Berberis' World

Saturday, 6th July 2013, Cadogan Hall, London.

Leoš Janácek: Otce Náš
John Carmichael: Hommages
Eric Whitacre: Cloudburst
Eric Whitacre: When David Heard
Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

Tenor: Paul Austin Kelly
Countertenor: Roderick Morris
Harp: Alison Martin
Piano/Organ: Nico de Villiers
Percussion Leader: Matthew Turner

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

This was not my introduction to Eric Whitacre – that was Lux arumque back in 2008 – but it was my first hearing of the transcendent When David Heard. Go and listen.

I’ve listened to the Janácek piece a couple of times since this concert and still don’t like it. I can only put this down to having learned the Lord’s Prayer by rote as a child and, to my ears, anything other than a spoken version just sounds wrong. I would have preferred to sing it in Czech, but I suspect that was deemed too difficult. It’s not, but it wasn’t my decision.

An homage is an odd thing. If you don’t know the original piece, then all you see is other people nodding and making ‘oh, that’s so clever!’ faces. If you don’t, then just close your eyes and listen to the music. You’ll either like it or you won’t, but at least you don’t have to look at people being smug.

Cloudburst does exactly what it says on the tin, but it’s the sort of weather we rarely get in the UK. The rain is warm, and you inhale that smell from hot pavements, and the world afterwards seems lighter and fresher. I was even okay with the thigh-slapping and finger-clicking.

Chichester Psalms are lush and lovely, especially the final psalm. It’s film music, and in a good way. In my Boosey & Hawkes score, two bars before fig. 60, under where the C flat becomes a B natural, I wrote ‘it’s the same note, doofus’. Which it is. Only it isn’t. The sopranos (sorry, Maestro Bernstein) go from A flat to G natural at the same time, and this is also the same note. Only it also isn’t. It’s all in the accompaniment. Beautiful stuff.

And then there’s When David Heard. If only to do justice to three bars – 17, 18, and 19 – this needs a vaulted ceiling high enough to allow it to take flight, to rise, to soar, to ring around carved stone, to rattle stained glass windows. From the first chill of bereavement, to the anguish that – literally – stops you in your tracks with tears coursing down your face, to the unreasonable and incoherent rage that surges though you, to the intense sorrow that settles and, with time, becomes a shadow, When David Heard is months – sometimes years – of angst distilled into a few minutes of astonishing beauty.

“Above all, trust the silences.”