John TAVENER
Total
Eclipse
Agraphon
John Harle
(saxophone)
Patricia Rozario (soprano)
Academy of Ancient Music/Paul
Goodwin
HARMONIA MUNDI
HMU907271
Crotchet AmazonUK
AmazonUS
Total Eclipse is the more recent of these two major works as it was
premiered in St. Paul's Cathedral in June 2000. All Tavener's music has a
sacred (specifically Greek Orthodox) basis and this one explores the conversion
of Saul (later St Paul). It begins dissonantly, savagely so, with John Harle's
soprano saxophone, representing the unregenerate Saul in a somewhat similar
destructive role as that of the snare drum in Nielsen's Fifth Symphony. Things
then quieten down considerably, in volume, in tempo (the music becomes almost
static at times) and in harmonic astringency, with singers James Gilchrist
(tenor), Christopher Robson (counter-tenor), Max Jones (treble) and the New
College Choir taking increasing roles as Saul sees the light on the road
to Damascus and then absorbs the Christian teaching. Even when Paul is martyred
in the fourth, final section (it would have been helpful, for study purposes
at least, to have had the four sections - of a 40 minute work - separately
tracked) we do not return to anywhere near the intensity of the opening.
The performance seems superb, with John Harle quite brilliant; the booklet
note is by Tavener himself.
Agraphon, dating from 1995 and around half the length of Total
Eclipse, sets words by Angelos Sikelianos written in 1941 and describing
an unrecorded incident in Christ's teachings. The principal protagonist here
is not the saxophone but the soprano Patricia Rozario, who copes superbly
with her sometimes cruelly sustained, often melismatic vocal line. Both works
feature the drums substantially, modern in Agraphon, baroque in Total
Eclipse. The use of early instruments in the orchestra is deliberate,
the composer favouring "their more sober and hieratical sound"; he could
perhaps have also said, their added sharpness and clarity. Tavener addicts
will need no urging to invest in this disc; others are urged to give it a
trial.
Philip Scowcroft
