It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The BBC Symphony Orchestra had initially booked the late Sir Andrew Davis for Friday’s concert; instead Sakari Oramo conducted The Dream of Gerontius in his memory. Then a few days ago an ailing Nicky Spence was forced to withdraw from the taxing title role, one he recorded so triumphantly last year with Paul McCreesh, only for a dream super-sub to step in. That was David Butt Philip, a seasoned Gerontius and a tenor at the peak of his powers. So no, it wasn’t supposed to be like this, but we’re darn lucky it was.
Oramo prefaced his performance with a warm tribute to his late predecessor, then launched into an account of the Prelude that treated its ten-minute span as a symphonic poem. Anyone more used to hearing Elgar’s oratorio steeped in the reverence of a cathedral setting, or else swirling in the canyons of the Royal Albert Hall, will have been startled by the immediacy of the Finn’s clear-eyed interpretation in the more intimate Barbican acoustic. Moreover, the BBCSO was on electrifying form for its Chief Conductor. The BBC Symphony Chorus was good too, and sang with gusto, although there were passages (mostly in hushed moments) where imprecise diction compromised the choristers’ otherwise clear delivery.
The solo trio comprised home-grown opera specialists of the first order, all of whom drew on extensive stage experience to inhabit their roles within the oratorio in a naturally assured, vividly communicative fashion. It was not only musical beauty that held the audience rapt (although in all three cases it helped) but the sheer embodiment of personality, whether mortal or beyond mortality. In Part 1, Butt Philip as the dying Gerontius suggested so acutely a body wracked by pain from an unstated (albeit guessable) disease that when the chorus of his ‘assistants’ implored God to “Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour” the words, studiously antiseptic though they may appear to be, were an unambiguous prayer for death as an exit from his suffering. It was Cardinal Newman’s cryptic invocation of a celestial Dignitas.
When Roderick Williams intoned the great song of transition from this world to the next, his “Proficiscere, anima Christiana” created shivers, while Dame Sarah Connolly found an ineffable blend of sympathy and majesty as she lent her seraphic vocal command to the dominant role of the Angel.
Newman’s fustian text inspired Elgar to what he called “the best of me”, but it can be hard to stomach the quest of Gerontius to come face to face with God as if he were some celestial Wizard of Oz, or to swallow the sheer pantomime silliness of the Demons’ chorus, within the context of the poet’s indubitable reverence. The words have long divided commentators and one can see why. It takes a performance of Oramo’s masterly conviction to let the composer, who was seldom more inspired than here, bring Gerontius to a dignified rest.
