EIF: Tippett’s ‘A Child of Our Time’
Usher Hall - 20/08/23
Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Sir Andrew Davis, conductor | Edinburgh Festival Chorus - Aidan Oliver | Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, soprano | Dame Sarah Connolly, mezzo soprano | Russell Thomas, tenor | Michael Mofidian, bass
Reviewer - Simon Barrow
Composed during the Second World War and premiered 79 years ago in London, just before it ended, Michael Tippett’s oratorio ‘A Child of Our Time’ has continued to demonstrate its force, scope and relevance by moving audiences ever since – as the heartfelt response to this emotive, detailed performance, under the capable hands of long-term Tippett collaborator and advocate Andrew Davis, confirmed.
The questioning theme of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Where do we go from here?’, also lies at the core of this searching masterpiece. Written in response to a young Jewish refugee’s frustrated killing of a German diplomat, which the Nazis used as a pretext for the planned pogrom of Kristallnacht, Tippett’s work – following the three-part pattern of Handel’s ‘Messiah’, and famously replacing the chorales that Bach would have used with African-American Spirituals – both contextualises and universalises its deeply felt response to oppression, racism, tyranny and war in all its shapes and forms.
While the final note is one of hope (the movement of life from winter to spring, collectively and individually, using Jungian imagery), the journey is filled with desperation and longing. ‘A Child of Our Time’ does not gloss the struggle and uncertainty. It is also frighteningly contemporary. The Chorus of the Self-Righteous in Part Two rehearses the scapegoating of refugees and anti-immigration rhetoric in a way which echoes right down to Westminster today.
The RSNO and ever-busy Edinburgh Festival Chorus deployed perhaps over-large forces (given the venue) to deliver a work which transcendently combines pacifism with profound moral anger, and the secular quest for justice with religiously adumbrated yearning. But impact it certainly had. The chorus handled the technically demanding elements of the work, such as the double fugue in Part One, adeptly. Surprisingly, the one notable wobble came in the final bars. The soloists sang with conviction and power. South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha clearly has quite a career ahead of her. This is a work that mezzo Sarah Connolly evidently resonates with intensely. Richly-hued Scottish-Iranian bass Michael Mofidian and elegant American tenor Russell Thomas were both on good form.
The first half of the concert offered a significant contrast to the somewhat romantically delivered musical territory of ‘A Child of Our Time’, featuring as it did Michael Tippett’s ingenious, demanding and multi-textured ‘Concerto for Orchestra’. This was written while he was working on his startling second opera, ‘King Priam’. Its lean, unusually organised orchestral resources are deliberately fragmented. In the first of three movements, different themes, riffs and segments jostle up against one another, sometimes eliding but more often competing.
Both hints of the lush lyricism of earlier Tippett and the more confrontational, mosaic-like tones he adopted later on are present. The second movement shifts from deep dark to lighter musical hues. It is scored for strings alone and features an achingly affective cello solo. The final movement lets lose the brass and percussion to stunning effect.
Andrew Davis knows the ‘Concerto for Orchestra’, which was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival exactly 50 years ago this month, inside out – and it showed in this committed, sophisticated performance. All the players faced serious demands. They shone in response. Given the ‘difficult’ nature of this ground-breaking work, the audience response was hearteningly positive. A recording utilising the spatial capabilities of Atmos and 5.1 technology would be an ideal way of helping yet more people discover its thorny glories.
Reviewer - Kate Calder
Michael Tippett’s oratorio ‘A Child of Our Time,’ completed in 1941, is given a stunning performance at the Usher Hall by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and a cast of outstanding soloists.
At the centre of the work is the imprisonment of Polish Jewish refugee Hershel Grynzspan for the shooting of a German official in 1938, an assassination which led to the reprisal of Kristallnacht. Tenor Russell Thomas is “the man, the scapegoat, the child of our time” and introduces himself with folk-song simplicity, “I have no money for my bread.” He stands next to the mother, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, who in a moving aria questions how she can “cherish” her son: “How can I comfort you when I am dead?” As her glorious soprano rises in pitch and volume in a melisma, the choir begins the first spiritual “Steal Away to Jesus”, soon joined by Thomas singing the verse. It’s a thrilling musical transition marking the move from the individual’s oppression to the universal song of oppressed peoples. The soprano and tenor continue in the mother and son roles, exchange heart-breaking pleas, and lead the chorus in ‘I’m going to lay down my heavy load’, and ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I See.’ The oratorio has begun with mezzo Sarah Connolly, bass Michael Mofidian and the choir singing Tippett’s metaphorical evocation of winter and the factual account of the world-wide troubles. Connolly’s first stark wintry solo, introduced by a lovely melody on two flutes and viola, is twice savagely interrupted by cymbals and fortissimo chorus. Mofidian tells us bluntly of “pogroms” and is later given the lead voice in a rousing ‘Let my people go!’
The Festival Chorus take the oratorio’s many demands in their stride and are especially chilling when opposing sections debate the fate of those who deserve persecution, their “Away with them!” reminiscent of Bach’s Matthew Passion’s crowd scenes. As they give a masterclass in their third major choral work this week, we can again be grateful for the high quality of Scotland’s amateur choirs and their directors.
Despite Tippett’s sometimes dated and wordy libretto (Connolly has one or two clunky passage of text to negotiate), the subtleties of the music, with its echoes of earlier choral works and twentieth century jazz rhythms, carry the work forward, with superb playing by the RSNO, sensitively conducted by Andrew Davis. Eventually, winter turns into spring, but Tippett, writing in wartime, explained, “It is spring: but spring with an ache in it.” John Bunyan’s description of the pilgrims crossing the river to the Celestial City comes to mind in the choice of ‘Deep River,’ sung by the four soloists and choir, as the oratorio’s conclusion. This, and the other spirituals, delivered with passion and commitment will linger long in the memory. ‘A Child of Our Time,’ rapturously applauded by the Usher Hall audience, is the best festival performance I have seen this year – so far!
Cover photo: Dario Acosta
Simon Barrow is a writer, journalist, think-tank director and commentator whose musical interests span new music, classical, jazz, electronica and art rock. His book ‘Transfiguring the Everyday: The Musical Vision of Michael Tippett’ will be published by Siglum next year.
Kate Calder was introduced to classical music by her father at SNO Concerts in Kirkcaldy. She’s an opera fan, plays the piano, and is a member of a community choir, which rehearses and has concerts in the Usher Hall.