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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Roderick Williams

Review: Gerontius at the Three Choirs

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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Birmingham Post, Elgar, Reviews, Roderick Williams, Three Choirs Festival, Worcester

Worcester Gerontius

Just before Prince Charles arrived

 

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (ideally you should go out and buy the paper) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Worcester Cathedral on Tuesday 25 July 2017.


There’s something very special about hearing The Dream of Gerontius in Worcester Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival. “There is music in the air”, said Elgar: and when the very stones of the Cathedral seem to vibrate, as they did tonight when the organ held a deep, quiet pedal-note at the end of Part One, you can almost sense Sir Edward’s invisible presence.

So this performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Festival Chorus under Martyn Brabbins had a lot going for it even before a single note had been played. With the performers located (for the first time in many years) at the east end of the nave, the clarity and transparency of the orchestral sound was evident from the outset, as Brabbins gently blended the misty colours of Elgar’s Prelude.

That set the tone for a performance that was expansive (new layout or not, the Cathedral acoustic doesn’t allow much leeway on that front), but consistently lyrical and loving. David Butt Philip was almost a bel canto Gerontius, and while his voice felt perhaps too fresh for the dying man of Part One, his vocal radiance and sense of wonder made Part Two glow. As the Angel, Susan Bickley had “something too of sternness”, cresting her Alleluias like a Valkyrie – but found limitless compassion in her great Farewell. Roderick Williams was both a warmly expressive Priest, and a majestic Angel of the Agony.

Chorus and Orchestra responded in kind, with the Girl Choristers of Worcester Cathedral giving a gleaming golden top to a Festival Chorus whose pianissimos were luminous, even if they struggled for clarity in the Demons’ Chorus and Praise to the Holiest. But the spirit, clearly, was willing: and in The Dream of Gerontius, nothing matters more.

Review: Roderick Williams & Susie Allen

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

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Birmingham Post, Reviews, Roderick Williams, Tardebigge

Tardebigge 1

Tardebigge Steeple – photo by Annette Rubery.

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (you should really go out and buy the paper!) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Tardebigge in Worcestershire on Sunday 28 August.


For thirteen years Jennie McGregor-Smith and her team of helpers have brought some of the world’s finest singers to the Georgian church at Tardebigge, and persuaded them to champion a repertoire that – even if it’s no longer quite as endangered as it was back in 2004 – we still can’t afford to take for granted. The singers have ranged from Nicky Spence to Susan Bickley; the songs have spanned centuries and continents, with a remarkable list of world premieres and commissions. The welcome has been warm, the setting idyllic and the audience devoted.

No more. This was Celebrating English Song’s final concert, and it said everything about this wonderful little series that it turned out to be such a joyous occasion. The performers, Roderick Williams and Susie Allen, had a lot to do with that: Williams’s baritone is just so sunny, so graceful and so effortlessly expressive. He floated the opening lines of Butterworth’s Loveliest of Trees over Allen’s eloquent, understated piano in a single, rapturous arc; bringing out the cycle’s latent drama not with grand gestures, but with endless subtle shadings of the voice.

That set the tone for a concert designed to celebrate as many English-language song composers as possible in a mere two hours. Cycles by Butterworth, Ireland and Ivor Gurney anchored the programme; Quilter, Moeran, Warlock, Vaughan Williams and Britten also featured, as did Ian Venables – who took a bow in person. There was a gentle emphasis on local poets – Housman, Masefield, and Shakespeare – but this was as gloriously rich and diverse an afternoon as we’ve ever spent at Tardebigge, and if Williams’s cheerful attempts to get the audience to sing along in Gurney’s rum-fuelled Captain Stratton’s Fancy didn’t quite pay off, maybe it’s because this has always been more of a tea and cake crowd.

Finzi’s It Was A Lover And His Lass ended the official programme on a note of bright-eyed optimism. But there was one song left to sing: Gurney’s Sleep, a special request from Jennie herself – whose devotion and achievement in giving us these thirteen magical summers fully merited the ovation she received from audience and performers alike.

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