The Hallé in Sheffield: a neglected masterpiece takes centre stage

How often does that familiar cliché “a neglected masterpiece” turn out to involve an excess of special pleading on behalf of a work that might actually reveal good reasons for spending time out of the spotlight? Well, in the case of Lili Boulanger’s setting of Psalm 130 for chorus, organ and orchestra, with solo vocal parts for mezzo and (fleetingly) tenor, all one can say is that it is utterly baffling that the work should have waited until now for its first Sheffield performance. Dedicated to the memory of “mon cher papa”, but also written in the depths of the First World War, a cataclysm Boulanger would not live to see ended, it’s a brooding, darkly-scored work, suiting both the temper of the war-torn times but also Boulanger’s own sombre temperament. That such a work should come from the pen of an ailing young woman in only her twenty-third year is astonishing.

In this excellent performance, The Hallé and its former Assistant Conductor Delyana Lazarova were ably assisted by the massed voices of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, although the singers’ French pronunciation was occasionally tinged with some rather Yorkshire vowel sounds. The work nonetheless emerged as an intensely human appeal for comfort and compassion in a shattered world. Polish mezzo Hanna Hipp embraced the psalm’s yearning for redemption with impassioned eloquence, joined for all of ten bars of music by young Scottish tenor Liam Forrest. All in all, it was an experience not to be missed, witnessed by a gratifyingly larger than usual City Hall audience.

To single out Boulanger’s composition for special mention is in no way to overlook the rest of the programme. The Hallé obviously enjoys its association with Lazarova and she conjured from them a sound both precise and cohesive. I’ve rarely heard the Hallé’s strings sound as sweetly transparent as they did in Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, and in a work in which the woodwind section tends to steal the show the violins in particular had a delectable shimmer. The whole ensemble sounded, well, very French.

At the other end of the spectrum, the strings dug into the gutsy rhythmic patterns of Saint-Saëns’s never knowingly understated Symphony no. 3 with a gusto that helped to carry all before it. It’s a curious work, occasionally in danger of being consumed by its own bombast, but it’s one which almost always leaves audiences with smiles on their faces. There are those who don’t warm to Saint-Saëns, usually because of his emotional detachment, but this performance suggested a composer having fun – rigorous fun, but no less joyful for that. Lazarova and the Hallé made much of the symphony’s Lisztian patterns of thematic transformation, so that the piece came across as more cohesive than it sometimes does, and when the stirring C Major organ chord heralded the start of the final movement it felt both inevitable and fulfilling. Local hero Darius Battiwalla, Music Director of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus since the late 20^th century, played the solo part with evident enthusiasm, and his interaction with Lazarova meant the organ emerged as part of the orchestral sound rather than battling against it. As an upbeat to the Organ Symphony, Battiwalla gave us a short organ piece by Saint-Saëns, his Fantaisie in E flat major, coincidentally written when Saint-Saëns was the same age as Boulanger when she wrote her setting of Psalm 130. It’s a charming if fairly innocuous work, though its technical challenges at least allowed Battiwalla a rigorous warm-up before the symphony to follow.