Page 37 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020
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Skin-pricklingly good: the LSO in concert CREDIT: Mark Allan
Knussen’s own piece featured soprano Lucy Crowe as the naughty boy Max who is at first afraid of
the Wild Things but eventually tames them. In the hall her leaping, pure-toned voice was
overwhelmed by Knussen’s magical swooping horns and wind machine and thrumming harp, but
on the broadcast she certainly holds her own. Both pieces were inevitably topped by Britten’s
immortal Serenade.
It benefited from that wonderful tenor Allan Clayton, who is fast becoming the “go-to” tenor for
Britten. From his very first high note, inexpressibly gentle yet rock-solid, one knew he was going to
be wonderful, and across the following six poems of nocturnal magic and menace he summoned a
tremendous range of tone. No less wonderful was solo horn player Richard Watkins. His uncanny
pinched stopped notes in Blake’s ‘O rose, thou art sick’, symbolising the ‘invisible worm’ at the
rose’s heart made one’s skin prickle with a sense of the uncanny.
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