Page 231 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

What’s his secret? It’s partly Jenkins’s no-nonsense, man-of-the-people stance, demonstrated in
his 1970s career as a pop-jazz star with supergroup The Soft Machine, and revealed on Sunday
night in his disarmingly brief, modest welcome to the audience at this sold-out 80th-birthday
concert. Then there’s his reassuringly old-fashioned stance towards his art. As we discovered, his
literary tastes are those of a public-school headmaster c 1950: The Bible, Shelley, Dryden,
Tennyson. And his musical idiom is absolutely mainstream, with constant echoes of classical
music’s history: here a Renaissance fanfare, there a busy Baroque-style Moto Perpetuo. Sometimes
you even get a whiff of Victorian pious sweetness.

We heard that Baroque style right at the beginning, with Jenkins’s YouTube sensation Palladio,
played with bite and precision under the composer’s own baton by the Philharmonia Orchestra.
With Adiemus, when two soloists and the Crouch End Festival Chorus joined the musicians on
stage, we encountered another side of Jenkins – the one that likes to bring a flavour of “world
music” such as Indian percussion and a non-Western-classical singing style into his lush orchestral
sounds. These symbolise his attachment to good causes: pacifism, the unity of religious faiths, care
for the environment.

That feeling of spiritual one-ness was even more pronounced in Jenkins’s recent big choral-and-
orchestral piece One World. It included Jewish and Hindu prayers, and a passionate plea against
contemporary slavery beautifully sung by Kathryn Rudge (though the annoying amplification gave
her voice and everybody else on stage a peculiar harsh edge. Why do promoters eager to promote
classical music persist in trying to gild the lily with pointless electronic tweaking?).

Finally came Jenkins’s biggest and most famous piece, The Armed Man. The idea of a sturdy 15th-
century war song being gradually vanquished by the peaceful message of a Catholic Mass is a good
one. But as with everything I heard, Jenkins’s undoubted sincerity and musical gifts were
undermined by his fondness for literal repetitions, too-obvious musical symbolism, and static
harmonies. And the constant procession of movements in a slow tempo, made more ponderous by
Jenkins’s slack conducting, had me almost chewing the Albert Hall’s plush upholstery in
frustration. Jenkins has good ideas and noble intentions, and the packed Albert Hall seemed to
love him, but he badly needs a good editor. IH
Touring until 14 April; karljenkins.com

Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall ★★★★★