Our reviewer explores the Brighton classical music scene

Brighton Festival 2022, Classical: Week Three selection

At All Saints Hove, Classical’s back-to-back contribution to the Festival’s Syrian thread –

Thursday 26 May (6pm), Jonathan Dove (b 1959) song cycle, ‘In Damascus’ (comp 2016, 40mins): setting text from Syrian poet Ali Safar’s ‘A Black Cloud In A Leaden Sky’ or ‘Death By Stabs of Sorrow’, translated by Anne-Marie McManus; performed by Sacconi String Quartet (Ben Hancox, Hannah Dawson violins, Robin Ashwell viola, Cara Berridge cello), with James Gilchrist, tenor.

1 “A while ago in the Damascus neighbourhood of Zahur, children were drifting off to sleep believing there was a truce for the holiday . . .”; 2 “And what if you weep alone at the end of the night, will the children find their way home in the morning . . .”; 3 “Two days ago we were standing where the long line of Syrians . . .”; 4 “Here and now in Damascus, in spite of everything there are white clouds laced with black”;

5 “The many faces of Damascus”; 6 Instrumental; 7 “Soon we will be free of our faces and our souls”; (pause); 8 “I don’t think any nation in existence will match Syrians in their expressions of sadness, their airing of grief”; 9 “On all my travels I’d take a book”; 10 “My heart is as black as a lump of coal”; 11 “My country, please wait a little longer.”

EACH DIFFERENT SET of dots denote further words describing a different kind of wartime victim pain. These titles foreshadow yet deeper shocks and agonies in Ali Safar’s texts Jonathan Dove set six years back, when the Syrian civil war drew prolonged world scrutiny and media attention.

The Ukrainian Donbas, then already ablaze more than Western public knew, erupted large after Brighton Festival 2022 had already programmed a Syrian thread now gravely apposite. And between these two conflicts, Afghanistan too now lies desperate and upstaged. Not to mention Yemen.

These two Festival concerts took place not far from The Riwaq plywood Arabic colonnade installed on Hove Lawns by Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni, one of the Festival’s two guest co-directors. And with Palmeira Square almost equidistant. Ought that now to become Palmyra, its ethic spelling?

Conceiving ‘In Damascus’ in 2016, the commissioning Sacconi Quartet and composer Dove set one other a compositional challenge in classical music at a time when the UK was, comparatively, to quote Phil Collins, having just another day in paradise.

Britten’s War Requiem towers over British modern classical reaction to war. But Dove, merely an eye witness as an English tourist in Syria 20 years before composing this, and despite being a prolific operatic composer, additionally a choral one and a top choice to provide music for national ceremonies and rep theatre, here goes small scale and intimate.

When nothing less will suffice, ‘In Damascus’ has the instrumental and vocal starkness the essentially bleak and sombre text demands of a composer broadcasting Ali Safar’s sometimes biting, sometimes lyrically ironical observations of his nation’s destruction everywhere.

Dove, with skilful control, restraint and imagination, has his string quartet generating textures and moods frequently skinned to the skeleton – even sometimes nearly freezing in its response to the austere desolation. The instruments often work in pairs, sometimes playing opposing figures or lines of different character, to create expressive flow or stasis, cross-rhythms of momentum or disturbance, and tensional tightening or release. Listening was a quartet music lover’s treat.

Standing in the middle of the curving quartet stage layout between second violin and viola, tenor James Gilchrist’s beautiful tonal purity and sensitive dynamics made him sound, if saintly, sometimes vulnerable. Is he cast as an English translator and reporter of Ali Safar’s earthy poetic reactions? Or is Dove’s tenor actually Ali Safar himself?

Gilchrist apparently executed an emotional crack in his voice on two upward vocal leaps at the words ‘like TEARS’ in Song 4 and ‘we will LEAVE’ in No 11 (my capitals). I noticed another expressive touch in No 10 at “Our days: a BLACK box’. But something, for me, made him miss the boat. Infuriatingly, he rolled his ‘r’s at almost every opportunity.

Gilchrist is a New College Oxford and Kings College Cambridge vocal product, now among the world leaders as Evangelist in the great Bach John and Matthew Passions, and of high repute in the mainstream oratorio repertory, also with operatic recognition as the Reverend in Peter Grimes. A Western Christianity groove.

Choirs and singers, in church or out, happily roll ‘r’s of words especially when ‘r’ heads the first syllable. It’s blandly and habitually used for for diction, occasionally for emphasis with added ‘rrr’s, or else simply thrown in for vocal enjoyment. It’s a mannerism, artificial, institutionalised, and too often pretentiously so. Here I found it maddeningly stylising, intrusive and surely misplaced.

The effect, for me, was remote, detached, clichéd, precious, and ‘being exquisite’ (to borrow from Vaughan Williams). Instead of engaging me as a Syrian voice poetically despairing among Damascus ruins, hoping for crumbs of comfort, Gilchrist, leaning indiscriminately on this traditional vocal decoration, came at this as a voice from a hallowed cathedral – and, worse, had me imagining a patronising bestowal of official, albeit empathetic, holy Christian blessing upon a brutally shattering muslim life experience.

Is this what Dove intends? Or was there underestimation by Gilchrist, artistically missing a Damascus moment Dove offers his ‘Syrian’ tenor. Granted, Dove says he has deliberately avoided any authentic Syrian or other musical idiom, mode or sound of The Levant. I don’t see this, though, as an excuse for Gilchrist to stay lazily true to type.

Or perhaps is the ‘classical’ clothing of ‘In Damascus’ hidebounding interpretation? Has it fallen between two stools? Is it allowing artifice? Can a European truly fill Middle Eastern shoes? (We sometimes expect them to fill ours) Or am I craving something more dramatic, connective and worldly than Dove wishes?

Could it better have been more powerfully a solo operatic scene about loss? Dove’s quartet makes it a private soliloquy. In which case, Gilchrist may have licence to talk to himself in as many ‘rrr’s as he likes in expressing shock from his safe distance.

Even in a performance neutral and implying detachment or self-assertion can be justified, why was it that to a global audience of millions the tenor at the funeral of Diana Princess of Wales, in national Abbey surroundings and with enough reason for an emotional performance, saw no need here automatically to roll his ‘r’s? . . . “And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind: never fading with the sunset when the RRRAIN set in.”

The tenor’s chance here is to forsake one’s comfort zone to achieve a distinctive expressive stamp for the piece. How do other singers tackle this? We should find out. The Sacconi Quartet have recorded it with Mark Padmore. I haven’t heard it yet.

Listening in the audience, to the Sacconis and Gilchrist, ahead of her own performance to follow, was young Syrian oudist Rihab Azar. Her reaction? “This is not a music genre I feel able to judge but I felt it honoured the subject matter,” she told me. “Music is abstract. But here it integrates more with the text and it’s obvious to hear so much pain, tension and sorrow.”

This composition communicates beyond its own shores. It’s salutary listening.

Thursday 26 May (8.30pm), Rihab Azar Trio: Rihab Azar (Homs, Syria; oud, contact-miked), Dudley Phillips (UK; electro-acoustic bass guitar, amplified), Antonio Romero (Spain; djembe, snare and foot bass percussion; miked).

1 Farid al-Atrash (Syria), ‘Melody of Immortality’; 2 Riad Al-Sunbati (Egypt), ‘Rejoice, My Heart’; 3 Mohamad Abdul-Karim (Syria), Tango; 4 Rihab Azar, improvisation - Mohamad Al-Qassabji (Egypt), ‘My Heart Is My Guide’; 5 Mohamad Abdul-Karim (Syria), Samaie Rast; 6 Khaled Mohamed Ali (Iraq), ‘The Knight’;

7 Adnan Abul-Shamat (Syria), ‘Bring it Over, Companion’; 8 Dudley Phillips, improvisation - Charbel Rouhana (Lebanon), ‘Bashraf Inspired by the Present’; 9 Syrian heritage medley of 2 Muwashah; 10 Anouar Brahem (Tunisia), ‘Perfume of the Gypsy’; 11 Sultan Abdu-Aziz (Turkey), ‘Mandira Hicaz’. Encore: Syrian traditional songs.

A triumphant day in the Brighton Festival. Extra seats for the ‘In Damascus’ audience. And this follow-up, ostensibly world music event, sold out. Rihab Azar, a leading authority and exponent from Homs, now for several years resident in London, brought contemporary and traditional music from North Africa and the Middle East to a city evidently itching to become its second home.

Predating the lute of Dowland’s Elizabethan Songbook, did rock music spiritually start with the oud in Mesapotamia, when it was an ancestral instrument al, those centuries ago? On the evidence of this 75-minute meeting with spontaneous and much-improvised Arabic dance music, song and ethnic jazz, European and American takes on those three genres needed catch-up time.

Musically, there was constant and stimulating variety of rhythm metre and conversational inter-musician exchange. The musical form, like jazz or blues, enables this kind of ensemble-from-scratch to meet, introduce each other, rehearse a little to familiarise, then put on a live show to a communal audience ready and raring to go with you. It was this musician line-up’s debut.

The sideways-set seating across the All Saints nave created an atmospheric acoustic. The two pillars framing the stage were up-lit to accentuate the architecture, choosing soft pink. The musical feel was loose but disciplined quality showed in the prompt and united endings.

Smiling and excited, with shoulder-length black hair, Rihab giggled and chuckled her all-welcoming music announcements, in a boat-necked, three-quarter-sleeved black T-shirt and full-length black skirt glittering in pink and turquoise.

A diminutive new star sitting between two rangy cross-genre artistes – a Briton from London on bass, and a percussionist from the long-artistically and culturally-famous Spanish city of Jerez. A thorn between two roses, she joked, having said in the programme she was humbled by the musicianship of Phillips and Romero in joining her “to play music of the tradition into which I was born.”

She was revelling in her new Turkish Oud, made in Instanbul by Faruk Türünz. “It’s more bassy and resonant,” she confided, “and I enjoy the vibratos on it.”

It has an extra bottom string, the upward tuning is C F A D G C F (conventional guitar being E A D G B E). She re-tuned the bottom C to D later on in the set.

Of additional interest to instrumentalists will be her plectrum, which, held inside it, protrudes both sides of her hand. Shaped like a cardboard nail file, it’s actually 3½ inches of wood and recycled plastic. As opposed to a conventional plastic or nylon plectrum of pear shape, she explained its length and slight flexibility gave her leverage to increase her right-hand dexterity.

Phillips and Romero showed their mettle also in a solo improvisation each and there was only one false start – of course, happily laughed off with the players by an engaged fascinated and well-rewarded audience.

This was Rihab’s second Brighton Festival appearance, following that in 2019 with early music group Stile Antico interpreting the English Byrd, Dowland and contemporary Giles Swayne. Many would like her to be achieve some kind of hat-trick.

Richard Amey

www.rihabazar.co.uk

www.dudleyphillips.com/artists.html

https://antromero.com/biography.html

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Brighton Festival 2022, Classical: Festival-closing concert at The Dome.

Sunday 29 May (8pm), Philharmonia Orchestra, Brighton Festival Chorus, conductor Ilan Volkov, soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, baritone Duncan Rock.

Kaija Saariaho (Finnish, b 1952), Oltra Mar (Across the Sea): Departure, Love, Waves, Time, Memory of Waves, Death, Arrival.

Vaughan Williams (English, 1872-1958), A Sea Symphony: 1 A Song for All Seas, All Ships; 2 The Beach At Night, Alone; 3 The Waves (scherzo); 4 The Explorers.

I had a classical music concert nightmare and it lasted nearly an hour of A Sea Symphony. My nose began streaming with a cold not long into the opening movement. I was mopping nose and stifling my snuffling. But mercifully the music was frequently so loud The Philharmonia and Brighton Festival Chorus would have been amply audible as The Who’s backing band and singers. I was confident no-one heard me.

I knew the opening movement ended quietly. It arrived and, sure enough, for the first time I was about to cough and splutter. In striving to stay silent I felt I was going to stop breathing. A sipped bottle of water saved me and for the rest of the Symphony my tissue remained resolutely under my nostrils like the Dutch boy holding back the Dyke with his arm.

But later on, with the music still hugely surging from climax to climax with such force that a decibel meter would have halted the performance, I chalked up a personal classical-concert first.

Having awaited my best moment of opportunity, I blew my nose, with my penultimate tissue . . . during the music . . . and I’m sure no one heard. Yes, I made sure I wasn’t imitating a maritime foghorn, although Ralph Vaughan Williams could well have had one in his score. He had just about everything else except the wind machine he kept back for six symphonies later, in his Sinfonia Antartica.

It’s not often Brighton Festival misses a trick. But my companion spotted this one. Opera houses have surtitles above the stage showing text being sung. Surely, concert halls should have surtitles for choral symphonies with extended texts like this one, and oratorios. Think Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, his Song Of The Earth, or Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.

These aren’t pop songs everyone can sing word for word over breakfast, nor poems we can all recite like nursery rhymes or prose like Shakespeare. The programme booklet with the text in it can’t do the job once the house lights are dimmed and the music’s started. You want to know why the orchestra is doing what it is when the words are say something you can’t quite define.

The larger the forces the greater the surtitle need because sound balance around the auditorium can differ in sung-word audibility. I was upstairs, where the brass was probably loudest, and I deciphered too little of the choir’s diction. Lights were low. I lost track. We need enterprising concern to provide surtitles for inquisitive new-blood audience alongside the regular classical-loving ears beyond the fresh flush of youth. It’s known as audience development and retention.

So, let’s consider this event of such immense visceral impact. What does a major arts Festival choose for its big closing orchestral concert when it has been guest co-directed by a Syrian architect and writer, and a half-British half-East European construction engineering technology collaborator with experience of the same Middle Eastern country?

The overall theme at Brighton Festival this month has been ‘Rebuilding’, after the Covid pandemic’s two-year existential threat and life intervention. A major Festival theme has been Syria and its own need to reconstruct physically and spiritually after devastating civil war.

Thus far, the Festival music section had notably presented an orchestra of reuniting UK-based Syrian refugee musicians and singers, a Syrian oud virtuoso with bass and percussion, a Syrian poet’s lament on domestic civil destruction set to music by a Briton, and not far removed, a piano recital by a Jordanian-Palestinian.

Planned probably before this year even turned, the orchestral music to wrap everything up in this final concert voiced humanity’s universality and life’s enquiring voyage, with the sea as both a companion global element and a metaphor. Four texts featured, verbalised by the splendid Brighton Festival Chorus, singing in fullest number.

Love, Time and Death are contemplated by living Finnish composer resident in France, Kaija Saariaho. A Persian born in AD 967 talks about Love existing even before creation (Abou Said). A living French-Lebanese ascribes that Time’s length and breadth is controlled by, respectively, the rhythm of the sun and passions (Amin Maalouf). A traditional African Pygmy song concerning Death notes that a dying man is a released prisoner as his own shining star frees the sky of darkness.

Vaughan Williams, the mystically-driven but visionary and utilitarian British composer being widely celebrated and e-evaluated now on his 150th Anniversary, is here spellbound by 19th Century American poet Walt Whitman. RVW musically sets descriptive but also philosophical and metaphysical words from WW’s Song of the Exposition, Sea Drift and Passage to India.

A concert of two striking romantic works, then, both with the sea as its subject and theatrical setting. Indeed, the sea whose creatures came ashore to evolve into human beings, scientists now say – adding that, at current global warming rate, the sea is set to return and consume us). And the sea, the constant companion of Brighton.

One work 25 minutes long, by a composer only six years old when the other died, the Saariaho was magical and vast in effect, using quadruple woodwind and double brass, tuned percussion, piano, and one harp; juxtaposed with the vast 70-minute Vaughan Williams, epic in its humaneness and endeavour, with triple woodwind, organ and two harps.

Oltra Mar had 87 musicians in action with the world-class Brighton Festival Chorus, their entity profile and list of personnel peculiarly missing from the programme booklet, on their home territory. I forgot to count the singers in lieu of this but they filled the entire choir seating balcony and a long line of alto semi-chorus stretched out on the stage behind the brass.

Colossal effect. When Saariaho’s more-than-impressionistic cantata exploded into thunderous presence, and equally, later when the Symphony exalted or asserted in full force and throat, including the gallant soloists’ individual voices, with bass drum, gong and five available kettle drums pounding, it felt like the sea itself had battered down the Dome walls and crashed inside.

Huge contrasts. Saariaho also used voiceless chorus to whisper messages and hiss the sound of surging tide over helpless shingle. Her instruments and voices moved in slowly forming then swelling sound, in sliding dissonances and semi-resolving chords and washes, with syllables expanding over varying lengths, and sometimes repeating cells or fragments in undertow.

It was one of the most beautiful sonic experiences a live orchestra has given me. It’s from 1999 and Saariaho’s background in Parisian electronic composition pays dividends as she steps out beyond this.

For those who know Vaughan Williams’ most-performed Symphonies, this is his lesser-known first – grander and bulkier than any of his following eight. In A Sea Symphony, he amassed in scale something too ambitious for an apprentice symphonist to be tasked with. Fully 50 lines of text to set and interpret intelligibly on a weighty poetic theme, demanding unflagging continuity within an adapted symphonic framework – plus gigantic commensurate musical forces needing proper balance and to keep generating high audience expectancy.

It needed a Hurculean effort. His inexperience, despite fervent endeavour and determination, meant it took him six years, frpm age 31. His first working title for it was ‘Songs of The Sea’. It then became “My ocean symphony”. He was surely picturing no mere English Channel, but Whitman’s mighty Atlantic. Rather than a symphony, is this perhaps one enormous song?

RVW, inside, still harboured the British Victorian compositional influences of Stanford, Parry and Elgar). Perhaps he also sensed that allowing in a flavour of these would help audiences accommodate his debut Symphony No 1 in the still-imperial first decade of the 1900s. But his own redeeming, characteristic affinity with folksong, shanty and hornpipe, and affection for Elizabethan musical forms sprinkled his personal stamp through A Sea Symphony. And he would shake off those lingering elders in Symphony No 2, his ‘London’, in his now entirely new symphonic voice.

Conductor Ilan Volkov, athletic with grey shoulder-length hair, was as though co-ordinating a whole naval port of forces and needed to stick to simple expanded semaphore so all could see, follow and stay united. The Philharmonia came vividly into their own during RVW’s choirless Waves scherzo.

The soloists impressed in their quieter passages, Gweneth Ann Rand the more penetrative during the loud. And Duncan Rock’s turning around to face the voices in dialogue with him from behind, enhanced his stage artistry and projected performing unanimity.

Unfailingly, this added up to what will be another memorable signing-off concert in the Brighton Festival annals. I’m glad I was there. I apologise to anyone who did hear me amid the roaring waves.

Richard Amey