Credit Chineke! if it feels as though there is finally some momentum behind the rediscovery of Black composers by symphony orchestras and record labels. Here the orchestra saved some of the spotlight for the composer George Walker, even as it made exhilarating work of the annual Proms performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Walker’s music went unheard at the Proms until Chineke!’s debut here in 2017, but it, too, is gaining traction. Earlier this year London audiences heard Lilacs, the song cycle that in 1996 made Walker the first Black winner of the Pulitzer prize for music, courtesy of the LSO and the soprano Nicole Cabell; she was again the soloist here at the Royal Albert Hall. Lilacs sets words by Walt Whitman following the murder of Abraham Lincoln, and Walker’s music underpins a heady romanticism with a sense of underlying menace. The vocal line glides on languid, gauzy strings, the high notes glinting with touches of bell-like percussion and celesta. Cabell put it across with clear, unhurried eloquence and gleaming tone.
