Peter Whelan is a common name among musicians. There’s one who is a leading bassoonist, both as soloist and as orchestral principal. Another is a harpsichordist who digs up neglected works, particularly from 18th-century Dublin and Edinburgh, and reconstructs them for performance and recording. Then there’s Peter Whelan, artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, conductor of the Irish National Opera and a founder of the period-instrument Ensemble Marsyas. Versatile is an inadequate description for this multitalented, Irish-born musician who is, in each of these cases, all the same person.
Whelan is now mid-European tour, conducting Handel’s Israel in Egypt, with the Monteverdi Choir, 60 this year, and the English Baroque Soloists (in which, no surprise, he has played bassoon). Last week they were in London, at St Martin-in-the-Fields. This vivid, double-choir choral work, premiered in 1739, could hardly have sounded more exhilarating. The biblical epic shows Handel borrowing from himself as well as other composers, and at his most inventive, with musical depictions of plagues of flies, lice and locusts; frogs, hailstones, darkness and, after bloodshed, redemption.
Ranked as one of the pre-eminent choral ensembles in the world, the Monteverdi Choir was founded by John Eliot Gardiner, whose name remains indelibly linked to its rigorous musical standards of training and achievement. Now 80, he is currently absent from conducting. (An announcement from the organisation, made before the tour, expresses hope he may return to the platform later in the year.) Treading a line between respect for Gardiner and striking out independently must have required immense tact on Whelan’s part. Directing from the keyboard, he was mostly on his feet, all but dancing from start to finish. The orchestral playing was buoyant as well as sensitive, the choral work dazzling. The soloists – Nick Pritchard, Julia Doyle, Amy Wood, James Hall and Jack Comerford – excelled, but the choir took top honours: every word audible, every note, even when roared, bang in tune.
Just as we acknowledge that the world may be non-binary, along comes the binary-minded New York composer Tristan Perich (b.1982) with his composition Infinity Gradient for organ and 100 speakers (2021). Given its UK premiere last weekend by the organist James McVinnie – at the start of his year-long residency at London’s Southbank Centre and as part of the Festival Hall organ’s 70th anniversary extravaganza – this hour-long work is based on binary principles shared by organ pipes and 1-bit sound. In simple terms, this means on or off, to speak or to stay silent. A discussion between McVinnie and Perich beforehand was full of talk of oscillations and longitudinal waves, yet the work itself turned out to be human and experiential.
McVinnie was alone at the organ, with 100 speakers of different sizes, custom-built by Perich, set up across the stage behind him, the larger ones suggestive of a strange early warning system. On first hearing, it was hard to know exactly what the interaction in the nine movements was between organist and electronics, but the whole epic enterprise was mesmeric in impact and sonic variety, now like Vidor’s Toccata on steroids, now a low dental drill, now a carousel sinking underwater. A few audience members hurried out in desperation but most sat, fully engaged. It was mad and massive, at its climax, after a near endless upward glissando, seeming to make the building’s foundations shake. Perhaps it was only our eardrums.
English National Opera had scheduled two performances, conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya, sung in Hungarian, of Béla Bartók’s short two-hander opera Bluebeard’s Castle, a masterpiece of the early 20th century. When Allison Cook, due to sing Judith, cancelled because of illness, the whole event could have collapsed. At late notice, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston stepped in, making her overdue company debut with singing of fierce intelligence and magnificent beauty.
Standing, static, to one side of the stage, she nonetheless conjured immense, chilling drama, never overwhelmed by the orchestra, who after a tentative start yielded to the score’s terrifying intensity and grandeur. John Relyea sang the title role – noble, emotionally occluded, allowing hints of self-awareness at his cruelty to his former wives, here a whole harem of silent brides veiled in white. Described as a semi-staging by Joe Hill-Gibbins, it was set around a long table, with props to suggest the secrets behind each door: flowers, showers of gold, dollops of gore. The focus might have been undermined by circumstance, torn as we were between watching the compelling Johnston and the equally magnetic Crispin Lord (an ENO staff director), sensuously and seductively walking the role of Judith. But the evening gathered a fiery energy of its own, and the work’s mysteries scorched our senses.
Star ratings (out of five)
Israel in Egypt ★★★★★
James McVinnie & Tristan Perich: Infinity Gradient ★★★★
Bluebeard’s Castle ★★★★
