After the first performance of Sir Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time doubt was expressed about the inclusion of the American Spirituals into the piece. Never before had music associated with an enslaved people been incorporated into a work of Western art music and it was thought that the Spirituals did not add to the expressiveness of the piece as a whole. However, it is a mark of Tippett’s groundbreaking work that his setting of the five Spirituals is a masterly achievement. His sensitive transformation of the material and its seamless embedding into the gloriously rich texture of the score gives the work its very special place in the choral tradition. Sir Antonio Pappano, the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and four high-profile soloists delivered an utterly arresting and absorbing performance that was expansive in scale and intimate in gesture.
Tippett’s libretto is shot through with the pity of injustice versus the angst of self-righteous indignation. It was vividly evoked by emotive performances from the soloists. Soprano Masabane Cecillia Rangwanasha was majestic in tone, with her top notes catching both the warmth and the light of the sun. There was a copper-like patina to mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges’ lower register, slightly underpowered in places but she still captured her fearful summoning of the dark forces rising like a flood. A noticeable reticence was attached to tenor Sean Panikkar’s searching for his shadow and his light; nonetheless the wild beating of his heart won the day. The sartorial elegance of bass Soloman Howard was matched by the wisdom of his words; he convinced me that the garden does indeed lie beyond the desert.
Pappano’s rugged, impassioned conducting drew superb playing from the LSO, with the strings being alternatively edgy and ecstatic, the brass spine-tingling and spellbinding, and the woodwinds wailingly mournfully and quietly reposeful. The chorus, thoroughly prepared by Mariana Rosas, was fantastic; menacing agitators, valiant signallers of hope and, in the Spirituals, joining wonderfully with the soloists as the guarantors of redemption. A crowded stage, with conductor and soloists very close to the edge, and the high-raked seating for the chorus added to the dramatic staging of an original and singular work. The doubters after the premiere conceded that it might easily become a landmark in the history of choral music, and so it has.
Where Tippett has the enslaved and the oppressed stealing away to Jesus, Beethoven invites the whole of humanity to seek the Creator, of its own free will, above the stars. Different means, but the same goal, and for Beethoven that means is his Ninth Symphony. The setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy was not motivated by any overt religious belief or sentiment, any more than was Tippett’s use of the Spirituals; but as paeans to freedom both works evoke the shared humanity of the composers.
Pappano’s unfurling of Beethoven’s vivid canvas was as arresting and absorbing as the endeavour lavished on the Tippett. The heart and soul of the performance was the intensity of the Adagio; the winds and the strings produced a rapturous sound that would be echoed, in more blazing colours, in the choral setting. For the outer orchestral movements Pappano engaged the same rugged style for the shaping of gestures, the pinpointing of rhythmic motifs and the highlighting of Beethoven’s graceful cantabile lines. As in the Tippett, the soloists and chorus sang with great passion, stylish precision and an all-embracing sense of being party to something greater than themselves.
