The large crowd assembling for the Messiah was gobsmacked to be informed that star soprano Lucy Crowe was indisposed and would not be appearing. It proved difficult to ascertain exactly what had occurred, and when: she had apparently been in Glasgow on Friday, but, I understand, had been smitten abruptly and severely by The Bug.
Next however came the information that Crowe was being replaced at less than 24 hours’ notice by soprano Ailish Tynan. Communal spirits soared. There are good sopranos and very good sopranos; but there is only one Ailish Tynan. This was luxury casting, and so it proved as she came on and simply radiated sumptuous beauty
of tone.
But the most extraordinary feature of all was the interpretation of conductor Roy Goodman. He is red hot. He always is; and time and again the playing of the RSNO and the singing of the RSNO Chorus testified to
that fact.
He’s done this many times here with many Messiahs, but this one was something else. All his trademark features – weight, muscular energy, attack, tightly-sprung rhythms, and strongly-flavoured dynamic contrasts, were reflected in the RSNO performance.
But I have never heard, not even from Goodman himself, a Messiah that was so alive to the text. Rather than the music colouring and characterising the text, or being pictorial, it was almost as though the text itself was shaping the music, and, through it, Goodman’s response and its reflection in the performance.
The singers, that glorious Irish soprano Tynan, the magisterial and awesomely voiced mezzo Hilary Summers, the lean and intense tenor James Oxley and (a little less so) bass Michael George, seized on this near-inversion of music and text and produced an electrifyingly dramatic Messiah which at some points almost suggested theatricality, underlined at one moment when James Oxley actually physically changed position and moved in on the choral sound.
This was a Messiah of blazing intensity and unusually gripping drama; and a Messiah, moreover, with absolutely minimal cuts: as near complete as you will hear. Tremendous.
Star rating: ****
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