SUPER AUDIO CD macmillan quickening three interludes from ‘the sacrifice’ the hilliard ensemble city of birmingham symphony youth chorus city of birmingham symphony chorus bbc philharmonic CHSA36 5072 james macmillan James MacMillan (b. 1959) Three Interludes from ‘The Sacrifice’ (2007)* 14:28 for orchestra 1 I The Parting. Andante – Poco più largamente – = 76 – Andante – = c. 160+ – Moderato q 4:37 © Eric Richmond/Arena PAL 2 II Passacaglia.e = c. 76 4:25 3 III The Investiture.q Allegro – [ ] – Allegro – = c. 82 – Allegro – = c. 82 – = c. 152 – = c. 82 – = c. 152q – q = c. 82 – q = c. 152 q q 5 :11 q q Quickening (1998)† 45:37 for soloists (counter-tenor, two tenors and baritone), children’s chorus, mixed chorus and orchestra Words by Michael Symmons Roberts To the Glasgow Lay Dominicans 4 I Incarnadine. Largo – Adagio – Tempo I – Larghetto – Andante – Larghetto – Largo 14:25 5 II Midwife. Adagio – Andante – Largo – Adagio – Largo – Andante – Tempo I – Largo 10:18 James MacMillan 3 MacMillan: Quickening/Three Interludes from ‘The Sacrifice’ Introduction a cantata about childbirth and parenthood. 6 III Poppies. Allegro moderato – Alla marcia – = 108 –112 – Composers and poets rarely find a perfect MacMillan and Symmons Roberts embarked Tempo I – Adagio q 9:16 equilibrium. Out of three recent operatic on Quickening in 1998 because, as the 7 IV Living Water. Senza misura – = 72 –76 – Poco più adagio – collaborations which it would be invidious composer told Lynne Walker: Andante moderato – Allegro –q Meno mosso – Largamente – to name, the music in two cases has been Michael and I realised that there wasn’t Larghetto – Adagio 11:18 infinitely superior to the frequent banalities a lot in our culture which marked TT 60:24 of the librettos, and in one (very recent at parenthood or, more specifically, the time of writing) the text has had the edge fatherhood. We had both recently become over an indifferent score. Only in The Sacrifice fathers – an overwhelming, transformative have the searing musical embodiment of experience (‘this new life is our elixir’) – The Hilliard Ensemble† his harrowing subject by James MacMillan and wanted to extend the idea of Robin Blaze counter-tenor and the balance of high poetic diction and sexuality celebrated in popular culture Rogers Covey-Crump tenor textual clarity of his constant poet, Michael and develop it in a different context. The Steven Harrold tenor Symmons Roberts, provided a match, in this title refers explicitly to the instant of Gordon Jones baritone listener’s opinion, for the harmony attained by conception – ‘the quickening of seed that City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus† John Adams and Alice Goodman in two operas will become ripe grain’ – or the moment which have already achieved classic status, that a woman first feels her baby kick. Simon Halsey chorus director Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. If To succeed on a more universal level, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus† the powerful response of so many members of however, this vast score – originally Simon Halsey chorus director its audience is anything to go by, The Sacrifice co-commissioned by the Philadelphia BBC Philharmonic deserves the same measure of success. Orchestra and the London Proms – must communicate more than simply the life within Yuri Torchinsky leader* • Fionnuala Hunt guest leader† Quickening the womb and its glorious deliverance into James MacMillan All this, of course, is notoriously subjective, the world. Just as the moral fairytale of and what one reader or listener finds Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, beautiful in the poetic muse, another may find Die Frau ohne Schatten, extends its message pretentious. The shifting sands of opinion and of fertility and the release of the unborn response are especially apparent in facing child into a general metaphor of creativity 4 5 and human connectedness, so MacMillan and consonant commentary on all this leads a second ritual of the temple bowls into a Confirmation of that, of course, waits on a Symmons Roberts embrace struggle, war, to a second climax and the more intimate sea of improvisatory sounds from strings complete recording; but, in the meantime, the death and resurrection within their musical utterances (‘Incarnadine, vermilion, crimson’) and, later, chorus. The solo voices break Three Interludes that MacMillan extracted and and verbal images. The ambition is almost of vocal quartet and children’s chorus – free of their quartet harmony and roles are conducted in a February 2008 premiere with as big as that of Britten in his War Requiem, sketching the voice of the unborn, as in reversed, all striving to evoke a universal the BBC Philharmonic encapsulate some of the which Quickening takes as its starting-point for Die Frau ohne Schatten – which are rounded resurrection before fading into the Aramaic drama’s almost unbearable tension. To relate several expressive effects. The children’s chorus off by a transcendent flutter-tonguing and prayer; a high-lying violin solo leads finally to the complete, if elemental plot of The Sacrifice and chamber organ, which MacMillan asks to the conga heartbeats of new life. nothingness. It is a typically daring apotheosis would remove some of its capacity to shock, be positioned, if possible, ‘away from the other Violent childbirth erupts in the fierce lower in an uncompromising work which, for all its so the terse summary by the composer in his performers… but not so as to sound distant’, brass and ‘Bartók pizzicati’ of ‘Midwife’, its homages, remains without precedent. original programme notes will suffice: come from there; but instead of the tenor narrative given at first to appropriately mother- It is based on one of the stories in and bass soloists whom Britten uses to inflect earthish choral altos. Graphic depictions of Three Interludes from ‘The Sacrifice’ The Mabinogion, a collection of ancient Wilfred Owen’s war poetry, MacMillan engages what will prove to be the cleansing water- It is, perhaps, in venturing beyond the Welsh myths. It is a tale of love set amid a solo quartet of counter-tenor (or contralto), droplets shaken from the deliverer’s hands, expected bounds of a well-made ending that a civil or clannish strife, and culminates two tenors and a bass. Their relatively simple, and the ‘frogs’ legs’ of the newborn baby, are the individual talent in music or drama always in a supreme act of self-sacrifice which ‘white-note’ or diatonic harmony overlaps softened by the brave-new-world observations makes itself felt. In this respect, the Verdian eventually heals the communal hatred with that of the children’s chorus until the of children’s voices and quartet, their second scope and the final unanswered question of and brings peace and renewed hope. In final movement, when each singer becomes a interjection to be delivered ‘a bit rough – like which wins out – forgiveness or violence – its first production the action was placed soloist and all roles are shared or reversed to a folksong’. A hint at Herod’s massacre of the have left audiences stunned at the end of in the near future, rather than a mythical point up the wider message. innocents, the threat never far away from the MacMillan’s second opera, The Sacrifice. First past. MacMillan does not unleash his striking purity of the infant, as in the child’s vision performed in 2007 by Welsh National Opera, ‘The Parting’ vividly pits the musical chain armoury of percussion all at once, but it plays at the end of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, is featuring what may prove to have been a mail of authority against the lyricism that a crucial role in the state of becoming that is flicked away as the midwife strikes ‘drops into definitive cast movingly led by Lisa Milne marks out the love of the General’s daughter, ‘Incarnadine’, with marimba, steel drums and a rose-water bowl’, vividly enacted by the and Christopher Purves, and haunted by the Sian, for Evan, whom she has to leave in tuned gongs warming strings, percussion, ringing of three dobaci, or temple bowls. unpredictable perspectives of the director, order to marry Mal, the leader of the rival woodwind, hand bells and, finally, chorus into ‘Poppies’ immediately suggests new life in Katie Mitchell, this was one of the rare new tribe, in a sacrificial gesture of reconciliation. pre-existence. The ‘Babel songs’, muttered in a force field of destruction, and appropriately operas of the last few decades able to touch The second interlude is a Passacaglia, overlapping phrases just like the free-rhythm the brutal march of chorus and orchestra the emotions of large audiences without featuring a theme constantly repeated in the chant in the Sanctus of Britten’s War Requiem, is salved by the most beautiful and simple compromising its musical values – and one of bass, above which dance fragments and other are drawn from the text of the Lord’s Prayer writing in the work, for the quartet and the the few works since Britten’s to provide truly ideas are played out in vividly contrasted in Aramaic, as MacMillan transcribed it from boys as they lament, without morbidity, grateful and memorable word setting for the orchestral colours as the scene is set for the a radio broadcast. The mixed choir’s more premature birth. ‘Living Water’ takes us from singers. marriage feast. Although this Passacaglia 6 7 is not a central emblem of the drama, as to Japan, the USA and Canada. After several King Roger conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival in 2000, a it is in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of collaborations with Arvo Pärt the group has a performance later taken to the Salzburg live recording with the Vienna Philharmonic Mtsensk and Britten’s Peter Grimes, the commissioned important works by other Festival.