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Morality takes to the stage

Henrietta Bredin

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Henrietta Bredi joins in the preparations for Vaughan Williams's 'The Pilgrim's Progress'

I want to stay and keep listening but there are phone calls to make and emails to send, queries to be raised about whether music and music stands can stay in place between the dress rehearsal and the first performance, box-office figures to be checked and a schedule to be updated. All the stuff that has to be quietly and doggedly sorted, to underpin this act of communal musical endeavour, the steady building of notes and text to create a complete performance.

Vaughan Williams is ripe for reassessment, a process that has been happening for a while now but should continue until his music finally shakes itself free of the trappings of nostalgia and English folksiness that it has acquired. This year, Classic FM listeners voted — again — for Lark Ascending as their favourite piece of music. It’s a piece that has frequently been slammed as clichéd and hackneyed but played as it was by Anthony Marwood with the Philharmonia at the end of May, with an exquisitely controlled tenderness and precision, it acquires a keen freshness and, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s phrase, ‘does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing’.

The Philharmonia presents The Pilgrim’s Progress at Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 20 June (7.30 p.m.) and 22 June (4 p.m.), tickets from www.sadlerswells.com or tel: 0844 412 4300.

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J. Vaughan

June 12th, 2008 5:03pm

Believe it or not, this may still be my favourite work in the whole of Western serious music! I am thus _MOST_ pleased that Miss Bredin has given us this insider's view as it were, of how a work this large can somehow be brought off if one has a sympathetic and first-rate director, conductor, soloists, chorus and orchestra! Mr. Hickox has already shown, more than once, that he, as is said, has what it takes in the second of these capacities, his _SUPERB_, at least in my opinion, recording of this morality now at the top for me despite retaining a profound respect for the older Boult version with the late Mr. Noble, who I had the privilege of knowing personally for nearly 30 years, in the title role! I hope Mr. Williams, a fine singer, will be able to bring the same perceptive intensity to his performances as Mr. Gerald Finley did on the recording! I only regret that, being on the other side of the Atlantic, I will be unable to share in this experience, that is unless Radio 3, or someone else, is going to broadcast one of these performances!

Hoping that this finds all of you well,

J. V.

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