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.
It was in the Beethoven that Chineke! came into its own, assuming an appealing new directness of tone. The conductor Kevin John Edusei – based in Germany, but back in London in October for ENO’s Tosca – set brisk tempos but didn’t seem to be having to drive his players onwards at all, and transitions were seamless. For the first three movements at least the music never sounded hurried; instead, there was a buoyant lightness and a constant sense of dialogue happening between the instruments, thanks partly to the transparency of the sound Edusei drew from the orchestra and the meticulous clarity of his approach. The performance felt simple and organic, the phrasing unfussy, and yet at the same time it teemed with detail, so that even Beethoven buffs who had heard this work hundreds of times before might have picked up something previously unnoticed.
At the beginning of the fourth movement the neatness slipped once or twice, but once the bass-baritone soloist Ryan Speedo Green had pinned us to our seats with his formidable entry, the performance felt firmly anchored again. Approximately 200 strong and singing from memory, Chineke! Voices made sure Beethoven’s finale was as rousing and joyous as could be.
• On BBC Four on 4 September, then on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer until 10 October.
