After last weekend’s Gerontius and Saturday’s Apostles, one might have worried that some combination of orchestra, choirs, conductor and audience might have been tiring of Elgar’s writing. Not a bit of it, however: the onstage forces mustered up all the requisite energy and spirit needed for a big season finale, and Sir Mark Elder rounded off his Elgar oratorio-thon in style with a compelling account of The Kingdom.
On its surface, The Kingdom is a more difficult work than the two other big Elgar oratorios, and its apparently episodic nature requires careful navigation. Here, tempos were kept relatively brisk, and soloists gave such strong character to their roles as to avoid any sense of dramatic unevenness. Each provided a number of wonderfully crafted individual moments, though it was Gemma Summerfield’s “The sun goeth down” in Part 4 which was most striking. Combining seamlessly with Roberto Ruisi’s elegant solo violin lines and the two centrally-placed harpists, she sang with utmost delicacy and warmth. Earlier, in Part 2, Summerfield and Dame Sarah Connolly wove an attractively well rounded Morn of Pentecost, prioritising utmost beauty of sound at all times.
As a late replacement for an unwell Thomas Atkins, Andrew Staples’ St John was an unexpected pleasure to witness, projecting his huge sound with ease across the entirety of his range. Elgar’s writing for Ashley Riches’ St Peter is less sympathetic, and at times his more measured tone was swallowed into the orchestra, though he led a magnificent “Repent and be baptised” with magisterial authority.
The choral forces for the city’s big Elgar triple varied slightly for each performance, with some 350 choristers in total contributing to the series. At the heart of this vast number, the Hallé Choir and their director Matthew Hamilton must be credited with pulling off the enormous challenge – musical, mental and physical – of preparing and delivering these works to such a high standard. The final scene of Pentecost was hair-raisingly huge in sound, and the big moments after the interval, above all “Lord thou didst make the heaven”, continued to rattle the furniture.
In front of the choirs, the orchestra again played with sensitivity and attentiveness to the vocal lines, supporting where necessary but indulging their own rich timbre for the most Wagnerian moments in the oratorio’s Prelude and Part 4. As the final chords faded gently into darkness, it struck me that few musicians in the world can ever have had such a strong connection to a composer as The Hallé and Elder have developed with Elgar over the last quarter of a century.
