United Kingdom BBC Proms 2025 [17] – Delius: Jennifer Davis (soprano), Claudia Huckle (mezzo-soprano), David Butt Philip (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), BBC Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London, 18.8.2025. (CK)
Delius – A Mass of Life
Let no one say the BBC is not generous. At this season’s First Night we were given the opportunity to hear Vaughan Williams’s Sancta Civitas; this concert landed an even bigger fish.
The case of Delius is a curious one. Sir Thomas Beecham proclaimed him the finest English composer since Purcell, and his one-time popularity was largely down to his advocacy. There is beauty, certainly, and lashings of it; but his music often seems boneless, merely rhapsodic – you either surrender to it, or you don’t.
I have been moved by Sea Drift since my teens; otherwise, the part Delius’s music has played in my listening and concert-going has been vanishingly small. I knew next to nothing about A Mass of Life (other than as a nickname musicians used to bestow on Norman del Mar), so I relished this opportunity to hear it in performance. How would the music of a man who eschewed formal processes in favour of transient sensation fare over a span of 100 minutes? Epiphany or turkey?
For me, largely, the former: though a critic I bumped into at Waterloo – one whom I greatly respect – thought otherwise. The orchestral playing was very fine: the vastly experienced Sir Mark Elder seemed to have transformed the BBC Symphony Orchestra into a pulsating Delian organism, changing shape and colour at his bidding. There was much to catch the ear: suave horns behind Claudia Huckle’s glowing mezzo-soprano in Part 1’s Andante tranquillo; busy harps and glistening percussion; soft strokes on the gong to mark the Midnight Song. In Part 2’s Lento, bassoons and bass clarinet over a gentle swell in the strings; and as the Lento molto opened we were transfixed by oboe, cor anglais and a gently rocking bass oboe. Most memorable of all was the interplay of horns that introduces Part 2: the echoes drifted down from the Gallery as Mahler’s posthorn had a week earlier in his Third Symphony (in which Zarathustra’s Midnight Song, which Delius sets so spectacularly, was entrusted to a single voice: the wonderful Beth Taylor).
Musical memories other than Mahler come and go. Debussy’s Faun floats by on a flute; some of the woodwind writing is so voluptuous that I had to remind myself that when Delius composed it Gurrelieder was still awaiting Schoenberg’s completion. Startlingly, near the beginning of the work, ecstatic choral writing over a surging bass momentarily put me in mind of Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony, done here so memorably in 2011. And in the seduction stakes, Delius’s la-la-ing ladies get my vote over Wagner’s Flowermaidens.
The ladies were stacked up spectacularly to the left of the organ: the men, rather fewer in number, to the right. From the opening invocation their sound was high, wide and handsome, projecting those gorgeous harmonies so that we could almost feel their exotic heat. Not all the ladies’ high notes were cleanly struck, but there was clarity and energy in abundance: most strikingly, perhaps, at the beginning of Part 2, where at the end of the echoing horns’ Auf den Bergen they have to leap to their feet with a sudden sunburst of sound: Herauf! Nun herauf!
Towards the end, as evening draws towards night, the music took on an extraordinary quality that seemed to mix ecstasy and pain: intoxication shot through with post-coital tristesse. The final affirmation – Lust will alle Dinge Ewigkeit – surged like a tsunami, washed over us and receded, leaving us breathless. So much sweetness! In 1919 a huge tank burst in Boston, engulfing the area in a 25-foot wave of molasses – more than two million tons of the stuff – in which 20 people and innumerable horses met a sticky end. It wasn’t quite like that, but it did provide the super-calorific Wagnerian apotheosis towards which the whole work had been heading.
The role of the soloists is crucial for the work’s overall character and impact, and they all shone. Roderick Williams, the voice of Zarathustra, had the lions’ share: initially outshone by David Butt Philip’s ardent tenor, he was soon at his best, producing full and lovely tone, the heartbeat of the whole massive musical ensemble. Jennifer Davis and Claudia Huckle edged the Delian sound with a sensuous gleam. The choirs were tireless – ecstasy must be exhausting – and fully deserved their accolades along with their chorus-masters Neil Ferris (BBC Symphony Chorus) and Neville Creed (London Philharmonic Choir).
Glad to have heard it, or hoping to hear it again? I think the former: but that in itself is a tribute to this performance. I cannot imagine it being bettered.
Chris Kettle
Featured Image: Conductor Sir Mark Elder, soloists, choruses and the BBC SO after the performance of A Mass of Life © Chris Christodoulou/BBC