Bodies in space, tumbling, rolling, hurtling; at the same time singing, playing, dancing. Handel’s many solo cantatas, which parse the extremes of human anguish, are dramatic on their own terms. As staged by director Adele Thomas for the headline event of this year’s London Handel festival, they expose life’s agonies with new levels of pity and transparency. Anger, grief, revenge, enveloped in music of gleaming precision and beauty, chafe and discomfort us. In their intensity and physicality, the performances here – four cantatas, each with a different singer, together with a dancer and small instrumental ensemble – provoke stark sympathy.
Gathered under the title In the Realms of Sorrow, the cantatas are amplified further, almost discreetly, by tiny musical interludes newly composed by Héloïse Werner: an untuning or retuning, strange harmonics, a hint of a scale, a double bass turned into a resonant drum. The countertenor James Laing, in evening dress and “smoking” a cigar, acted as a smooth master of ceremonies. Under its current music director, Laurence Cummings, and his team, this annual Handel festival, founded in 1978, has stepped away from advocacy and put creativity and progress to the fore. Cummings was key to Opera North’s 2022 Orpheus, a European baroque-Indian classical collaboration. Last year, Thomas directed Vivaldi’s Bajazet at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury theatre. Both were pioneering highlights of a new, capacious and daring strand of musical theatre.
In the Realms of Sorrow had an ideal venue: the Welsh chapel turned nightclub turned squat that is now Stone Nest in London’s West End. The necessarily limited audience sits in the round. Seats are close; you have to like your neighbours. The eight musicians stood at the perimeter, as if pinning the stage action like tent pegs, or at times flew loose upstairs and down, with Cummings directing from the harpsichord in a dimly lit corner. With the dancer Jonathon Luke Baker bendily and brilliantly insinuating himself into the action, each cantata had its own visual and theatrical signature. All praise to Emma Woods for the choreography, with designs by Hannah Clark and (lighting and video) Josh Pharo.
The countertenor Patrick Terry, casting gender to the winds in the tale of Chloris, who tries to retrieve her lover Thyrsis from Hades, gave a vocally thrilling, heart-rending and turbulent account of Il delirio amoroso, HWV 99. The soprano Nardus Williams, voice soaring smokily as if from nowhere as she emerged on the balcony, sequined trouser suit glinting as a glitterball slowly revolved, was rhapsodic and affecting in Armida abbandonata, HWV 105. The soprano Soraya Mafi, with vocal prowess and formidable athleticism – her explosive performance was more of a personalised triathlon – sang (hardly an adequate word) Ero e Leandro, HWV 150.
To say Claire Booth, the last of the four, stole the show is unfair: each performer, as well as musicians and dancer, could claim that honour. Her mesmerising delivery of Agrippina condotta a morire, HWV 110 was nevertheless in a class of its own, a whole scena of mortifying sorrow. As a fully plasticised, false eyelashed, blond-wigged Venus in furs, Booth handled both text and music with powerful variety, but her bravery and vulnerability, when all is stripped away, flayed us all. An evening already rich and raw became unforgettable.
The festival’s opening concert was a performance of Alexander’s Feast, adapted from an ode to music by John Dryden and premiered at Covent Garden theatre in 1736. Under Cummings’s direction, the joint forces of the London Handel Orchestra, the London Handel Singers and National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellows gave a rollicking performance in St George’s, Hanover Square. In the 1720s, Handel was one of the church’s first parishioners. With characterful solos from the soprano and renowned Handelian Lucy Crowe, the tenor Joshua Ellicott and the bass Jonathan Lemalu, this exultant two-part work – truly a banquet, which encompasses three concertos – galloped along.
The ascent of the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, from BBC Young Musician winner to global star, has been speedy enough to invite anxiety from bystanders, so far without need. He chooses repertoire with care, and wears the mantle of celebrity with gracious, responsible acceptance. Last Sunday, at the Royal Festival Hall, he played Bloch’s Schelomo (1917) with the Philharmonia, conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste. This rhapsody for soloist and large orchestra, part lament, part sensual dance depicting King Solomon via the solo cello, suits Kanneh-Mason’s potent lyrical style. (He made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut with the work, to enthusiastic reviews, last month.) Bloch’s subtle orchestral colours were shaded deftly by the Philharmonia: a work that had never before seemed especially interesting here sprang to life.
The orchestra bristled and sparkled in Sibelius’s Symphony No 1, music full of silences and sudden attacks that can – and do – trip up even the best of string sections. It begins mysteriously, clarinet unfurling slowly (beautifully played) over a distant timpani roll, until second violins leap in – here, robust and confident – with an energetic reveille, triggering the symphony proper. After the concert, downstairs in the Clore Ballroom, seven members of the cello section showed their expertise in Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No 1, led by Kanneh-Mason. There was standing room only for this free event. Classical music needs its stars. Few are willing to hang around, roll up their sleeves and have a go at anything, as this young cellist does. The excitement in the audience was palpable.
Star ratings (out of five)
In the Realms of Sorrow ★★★★★
Alexander’s Feast ★★★★
Sheku Kanneh-Mason/Philharmonia ★★★★
