Music

RSNO/Oundjian

Royal Albert Hall, London

Keith Bruce

five stars

EVEN with the full forces of the RSNO Chorus and Huddersfield Choral Society (who share the skills of Gregory Batsleer as chorus-master) seated behind the orchestra, there was still room for a few of the capacity audience to occupy choir stall seating above them, facing conductor Peter Oundjian on what was his final appearance as music director of the RSNO. Although not the best seats in the house acoustically, they would have a particular perspective on his direction of the most meticulous and measured account of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

While that fact is also an indication of the sheer scale of the home of the BBC Proms, which the work matches in its additional requirement for two distinct orchestral ensembles and a choir of young people - the RSNO Junior Chorus and their chamber organ accompanist, Edward Cohen, sounding superb from the top level of the auditorium, there was a palpable intimacy about the performance of what is a masterpiece for a secular cathedral, albeit one that uses the text of the Latin Mass and which was first heard in a real one.

With his male soloists, tenor Allan Clayton and baritone Russell Braun, alongside him and soprano Erin Wall in the middle of the choristers, and the chamber orchestra led by Sharon Roffman on his right, with Maya Iwabuchi in her place as concertmaster of the main band, there was always an element of theatre in the flow of the work, but its sonic drama surpasses anything you can see.

The chorus set the benchmark in that with the attention-grabbing pianissimo singing of the opening, even before we heard the young folk from the gods, or the combination of Clayton and the chamber ensemble on the setting of Wilfred Owen’s best-known verse. Everyone on stage was on top form, but the tenor in particular excelled in terms of pure tone and perfect diction.

As the layers of vocal ingredients unfolded in the closing Libera Me movement, there was another inaudible sensation in the Royal Albert Hall: the sound of six thousand people listening with a shared emotional intensity.