was very beautiful and highly distinguished, given some clearly very difficult writing. Still, the results lacked meaning without any indication of what she was singing about, especially at the beginning when her dialogue was delivered in a parlando undertone. During the orchestral interludes – if that is what they were – there were very effective effects, including an ingenious counterpoint between marimba and harpsichord. The latter, which presumably was intended to convey a sense of the eighteenth-century setting, was left unexplained – although apparently Émilie du Châtelet was an admired exponent on the harpsichord.
The suite went on for half an hour, and included highly dramatic passages clearly linked to events onstage, but we were left in the dark as to their meaning. As it was, the sympathetic performance by Martyn Brabbins and the orchestra made less than half the effect it could have. (Those wishing to explore may want to know that the full score is available online at the composer’s website. It is clear from the notes that Saariaho regarded the dramatic and emotional effect of the words in the monodrama as the essence of the work.)
Grace Williams’s symphony is more conventionally constructed, and does not rely upon any programmatic reflections or texts, so the lack of information was less keenly felt. The orchestra covered themselves in glory in this performance, a vast improvement on the rather congested sound their younger selves produced more than forty years ago on the Lyrita recording conducted by Vernon Handley. In particular, Martyn Brabbins allowed the lyrical music in the slow movement and at the beginning of the finale to extend itself in a proper fashion. The warmth of the string tone gave the music a real emotional punch. The opening, with its high trumpet echoes of the Penillion superbly handled by Philippe Schartz, brought pre-echoes of Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony (to be written a couple of years later). The coruscating scherzo with its insistent changes of rhythm had a sense of frisson that looked back to RVW’s Fourth some thirty years earlier. But the work had all the standard Grace Williams trademarks, and made a ripe impression in the rich acoustics of the hall. We really need new recordings of these scores – the orchestra gave a superb rendition of the Penillion a few years back – to include also those earlier works that the composer suppressed during her lifetime. Dare we hope that some such project is under way?
The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and is available online for the forthcoming month. Fans of Grace Williams, a growing body of enthusiasts, will doubtless take note. The next world premiere in the BBC season, a new horn concerto by Gavin Higgins, is scheduled for performance on 14 January. It is still advertised for St David’s Hall, but I suspect that the concert will again be transferred to the Hoddinott Hall.
Paul Corfield Godfrey