Conductor Sofi Jeannin claims “navigating the unknown is part of the journey”. The journey in question was the monumental The Veil of the Temple, John Tavener’s epic all-night vigil; the unknown was the knitting together of a live event impossible to rehearse as a complete run. Opening the Edinburgh International Festival, Director Nicola Benedetti explained the performance marked a unique and singular moment chiming perfectly with this year’s festival theme ‘The Truth We Seek’. For practical purposes, this was more a light-to-darkness trajectory, the audience reluctantly ducking out of the early afternoon bright sunshine into a subdued but expectant Usher Hall, emerging into the late evening eight hours later, stunned by Tavener’s euphoric music still swirling around our heads.
Tavener converted to the Orthodox Church and was familiar with all-night liturgical Byzantine chanting. When the Temple Church in London approached him for an overnight vigil, Tavener produced a work in eight cycles, each growing in stature, the music circling and revisiting itself in modified forms like a Tibetan prayer wheel. Each cycle moves up a key, so that by the eighth the music has returned home, an octave higher. The work, sung in several languages – English, Aramaic, Church Slavonic, Greek and Sanskrit – is liturgically focussed on the Kyrie, The Lord’s Prayer and the Orthodox Mary of Theotokos and her mystical tongs, with intense solos covering the Beatitudes and a jumble of Gospels and Psalms. Thin choral forces slowly multiply over the cycles into a huge antiphonal experience, much of the music sung over David Goodenough’s long deep and soft organ pedal notes.
For a concert hall performance, to keep the organic feel of the piece, the audience was free to wander in and out as the music only stopped for three 10-minute pauses. The stalls were a sea of coloured beanbags with a raised central dais, the rest of us traditionally seated upstairs. Director Thomas Guthrie used the whole building theatrically with chorus and soloists appearing on-stage, off-stage and, most excitingly, in our midst. In a darkened hall, lighting picked out individual performers, and all singers had LED lamps on their scores, casting ghostly light onto their faces, dramatically heightening the atmosphere. Moving three choirs around the building, into and out of the semi-dark organ gallery, was an astonishing feat of stage direction in itself.
Sophia Burgos’ powerful and bright soprano introduced each cycle in call-and-response with the duduk, a plangent Armenian woodwind instrument, beautifully played by Hovhannes Margaryan, backed by Calum Robertson’s Indian harmonium, beginning with an ancient devotional Sufi text. A candle arrived with each cycle, marked by gong crashes and blasts from Richard Hellenthal’s giant Tibetan temple horn. We learned to read the pattern of the cycles, the choral elements growing in texture with added bells and percussion, solos delivered by members of the Monteverdi Choir. Most memorable were the extended Gospel fragments sung unaccompanied from the central platform, Florian Störtz’s flowing bass lines and tenor Hugo Hymas’ incantations arrestingly intense.
The Monteverdi Choir, Edinburgh Festival Chorus and National Youth Choirs of Scotland shared the choral load, thrillingly coming together in the final parts, scattered around the building, tackling Tavener’s tricky dissonances and singing their hearts out as the RSNO brass and timpani put in a last-minute appearance. Conductor Sofi Jeannin, onstage for all of it, glued the work into a thrilling journey. The Veil of the Temple is brave programming and a work one could lose patience with, but all was forgiven when over 200 singers packed the stage, hurling out the final Sanskrit 'Shanti' chants – Peace – the Truth We Seek.
