Festival Music

La Damnation de Faust

Usher Hall

Keith Bruce

five stars

THE FEAST of theatrical music continued a the Usher Hall with the rarely performed "Legende dramatique" derived from Goethe by Hector Berlioz. Under the baton of Mark Elder, an edition of The Halle Orchestra with six harps was joined on the platform by the Festival Chorus, the men of the Halle Choir and NYCoS National Girls Choir for a work that requires – and received – a vast palette of choral sound performed to a very high standard. Out front, and occasionally in amongst the choirs, soloists were tenor Michael Spyres as Faust and baritone Laurent Naouri as Mephistopheles, with Michelle Losier as Marguerite and David Soar as Brander.

Berlioz was a man of the theatre, but it is the music that the composer intends to do the work here, rather than any sort of staging, and that is as true of the instrumental writing – pizzicato strings suddenly characters in the drama at the start of Part 3 and some beautiful cor anglais playing in Part 4, for example – as it is of the voices, singing in French, Latin, and "an infernal language", as well as adding yelps and howls towards the end.

With the men to the fore throughout, the balance of the voices was perfectly pitched with Elder's dynamic instructions specific and the instrumentalists highly responsive. Spyres and Naouri, who sang the same roles at the Proms with John Eliot Gardner ten days ago, were absolutely outstanding, the latter's performance in particular full of character. As one of the Halle staff said at the interval, this is "the season of Damnations." In a better world, Berlioz's masterpiece would have an annual place in the calendar, like Handel's Messiah – at Hallowe'en perhaps, or on Hogmanay.