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Huddersfield Choral Society
Britten : War Requiem
Huddersfield Town Hall and The Sage Gateshead
March 2007
Religion does not cause war but it provides the tools for those who seek to gain power by infiltrating the minds of others to kill and maim in the name of their creator. That is surely the underlying theme of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a cry for peace from a pacifist who did not have a religion.
Fate has decreed that I have heard the work so many times and produced one of the many recordings of the score, and seldom have I been more deeply moved than by this performance from the Huddersfield Choral Society.
They have that weighty tone based on an unusually large male section, the massive outburst of the Dies Irae creating the desired effect of awe and horror as we move from religion to the scenes of war portrayed by two male soloists.
More earthy than angelic, the Trinity Boys Choir from Croydon sang with unusual security, and it was left to the ladies of the choir to transport us to celestial regions.
The three soloists, Janice Watson, Paul Nilon and Grant Doyle were superb, Nilon bringing an operatic approach to emotive words, the male voices perfectly balanced on their doomed duo as dead soldiers.
Principals of the Northern Sinfonia were a real class act as the chamber group, and though the small string section of Opera North were at times swamped, the orchestra were suitably responsive to the neat, communicative conducting of Takuo Yuasa, his total empathy and pacing of the work absolutely ideal.
David Denton
Yorkshire Post
6th April 2007
Benjamin Britten's choral masterpiece, War Requiem saw the marshalling of impressive musical forces for an awe-inspiring concert at The Sage Gateshead.
From the moment members of the large Huddersfield Choral Society filed in, along with the Northern Sinfonia and the Orchestra of Opera North, the audience knew it was going to be an occasion of note.
Conductor Takuo Yuasa opened the work with a sensitively modulated Requiem aeternam, with the voices of the Croyden Trinity Boys' Choir rising ethereally from high up at the back of the hall. The three soloists were intended by Britten to be representative of the Second World War's English, German and Russian protagonists.
Soprano Janice Watson, appearing alone at the top level, showed up the acoustic magnificence of the hall with her radiant voice. Her exchanges with the chorus, as she repeated the refrains from Lacrimosa dies illa were quite exquisite.
Britten's work interweaves Latin text of Requiem Mass with Wilfred Owen's stark anti-war poems - which were conveyed with compelling conviction by tenor Paul Nilon and baritone Grant Doyle.
Yuasa was completely immersed as he drove the work to greater and greater heights, seamlessly layering the massive collage into a swirling mass of colour. The fury of the Dies Irae boiled with passion.
As the last sustained chord died away, there were tears in some eyes. The applause was almost reverential, and although it wasn't quite appropriate to shout out bravo, everyone would have been quietly thinking so.
Gavin Engelbrech
Northern Echo
Tuesday 3rd April 2007
All served the themes of peace and reconciliation
Conductors, it might be said, are at their best when you barely notice they are there.
Not that Takuo Yuasa is particularly unobtrusive. His gestures are as fluent as any and his career has been a significant international success. But the sum of a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem should be greater than its parts. However great or small their individual contribution, generals and foot soldiers alike are there to serve the music, and the music of the War Requiem is to serve the themes of peace and reconciliation.
Written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, the work was first performed there in 1962, 22 years after the original 14th Century St Michael's was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. And like the First World War victim Wilfred Owen, whose poems are integrated with the Latin Mass for the Dead, Britten's anti-war sentiments lose none of their relevance in the present century.
Unlike a First World War general, Yuasa took great care of his forces with a clear yet expressive beat, indicating individual entries and coordinating with David Swinson, directing the Croyden Trinity Boys Choir high in the rear gallery. Ranged in front of Yuasa were the huge Huddersfield Choral Society, the Northern Sinfonia orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North and three vocal soloists. If the latter were sometimes lost in the orchestral onrush, the quieter passages revealed starkly convincing characterisations of Owen's protagonists with tenor Paul Nilon and baritone Grant Doyle chillingly nonchalant in The Next War: "Out there, we walked quite friendly up to Death ..."
Soprano Janice Watson sang from high in the front gallery, her May the Choir of Angels emerging ecstatically from the luminous sound of the combined choirs.
Thomas Hall
The Journal
2nd April 2007
Forces mass for eloquent lament on war
Benjamin Brittenﾕs War Requiem is scored for might forces but ends on a whisper.
The final, hushed Amen is as eloquent a lament for the pity of war as any of the more elaborate music which precedes it in this lengthy dramatic composition and the control, tone quality and intonation achieved by the singers of the Choral Society was as impressive here as anything they had negotiated in the previous 90 minutes.
But if the final moments were special, there were many such in this justifiably well received performance in which the Choral Society was joined by the combined forces our regionﾕs two very fine orchestras ﾐ the Northern Sinfonia, from Newcastle, and the Orchestra of Opera North, based in Leeds.
This massive body of singers and players was conducted by Takuo Yuasa, who ensured that the many moods of the Requiem ﾐ from anguish and sorrow to bitter irony ﾐ were fully captured.
The composition combines the Latin words of the Requiem Mass, set by countless composers for at least six centuries, with the poems of Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches of World War One. Owenﾕs edgy relationship with religious sentiment gives the War Requiem a tremendous inner conflict.
Among the soloists, tenor Paul Nilon was effectively the voice of Owen and the singer displayed an empathy with the text which was powerfully moving.
Also impressive was bass Grant Doyle and soprano Janice Watson.
Stationed in the gallery was the Trinity Boys Choir, based in Croydon. They acquitted themselves very well, although it is a shame perhaps that an area like Huddersfield cannot muster its own boy singers.
William Marshall
Huddersfield Daily Examiner
31st March 2007
The Sage, with its fine concert hall and acoustic, has not the spaciousness of a cathedral and therefore would not seem to be the most suitable venue for Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a piece that demands three groups of musicians, each with their own sound world and space. Designed for the new Coventry Cathedral at its inauguration in 1962 (replacing the medieval building the Luftwaffe demolished in 1940) the premiere employed two conductors to co-ordinate proceedings, one being the composer.
At the Sage, the three component parts were arranged with the boys choir at the top rear tier, the chamber group and two male soloists on the platform to the right of the conductor, and the large orchestra and chorus taking up the rest of the platform with the soprano behind and above on the upper tier.
There was a practical advantage in this relatively intimate set up in that one conductor could keep a firm grip on all before and behind him. In addition, it was possible to hear some of the subtleties of Brittenﾕs textures that might have been lost in a more cavernous setting. Lesser orchestral playing would have been readily exposed but consistently distinguished playing was provided by the happy combination of the Leeds based Orchestra of Opera North and the Sage's own resident chamber band, the Northern Sinfonia.
The choral force of more than 150 strong was that symbol of the great English Choral tradition which so impressed the likes of Haydn and Berlioz. When the latter visited England in 1847, the Huddersfield Choral Society was already in existence. 160 years later at The Sage it achieved some beautifully hushed singing in the most moving parts of the Requiem and conductor Takuo Yuasa ensured a perfect balance with the large orchestra. There was one unfortunate breach of balance when in the opening Requiem Aeternam an overly loud tubular bell shattered the mysterious peace.
The large choir was offset by the boys of Trinity Choir, Croydon, imported from the South in this otherwise Northern affair. They were confidently ethereal.
Britten mostly matched the two male soloists with the chamber orchestra. They render the words of the Wilfred Owen war poems that are interspersed with some of the C13th Latin text of the Requiem. They represent the here and now of the awfulness of war - the soldiers who alone know what it's really like. Tenor Paul Nilon and baritone Grant Doyle possess ideal voices for the roles, the two of them capable of lyricism and some power but above all they blended together superbly in terms of tone, ensemble and technical excellence.
As for soprano Janice Watson, who spatially and musically floated above the orchestra and chorus; I found her strident vibrato not to my taste although to be fair it could be said the delivery was in keeping with the horror of the ancient Christian text that refers to accountability on death to God and the threat of unspeakable consequences for those miserable beings found wanting. The trouble was, when it came to less gruesome passages, such as in the Sanctus, she toned it down very little. There must be something about the role. Reputedly, at rehearsals for the first London performance of this work, Britten was on several occasions politely suggesting to Galina Vishnevskaya (who had already thrown a tantrum over where she was being made to stand) that she tone it down a bit too. Perhaps Janice Watson was practising riding over a huge orchestra for her next operatic role: Salome.
There was only one other disappointment for me which was that the wonderfully drilled Huddersfield singers did not unleash the degree of terrifying power that I hoped for in the Dies Irae. One should feel in threat of being blown out of the hall and I am sure they had the potential to do it.
These minor gripes aside this was a moving and superbly executed performance, commandingly led and unerringly paced by Takuo Yuasa.
After the performance I bumped into a couple I know and it turned out that one of them had attended the premiere in Coventry Cathedral and the other the London premier that led to the recording. Both were relating how much speculation there was at the time, forty five years ago, about how much of a masterpiece the War Requiem was and whether it would stand the test of time. Certainly it was a staggering success for Britten, something that intensely irritated that other great contemporary composer, Igor Stravinsky. The first record sales were unprecedented for a new classical work and any live performance was bound to pack out. The fact that at the Sage there were a significant number of empty seats surprised me. Whether it represented a valid judgement of the work's current status I have no idea.
John Leeman
Musicweb-international.com
The Australian - Reviews
Bold rhythms and magical movements
Gillian Wills
March 06, 2006
Maestro Series. Rachmaninov 3rd Symphony.
The Queensland Orchestra. Queensland Performing Arts Centre. March 4.
PERCUSSIONIST Evelyn Glennie's performance style is powerful and entrancing, not because she plays in bare feet and wears red trousers that sparkle under stage lights and not because she is profoundly deaf, but because of her complete engagement with the music.
Glennie's intensely rhythmical playing flows through spry dancing movements and fleet transitions between instruments. Her virtuosity is as much a pleasure to watch as it is to hear.
Glennie has commissioned dozens of new works and the Queensland Orchestra's opening Maestro series concert presented a world premiere of Matthew Hindson's Percussion Concerto that was inspired by Glennie's versatility as a player. Travelling at a frenetic pace in this performance, the first of three movements was a soundscape of rapidly chattering and clipped articulations on a mix of cymbals that included the hi-hat. This was pitted against a choppy counterpoint of driving rhythms and explosive orchestral outbursts that exuberantly bounced off the walls. In this zany, pastiche of film music, folk, jazz and blues crammed within a classical frame, the brass players wallowed in their attention-seeking scooping, whining choruses so clearly removed from their traditional role of contained support.
Daring colours included a jazzy slapped bass and grimacing woodwind cries, ending with the soloist improvising a brushed cadenza on the tam-tam. Good Vibes, by contrast, was a tuneful excursion that floated the swimming resonance of the vibraphone on a surface of marbled, tranquil strings. Glennie embroidered sensitive lines but there were one or two frayed edges and she was not quite so convincing in milking the mood here as she was in the bolder, more blustery outer movements.
In Drummer Queen's super-charged, pounding montage of competing rhythms and popular dance quotations she was superb.
To this point the orchestra was in good form but Rachmaninov's Third Symphony emerged as the evening's tour de force. Conducting from memory, Takuo Yuasa authoritatively crafted an irresistibly polished surface of lush pliable strings, and the synergies between sections were immensely satisfying. Cohesion was assisted by a buoyant woodwind section, with particularly appealing contributions from the guest principal clarinet.
The second movement was magical, with an unusually elegant horn solo. In the Leonora Overture Yuasa fearlessly insisted that Beethoven's trademark of sharply contrasted dynamics was pushed to the limit.
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