Always prepared to do things differently, French conductor Laurence Equilbey, her Insula Orchestra and choir Accentus have collaborated with British artist Mat Collishaw on Sky Burial, a striking multimedia piece, first seen in Paris earlier this year, now given its first UK performance at the Barbican. Fauré’s familiar Requiem is prefaced by Gounod’s unfamiliar oratorio Saint François d’Assise, depicting the saint’s death; both works form a live soundtrack to a film by Collishaw that contemplates our common mortality before reflecting on, and depicting, the eastern practice of sky burial, in which the dead body is returned to nature by being exposed in the open to be eaten by vultures and scavenging animals.
Musically, this was beautiful, with Equilbey’s approach to both works at once reflective and austere. Insula’s period instruments conferred starkness on music that in lesser hands might all too easily cloy. Accentus sang with admirable focus: the altos and tenors circling in close harmony sounded genuinely unearthly in the Requiem’s Offertoire, while the sopranos were exquisite in both the In Paradisum and the angelic chorus that closes Saint François. Tenor Amitai Pati played the saint with great fervour. Oliver Barlow was the sweet-toned treble in the Requiem’s Pie Jesu, John Brancy the excellent, warm-voiced baritone in both works.
