“Elijah is like an opera. It comes right at you, and the choruses are overwhelming. Yet it also has lyrical moments, the oases of calm that make this piece just so beautiful.” Sir Antonio Pappano, Chief Conductor Designate of the London Symphony Orchestra, thus commends a work once seen as Mendelssohn’s masterpiece, though relatively neglected since the ubiquitous presence of its Victorian heyday. Perhaps Pappano likes to challenge the orchestra’s librarian to rummage in the backs of cupboards.
But if the music was covered in dust, Pappano blew that away from the stirring, innovative opening of this mighty tale of the Biblical prophet. Elijah himself pre-empts the overture proper with threats to the Israelites, then the LSO launched into an intense, troubled D minor fugal prelude with fine attack, itself then dramatically interrupted by the first choral entry with a mighty cry of “Help, Lord!”. There is little piety in Elijah, rather Old Testament fire, vengeance, suffering and slaying. As Pappano said, “It comes right at you.”
When was Elijah last so strongly cast? Dame Sarah Connolly is still the first name on the team-sheet for such works, her mezzo-soprano well able to encompass the designated alto roles with her usual care for the music’s meaning. Her “Oh, rest in the Lord” made the most of that famous number. Allan Clayton, whose bushy beard gives him the appearance of a young arriviste prophet with spiritual ambitions, sang the tenor numbers with pathos and ringing tone, not least in his aria “Then shall the righteous shine forth”. Soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha had one of the score’s plums, in the opening aria to Part 2, “Hear ye, Israel!”, quite beautifully sung, as was everything else she contributed.
But appropriately enough it was our Elijah, the magnificent Gerald Finley, who claimed the vocal honours even among such eminent colleagues. There was a sense of anticipation each time Finley got to his feet. We looked up from the text in our programmes, since his diction was impeccable. So too his vocal acting from stern minatory utterances, to his legato-rich “Lord God of Abraham”, to his resignation and despair in the Bachian “It is enough”. He calls himself “bass-baritone”, for that is his range, but it is all one voice, smoothly modulated throughout, and despite those implacable warnings, never hectoring. I was not present in Birmingham at the 1846 premiere, for which Mendelssohn brought his own distinguished bass from Germany, but I suspect Elijah has never been better sung.
The score requires eight soloists, for we have a trio of angels and a treble. Ewan Christian, Head Chorister at Westminster Cathedral, was confident and clear as the boy sent for signs that the drought is over. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama contributed eight vocal students to form an angelic choir, which they did in both senses. With this large vocal team of leading current and promising future professionals, it is good news that Wednesday's repeat is to be filmed for Marquee TV, and released on LSO Live.
When the composer brought his revised Elijah to England in 1847, he was unhappy with the amateur choir, which struggled with this fugue-infested modern music. Mendelssohn moaned “Oh these tailors and shoemakers, they can’t do it and won’t practise”. Only the attendance of Victoria and Albert kept him on the rostrum. A pity he never heard the London Symphony Chorus, as prepared by Mariana Rosas. Alongside the title role, they must carry this work, and they did; loud or soft, four parts or eight, they came right at us. The present-day tailors and shoemakers of the LSO Chorus can return to their fitting-rooms and lasts confident in their mastery of their crafts – vocal included.
