Music

The Last Supper

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

SIR Harrison Birtwistle’s The Last Supper is a very rich feast to consume at a single sitting, so I am sure I will not be the only listener at this well-attended rare chance to hear it who will be tuning in to BBC Radio 3 on January 28 to have second opportunity.

Scored for a violin-free orchestra led by the BBC SSO’s principal viola Scott Dickinson, the instrumentalists rarely had my full attention, to be truthful, despite the presence of contrabass clarinet and other low reeds and brass, and accordionist James Crabb, all of which would usually be special enough to be riveting.

The performance also had the benefit of skilled sound mixing – by Sound Intermedia – that relayed the choral work particularly to three pairs of speakers in the auditorium at points. Again, a chance to appreciate that effect again on the radio should be grabbed.

On the night, however, it was inevitably the singers who commanded the limelight, and the first plaudits need to go to the BBC Singers, a choir whose status cannot be praised enough, and whose presence in Scotland would have made this concert unmissable whatever they were singing.

In Birtwhistle’s opera they have the best music, and the final fifteen minutes of the work featured some of the finest ensemble singing I have heard. Cancel other arrangements to hear the broadcast.

With the sort of resources only the BBC can command, the list of soloists – although somewhat altered from the one originally announced – was luxury casting, with Roderick Williams at the top of his form as Christ and Susan Bickley glorious as Ghost.

Although not in any sense devotional, the work is still liturgical in form, which makes it a strange and sometimes undramatic beast, a problem that Victoria Newlyn’s concert staging only partially addressed, but conductor Martyn Brabbins’s command of the music was majisterial.