SCO, Andrew Manze & Roderick Williams, Edinburgh review: 'captivating'
This was an evening of big passions and big ideas, writes David Kettle
SCO, Andrew Manze & Roderick Williams, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★
It’s been a strong week for new Scottish oratorios (hardly a sentence I ever thought I’d write). Just a few days after Sir James MacMillan’s new Angels Unawares landed at the Sistine Chapel, far closer to home SCO Associate Composer Jay Capperauld’s The Language of Eden got its world premiere at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall. They’re very different works, certainly, but they share a certain spiritual slant – and although Capperauld and his librettist, South Uist-born Niall Campbell, don’t look to scripture for inspiration as MacMillan did, they attempt nothing less than their own creation myth, with the mysterious Island of Eden birthing and nurturing an alternative Adam, who looks set to deliver his message to humankind through music.
There’s more than a hint of Tippett’s appealing but somewhat opaque philosophising to Capperauld and Campbell’s storyline, and to The Language of Eden’s sense of ritualistic unfolding. Capperauld’s music, though never less than powerful, passionate and effortlessly eloquent, could maybe have done with a little more variety in its lush, sometimes Reich-like harmonic language and its chordal vocal textures. But The Language of Eden was nonetheless often stunningly beautiful and immediately captivating – and generously written for voices too. Capperauld and Campbell could hardly have hoped for stronger or more committed performers, with the SCO Chorus on resplendent form, and soloist Roderick Williams living and embodying every word as the enigmatic Adam.
Conductor Andrew Manze was no less committed in his brisk, perceptive direction, and led a cleverly conceived programme around Capperauld’s new piece, launching with a remarkably velvety, rich but strongly defined Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, which showcased the SCO Chorus’s immaculate blend and clean, clear enunciation. His Elgar Serenade for Strings was light-footed and luminous, while Williams was powerfully poignant in his own orchestration of six songs from Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad. It was an evening of big passions and big ideas, for sure, even if some of those ideas remained a little elusive.
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