A mass of the life evaluation – magical and ecstatic proms performance by Delius’ Magnum Opus
It was 37 years ago that a mass of life was last carried out by the proms, and this excursion from 1988 was only the second complete promot performance. The neglect is hardly credible and this outstanding opportunity showed what the audience was refused. If there was ever a piece that was ideal for the Royal Albert Hall, it is Delius’ lush 1905 Magnum Opus with his double choir, its huge and sensual orchestration and the ecstatic confirmations of her Nietz text. And no conductor is ideal to bring all of this together than the lifelong lawyer Mark Elder.
Why the disregard? Sometimes perhaps the permanent boldness of Nietzsche’s atheistic polemics also spoke Zarathustra, from which the text is selected. The main reason, however, is certainly that Delius’ defiantly individual aesthetics – “sometimes a little immaterial, but always very nice”, as Elgar puts it so well – a hard sale to the audience who want her music to have obvious structure and progress.
And yet only a few large pieces have a clear start, a center and an end as a mass of life. The opening of the opening jumps great from the side. The atmospheric silence at the beginning of the second part with its distant horn calls – high in the Albert Hall Gallery – is a magical piece. And the last choir is a emphatic summation, which was admired by Elder here to avoid an indication of bombast.
The work is undeniably weaker moments when Delius’ music remains less convinced. However, only a few are without interest and nobody is missing art. The influence of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, both philosophically and musically, is there. This is also the echo of Delius’s exposure to African -American singing in his Florida years. Orchestration always lives with subtle changes in timbre and phrasing. All of this was sensitively realized by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with Alison Teal’s bass bass offering an unmistakable presence in the fine wooden wind section.
Among the vowel soloists, the baritone bears most of the weight, with Roderick Williams clarifying its marathon task. Jennifer Davis, Claudia Huckle and David Butt Philip showed that they were not there to compensate for the numbers. The BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir were never displayed. Translated translations of the German text were a good idea. But it was Elder who did the most to make a mass of life so conclusive. Why not a repetition in one or two years?
• Listen again BBC Sounds by October 12th. The proms continue until September 13th.