Until recently, Ethel Smyth was mostly a character – and what a character! – from the history books: bisexual composer and suffragette, briefly sent to Holloway Prison in 1912 for smashing windows during a pro-suffrage demonstration, she had a late-life crush on Virginia Woolf. Admirers of her music included Gustav Mahler and Queen Victoria.
Modern performances of her work have been intermittent but that may be changing. This year, Glyndebourne staged her 1909 opera The Wreckers, and Grimeborn, Dalston’s grittier alternative to Glyndebourne, presented her The Boatswain’s Mate. Meanwhile this year’s Proms offer a single performance of the Glyndebourne, The Wreckers and four other works.
The most substantial of those is her Mass, written for a large orchestra, an even larger chorus and four somewhat under-used vocal soloists. It was premiered at the Albert Hall in 1893; this was a triumphant return, complete with revisions that Smyth made in 1924, having rediscovered a work she’d all but forgotten.
Apart from her feminism, Smyth was no iconoclast. She stayed within the musical idioms of the 19th-century, even though she carried on composing into the 1930s. Her Mass is no exception, but that doesn’t mean it’s lifeless. Far from it, as proved by this muscular performance by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.
It began with a barely audible rustle of percussion, a sigh from double basses and cellos, a whisper from the chorus. The subterranean rumble of the mighty Albert Hall organ soon made itself felt, deep in the mix but barely disturbing the air.
It’s not a heaven-storming opening, and Oramo and his musicians precisely captured its diaphanous textures while also giving full weight to the more explosive moments that followed. At both volume levels, the 100-strong chorus was scrupulously disciplined but always impassioned. The young soloists were on the light side but well-matched. Although tenor Robert Murray was stretched, his graceful lyricism shone through, and Božidar SmiljaniÄ’s bass-baritone had a baleful edge that worked against the grain of the piece. Bethan Langford’s mezzo showed real warmth and a hint of melancholy while soprano Nardus Williams sang with a bright clarity that floated high into the hall’s upper reaches. Fine though they were, it was the sheer force of the chorus that carried the day.
Oramo opened the Prom with Debussy’s Nocturnes, a world away from Smyth, even though it was written only a few years after her first version of the Mass. Here, the playing was elegant and precise, well-upholstered but never flabby. The opening section (Clouds) had an eerie and appropriately shape-shifting quality, Festivals seemed on the verge of dance and Sirens, with its wordless women’s chorus, sounded rather Hollywood-y. Not an obvious curtain-raiser, but the contrast with Smyth was bracing.
