Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius: Jean Rigby (Mezzo); Mark Tucker (tenor); Matthew Best (baritone); BBC National Chorus of Wales; BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Richard Hickox 12.5.2007 (GPu)

 

The scheduled mezzo and tenor for this performance were Christine Rice and Philip Langridge, but both had to drop out and were replaced by Jean Rigby and Mark Tucker. No major disruption was discernable, though it is no insult to Mark Tucker to say that Philip Langridge, in particular, was missed.

Elgar wrote to A. J. Jaeger, publishing manager of Novello’s, in February 1890, telling him “I am setting Newman’s Dream of Gerontius awfully solemn and mystic”. This particular performance of Elgar’s remarkable work was perhaps stronger on the solemnity than the mysticism. The Dream of Gerontius is a work redolent of late Victorian Gothic revivalism and of the Oxford Movement earlier in the century. It is hard not to feel that it belongs in an incense-filled church, rather than a concert hall. Dinner jackets seem far too secular a mode of dress, though I’m not sure what the alternatives might be! Can an English composer have produced a finer piece of Catholic music since the reformation?

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales relished the orchestral prelude (and what a fine piece of work it is!), not least the lower strings, and the opening had a beautifully rapt, still quality, dominated by a sense of acceptance, almost of calm. But the orchestra was equally impressive as the music grew more passionate; there was fire as well as repose in their playing, and in Hickox’s conducting. Not for the first time in recent years, the orchestra’s percussionists distinguished themselves by the precision and musicality of their playing.

Mark Tucker’s reputation has largely been made in the baroque repertoire, especially in Italian music. Both as Orfeo, and in the Vespers, he has shown himself to be a distinguished singer of Monteverdi. Given that background, his isn’t a name one would automatically associate with Elgar. In his interpretation of Gerontius he was at his best in the most intimate and quiet passages; at ‘Bovissima hora est’ there were beautiful, gentle colours in his singing and in the passage which opens Part Two (from ‘I went to sleep’) there was a persuasive and intelligent subtlety to his phrasing, his voice blending beautifully with the strings of the orchestra. But in some other passages he didn’t appear to have quite the necessary weight of voice and there were, at least from where I was sitting, significant problems of balance between voice and orchestra. Gerontius is a big, long sing and, on the whole, Tucker acquitted himself well. Certainly, even at the very end, in ‘Take me away’, he was able to produce some very moving singing.

Matthew Best was a generally commanding vocal presence, exemplary in the quality of his diction, and never in danger of being swamped by the orchestra. He brought real authority and unbombastic power to his contributions as The Priest and, especially, The Angel of the Agony. The distinctly ‘English’ quality of his voice made an effective contrast with the slightly Italianate quality of Tucker’s voice.

Jean Rigby started out as a rather austere, overly prim and proper, rather schoolmistressy Angel, but as she went on there was greater warmth to her singing. Sometimes her phrasing carried a slight suggestion that she was a little too willing to neglect the patterns of Newman’s verse in meeting the demands of Elgar’s music, but she also had some very fine moments, notably at ‘Yes, for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord’.

Throughout the Chorus sang with great conviction, whether in the demonic passages (music so perfectly fitted to its purpose that one is inclined to wonder if Elgar wasn’t, as Blake said of Milton, “of the devil’s party without knowing it”) or in the radiant glory of ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’. The Chorus’s artistic director Adrian Partington had clearly done an excellent job in preparing them, and their contribution was of a consistently high standard. So was the work of the orchestra, their sound beautifully shaped in the orchestral transitions in Part Two.

Richard Hickox’s reading of The Dream perhaps emphasised grandeur over innerness, but the balance must be very hard to achieve in a work that holds the two in a richly creative tension, just as it is indebted equally to the Catholic tradition and to the English tradition in a way not common. This was, finally, a good rather than a great performance of The Dream; I was very glad to have been there to hear it – but perhaps I wasn’t the only one in the audience who left making a vow to listen again at the earliest opportunity to Barbirolli’s 1964 recording with Richard Lewis, Janet Baker and Kim Borg (with the Hallé). Not because the performance I had just heard was in any way bad; rather because it was good enough to remind one what a marvellous work this is, but not quite good enough to make one feel that absolute justice had been done to it.

 

Glyn Pursglove