{"id":210,"date":"2008-02-27T19:30:26","date_gmt":"2008-02-28T00:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.berkshirelinks.com\/berkshires-news\/concert-reviews\/bso-colin-davis-elgar\/"},"modified":"2008-02-27T19:30:26","modified_gmt":"2008-02-28T00:30:26","slug":"bso-colin-davis-elgar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/bso-colin-davis-elgar\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Symphony Orchestra performs The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by Sir Colin Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 26 January 2008 performance reviewed by Karl Henning<\/a><\/p>\n

Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius<\/i>, Opus 38<\/p>\n

Ben Heppner, tenor (Gerontius)
\nSarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano (The Angel)
\nGerald Finley, bass-baritone (The Priest and The Angel of the Agony)
\nTanglewood Festival Chorus (Jn Oliver, conductor)
\nThe Boston Symphony Orchestra
\nSir Colin Davis, guest conductor<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest work of sacred music that we have between the Verdi Requiem and Stravinsky\u2019s Symphony of Psalms,\u201d is Michael Steinberg\u2019s encapsulation of Elgar\u2019s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius<\/i>. Such a remark necessarily shows itself as hyperbole; and immediately suggests the self-imposed boundaries of the concert halls in the West \u2013 there is in that assessment little love for, say, Rakhmaninov\u2019s All-Night Vigil (Vespers)<\/i>, for starters \u2013 but if taken simply as a commendation of the grandeur and quality of Elgar\u2019s achievement, Steinberg\u2019s encomium displays an affection which is not at all misplaced.<\/p>\n

Other than in its land of origin, Gerontius<\/i> is much less widely known than either the Verdi or the Stravinsky. Yet it is a score into which Elgar poured \u201cmy own heart\u2019s blood.\u201d The poem by John Henry Cardinal Newman was of a special and personal importance to Elgar (the composer and his wife Alice often read it together). To this listener\u2019s ears, Gerontius<\/i> is perhaps Elgar\u2019s most successful large-scale score, unfolding in waves of unfailing grace, and many passages of disarming delicacy. At the end of the manuscript, Elgar wrote an inscription from John Ruskin\u2019s \u201cSesame and Lilies\u201d: This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.<\/i><\/p>\n

Ben Heppner was in fine voice, and his performance was sweetly modulated to the character of Gerontius throughout. It was necessarily a less dramatic delivery than Ben is oft famed for; but then, Gerontius is neither Wagner\u2019s Tristan nor Berlioz\u2019s Dido. Sarah Connolly sang nicely, yet her voice was perhaps a shade \u2018dusky\u2019 for the role of the Angel. From purely sonic considerations, though, Connolly and Heppner made a most agreeable pairing. Gerald Finley did a splendid job, albeit in two very minor roles; his Litany in Part II, as The Angel of the Agony, was steadfast and thrilling. Although serving as \u2018the background\u2019, the truly stand-out performers on Saturday were the orchestra, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The Chorus sang with such energy, with such focus and yet such ease, that the oratorio seemed a firm cornerstone of their annual repertory \u2013 there was no hint that this was only the second set of performances ever undertaken in Boston, and that a quarter century has passed since the first.<\/p>\n

There is a famous scolding in the history of performances of Gerontius<\/i>. In preparing a performance, Sir John Barbirolli needed to chide the tenors and basses for playing it a bit too nice in the Demons\u2019 Chorus: \u201cYou\u2019re not bank clerks on a Sunday outing, you\u2019re souls sizzling in hell.\u201d Yet part of it, I think, is the way Elgar wrote the piece; they do seem \u2018tidier\u2019 demons than those whom Berlioz has hectoring Faust in his descent to Hades. This is not at all to wish that Elgar had composed the oratorio at all otherwise than he did, of course; and if Elgar\u2019s demons express themselves partly in expert counterpart, perhaps it is something of a pun upon Gradus ad Parnassum<\/i>, the classic Fux primer.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, let us consider a rhetorical question. It is Sir Colin Davis who conducted this magnificent piece here in Boston both in December of 1982, and today. If it is not Sir Colin Davis who comes back to bring it to us again a third time, who will it be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by Sir Colin Davis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-tanglewood-3","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idealpoetry.com\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}