ELGAR AND VAUGHN WILLIAMS at Robinson College
Robert Murray tenor
If any concert is destined for an instant sell-out - it has to be this pair of English composers. Everyone has heard their work . The Lark Ascending was voted Britain’s most beloved piece of music and Elgar feels like the embodiment of tradition as it marches down the generations.
But put aside the clichés and lay on some outstanding modern players and what appear to be well worn family favourites transform into magical melody, paired with surprising disharmony to present these pieces in a fresh way.
Violinist Benjamin Baker cut a dark elegant figure on the stage illuminated by the full dramatic height of the John Piper stained glass window. He took up the Violin Sonata in E minor with huge energy, the kind of pace Elgar’s music needs to drive it through the any torpor and into the dimension of sheer soaring delight this according to expert David Owen-Norris who believes Elgar can lapse into drear without it. But Baker’s brilliant virtuoso propulsion , along with the casually expert piano accompaniment of Martin Roscoe, Elgar, the prince of English propriety transforms into a thrilling composer for all nations. Full of grief for the losses of the First World War, this Sonata is so sad it transcends mourning and becomes a heart melting medium of meditation on conflict and its futility.
The second half began with the Lark Ascending. With Martin Gerigk’s arrangement and Benjamin Baker’s complete control of the violin this was a wonderful evocation of the English countryside and the song of a vanishing bird . As the Echea Quartet joined with haunting ensemble strings the familiar piece acquired a perfection of its own. The applause was thunderous.
Robert Murray’s tenor voice was for me the highlight of the evening. On Wenlock Edge so often heard, he left behind sentiment and brought out its bitter cynicism along with the beauty of the songs.There was even a sinister feel to the famous “is My Team Ploughing?’ Edwardian England might seem the heart of England’s serene past of long gone peace, but it was in many ways a brutal place, redolent with early death ( remember the sequence was written by A. E Houseman eight years before the Great War)
Linden Lea, such a well known song got an urgent yearning treatment from Robert Murray which I have to say brought me to indulgent nostalgic tears. Good job I was on my own.
Perched on a backless concrete bench in the Chapel’s modernist rafters ( the concert was a sell out and packed to the gunnels) and with only a small beaker of water at the interval, the concert was still the zenith of a warm interpretation of two of our deservedly favourite composers.
Benjamin Baker
