The sight of royals at each other’s throats has become a familiar one in recent times, but it’s nothing new. Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, had a celebrated fight to the finish, the former eventually signing the latter’s death warrant. The fact that the two queens never actually met hasn’t prevented countless imaginative writers, from Friedrich Schiller onwards, creating a fictional confrontation.
Librettist Matthew Jocelyn and composer Brett Dean evidently couldn’t resist the temptation either, even though their version, In spe contra spem (Hope against hope), given its world premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under its principal conductor Edward Gardner, uses original texts of the two protagonists. Described as a “dramatic scena”, In spe contra spem is also, according to the creators, ”a concertante extract from a planned opera”. The work was the final product of Dean’s three-year composing residency with the orchestra.
The two queens were here incarnated by Emma Bell and Elsa Dreisig as Elizabeth and Mary respectively. Despite Jocelyn’s and Dean’s best endeavours, it was an unequal contest. By comparison with Bell’s richly upholstered tone, capable of encompassing regal, menacing and self-doubting modes alike, Dreisig’s was one-dimensional. Her Mary rarely engaged the attention, let alone the sympathy, that Bell’s Elizabeth commanded.
Dean’s score, by contrast, oscillates skilfully between the dramatic and the contemplative. Particularly striking is the section “Were we but as two milkmaids”, in which Elizabeth ruminates on the political forces dividing the two cousins. A Tudor-period consort, with harpsichord, establishes a mood of calm, idyllic reflection, subtly undermined first by growling double basses and percussion, and then poignant dissonances.
It’s good that the event was captured for Marquee TV (as well as BBC Radio 3), but for reasons better known to the technicians, the stage was flooded, for both halves of the concert, with inconsistent and unatmospheric lighting states.
There were many virtues in Gardner’s interpretation of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, among them the attention to articulation, to carefully balanced contrapuntal lines and a convincing overarching structure. What it lacked was the manic energy, the sheer ferocity and heart-on-sleeve emotionalism of Mahler’s score. In the famous Adagietto, Gardner rightly avoided sentimentality – it’s a love song not a lachrymose dirge – but for all its tender eloquence, the movement lacked warmth. The icy blue visuals didn’t help.
The emergence of the climactic brass chorale in the finale was appropriately spine-tingling, however. Not even the harshness of the stage lighting could detract from such a life-affirming apotheosis.
