Bernstein and Stravinsky
Usher Hall 21/8/25
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Karina Canellakis, conductor, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, James Grossmith, chorus director, Hugh Cutting, countertenor.
Rising Stars of Voice: Maryam Wocial soprano, Camilla Seale mezzo soprano, Euan McDonald tenor, Peter Edge baritone
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus under conductor Karina Canellakis present a varied programme of twentieth century music, centring around Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. This is my first hearing of the Bernstein, which lasts 20 minutes. A programmer’s dilemma - what works with a shortish choral work? My preferred answer would always be more choral music! Tonight’s choice is Messiaen’s ‘Les Offerandes Oubliée’ and a 1947 suite of Stravinsky’s ballet music from ‘Petrushka’.
The Messiaen (a short religious orchestral piece in three movements) didn’t work for me. Despite wonderfully controlled playing from the SSO’s string section, it remained somewhat reminiscent of the “safe” strings-only works (sometimes even played by masked instrumentalists) which became a post-covid staple. The Stravinsky showed off all aspects of the orchestra in its rapid realisation of eighteen colourful scenes and soundscapes. Petrushka’s life and death are at the centre of this kaleidoscope, centred on ‘Petrushka’s Room’ for which pianist Lynda Cochrane sets the scene. Throughout the work swirl the carousels – we hear them close to and in the distance - and individual turns at the Shrovetide Fair. There are no timpani but the array of percussionists have fun with different drums while the various xylophones add sparkling high notes. The fairground bear is impersonated by the tuba. Karina Canellakis keeps the arc of the story together.
The Chichester Psalms, sung in Hebrew with English surtitles, written for Chichester Cathedral in 1965, set the words of three Psalms. In the short first section, ‘Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord’ the massed choir accompanied by xylophones and drums, with cymbals and tambourine, never lets go of its syncopated rhythm. A contrapuntal section led off by the basses, and some quieter singing from the upper voices only briefly interrupt the joyous celebration.
Countertenor Hugh Cutting, the undoubted star of the evening, comes to the front of the stage to sing ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’ with very light accompaniment, his strong voice remaining quiet but reaching to the back of the hall as he unfolds one of Bernstein’s best melodies. Women’s voices and strings join for the second verse, until all is disrupted by the whole panoply of percussion and urgent male voices asking, “Why do the nations rage so furiously against him?” The soloist and the chorus restore peace, but this central section says much about the division in the Old Testament, and perhaps in all religion between a loving God who is with us “in the shadow of death”, and a vengeful God who “laughs in derision”. After a strident orchestral section, the final psalm builds up a message of communal harmony with harp and strings predominating in the orchestration.
Four of the Rising Stars of Voice sing quartets at the end of the first and third sections, faring better in their second appearance where they achieve a nice balance of voices.
