On Grief and Hope

St Cuthbert’s Church, 11/5/24

Pietà – Richard Blackford

Requiem – W A Mozart

 Edinburgh Royal Choral Union, Edinburgh Pro Musica Orchestra, Michael Bawtree (Conductor), Rachel Munro (Soprano), Catherine Backhouse (Mezzo), Eden Devaney (Tenor), Phil Gault (Baritone), Lewis Banks (Soprano Saxophone)

A Triumph!

 This was one of my favourite concerts of the year so far: the Scottish premiere of a new choral work by Richard Blackford, ‘Pietà’, a setting of the Stabat Mater with the addition of two poems by the Ukrainian poet, Anna Akhmatova, and a stunning performance of Mozart’s fabulous Requiem.

 I must say that, nowadays, one arrives at the premiere of any classical work with a mixture of hope and trepidation. Will the composer want his audience to like what he has written, or has he/she written a piece to challenge everything we hold dear? It is a common enough occurrence these days, and sadly the second option is often the more typical!

However, I am happy to report that ‘Pietà’ is not only tonally based, but also beautiful and deeply moving. It has already been performed in a number of venues and recorded, and I am as certain as one can be that this work will become a standard in choral societies’ repertoires in the years to come.

Starting from the liturgical Latin Stabat Mater, set by innumerable composers from Palestrina through Rossini to MacMillan, Richard Blackford has produced a wonderful piece for string orchestra, chorus, obbligato soprano saxophone and two vocal soloists, a mezzo-soprano and a baritone. Co-commissioned by Carolyn and Sandrey Date and the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, it was first performed in Poole in 2019, and won the Ivor Novello Composer Award in the Choral Category in 2020.

The Stabat Mater in its purest form is a meditation on the grief suffered by Mary for the loss of her son, Jesus, and Richard Blackford has pointed out that he was also deeply influenced by Michelangelo’s great sculpture, the Pietà, in St Peter’s in Rome. As he says in his notes, how can something so sad, so poignant in its expression of a mother’s grief for her son, be at the same time so beautiful, so inspiring of hope? This dilemma is the crux of the piece, and I think Mr Blackford has solved the puzzle, as it were, by writing a very beautiful work, which also makes us think. By adding the two Akhmatova poems, he brings in a contemporary relevance, not least as we watch pictures daily of mothers grieving for lost children in Ukraine, Gaza and many other parts of the world.

Pietà is in 3 parts, preceded by an intense string prelude, superbly played by the Edinburgh Pro Musica Orchestra, led by Greg Lawson, and the predominantly dark tone of the first movement, sharing the tormented grief of the mother, draws us into the text. The excellent chorus (with whom I sang as a schoolboy over 50 years ago) was marvellous as they declaimed the famous words in Latin - “the grieving mother stood weeping beside the cross where her son was hanging”, in a setting by Richard Blackford that emphasised compassion both of the mother and for the mother.

Soon the mezzo-soprano solo is introduced, here sung by the fabulous Catherine Backhouse, one of Scotland’s finest singers, and her powerful and incisive singing penetrated every corner of St Cuthbert’s. Her range is phenomenal, with sonorous lower notes matched by a thrilling top, and in this section and in a later one with text by Akhmatova, she revealed a clarity of diction and expression which was faultless. The baritone, Phil Gault, was equally at home in Richard Blackford’s setting, showing a well-modulated voice and excellent breath control.

As the piece proceeds, light and hope begin to suffuse the work, and here the obbligato saxophone of Lewis Banks was most expressive and apposite. The composer has said that, for him, the saxophone represents the wordless voice of Mary, and the superb playing of Mr Banks was a marvellously unifying element in the score. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (he won the Principal’s Prize for Excellence in 2018), Lewis Banks plays with a fluency and style that marks him out as very much one to watch. Although Pietà was composed and not improvised, I was reminded most favourably of the wonderful CD, ‘Officium,’ by the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek, where the saxophonist improvised round the mediaeval and Renaissance singing of the four Hilliards.

Pietà ends on a hopeful note as the saxophone gently soars over the hushed chorus and strings, and the audience reaction was immediate and warm. I have rarely heard an audience cheer a new composition and its composer (who was present) as much as we heard last night. A triumph indeed!

 After the interval, two new soloists appeared, both students at the RCS, Rachel Munro (Soprano) and Eden Devaney (Tenor), and brass and woodwind were added to the orchestra for Mozart’s wonderful Requiem.

Michael Bawtree, who had been the expert conductor for Pietà, now took total control of all the forces and we were treated to a splendid performance of this great work.

At first I was slightly worried that the adrenalin from the Blackford piece had taken hold of Mr Bawtree, so spirited was his fugue in the Kyrie, but he relented and the work unwound throughout its several stages into a most satisfying account of this fabulous score. The film ‘Amadeus’ has severely clouded our thinking about this Requiem, with its nonsense of conspiracy and intrigue about the writing of the piece, and poor Franz Süssmayr, Mozart’s pupil who was given the task of completing Mozart’s unfinished masterpiece, has come in for hugely unfair criticism over the years.

I find the completed work marvellous. Mozart’s inspiration was superb, but the Süssmayr elements are equally splendid, and a good performance, like this one, proves the point.

The solo quartet was very well balanced, with Rachel Munro’s soprano beautifully poised at the top. She is an alumna of St Andrews University, where I was for some years Honorary Professor of Singing, and Ms Munro is continuing the tradition, in which I played a small part, of producing excellent solo singers. I heard some comparisons last night with the young Gundula Janowitz, who I heard long ago in the Usher Hall, and I don’t think the comparisons are too foolish. She has a great future – watch out for the name. The young tenor, Eden Devaney, is still very much at the beginning of his career, but he displayed a sweet tone, good control, and above all, he looked poised and confident on the platform. Catherine Backhouse provided style and elegance in the ensemble, and I was impressed with the low notes of Phil Gault at the core of the quartet. Baritones often struggle in the Requiem, as it is very much written for a bass, but Mr Gault excelled, especially in the famous Tuba Mirum. A word here also for his terrific Biography in the programme, funny and interesting (and I will buy him a pint next time I see him!) and a welcome relief from several I have read recently in other concerts!

The Choral Union sang wonderfully – it is a real treat to have such a good choir in Edinburgh – and it was also a delight to hear a couple of basset horns in the orchestra, mellower of sound than clarinets. Finally, a bravo to Thomas Lowe on Timpani, offering us a thrilling sound at the appropriate moments.

All in all, this was a brilliant concert, in a lovely, packed venue, on a beautiful early summer evening.