Serenity was strikingly evident in Sunday night’s concert-opener, Debussy’s lyrical cantata La damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel). Scored for orchestra, mezzo-soprano, soprano and three-part female chorus, this evocative work sets Gabriel Rossetti’s narrative poem of 1850 (and translated into French by Gabriel Sarrazin) in which the chaste Damozel, waiting at the “gold bar of heaven”, yearns for the arrival of her earthly lover. The music’s sensuality provoked a few raised eyebrows at its first public performance in 1893, the audience no doubt taken aback by the notion of a Christian afterlife redolent of such human passion. Its musical language (a heady cocktail of Franck, Massenet and Wagner) was a perfect match for the poem’s imagery and both were magnificently recreated by David Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Amongst the many notable qualities of his account was the hushed opening prelude where Hill coaxed from his players some of the most tender playing I’ve heard in this rarely performed work. The prelude’s dynamic level was superbly controlled and the muted strings seemed to glow as if they themselves were heaven-bound. 60 meticulously prepared ladies from the London Symphony Chorus were superb, their diction and intonation faultless and, when required, their tone was suitably consoling and passionate. The icing on the cake was the sumptuous tones of the American soprano Nicole Cabell who found wonderfully expressive outlet in her role as the Damozel. If, on occasion, she was unable to project her lower range over the orchestra she was thrilling to watch and her pronunciation utterly convincing. Less rconvincing was Kelley O’Connor (another native American) whose swallowed vowels marred an otherwise sensitive narration.
With David Hill taking over at such short notice from an indisposed Donald Runnicles, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a programme change. Fortunately, the all-French theme remained (as did the association with the French symbolists) with Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande Suite replacing the originally advertised La mer. What we missed in Debussy’s richly scored seascape we gained in the elegance, clarity and understated craftsmanship found in Fauré’s incidental music based on Maeterlinck’s stage tragedy. In the Suite’s four movements, Hill responded effortlessly to the work’s melodic contours and summoned just the right wistful evocation in the first movement and brought to the second a brightly-lit scene where the clarity of Fauré’s scoring is superb. In the well-known “Sicilienne” harp (Bryn Lewis) and flute (Gareth Davies) formed a winning partnership, and in the concluding “Death of Mélisande” Hill allowed no indulgence, urging the music forward always with an acute ear to instrumental balance.