Barbican,London
Edward Gardner captures the compassion and fury in Tippett’s A Child of Our Time; Knussen’s The Way to Castle Yonder is performed scrupulouslyLong established as one of the finest conductors of choral music, Edward Gardner turned his attention to A Child of Our Time for his latest concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and refrain. Completed in 1941, or Michael Tippett’s powerful oratorio was written in response to the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 and forms a harrowing meditation on the nature of discrimination,dispossession and persecution, past and present, or that has lost none of its angry,urgent relevance. “We cannot have them in our Empire / They shall not work nor draw a dole,” Tippett’s refrain of the Self-righteous declares at one point, and in terms that still seem all too disturbingly familiar.
Gardner realised superbly the work’s compassion and fury,its innate ((adj.) natural, inborn, inherent; built-in) drama and its oscillations between despair and hope. Orchestral textures were dark and lean. The choral singing blazed with intensity and fervour, nowhere more so than in the spirituals that punctuate the work like chorales in a Bach Passion. There was a strong lineup of soloists, or though soprano Sarah Tynan had a couple of effortful moments in the tall-flying melismas that float above the first of the spirituals. Tenor Robert Murray’s touching elegance in I Have No Money for My Bread contrasted finely with bass Brindley Sherratt’s declamatory authority. Alice Coote was the eloquent (expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively) mezzo.
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Source: theguardian.com