Page 223 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

Breath, acclaimed in four different languages (Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English) and shapes up as another "In
the Beginning" along the lines of Wagner's Rheingold Prelude; we even get the Rhinemaidens' acclamation of
the gold in one of those lurid if not downright kitschy moments of which MacMillan is unafraid.

His choral writing both here and in the more straightforward Fatima celebration is, as always, consummate,
halfway at one point to the 40 voices of Tallis's Spem in Alium. And both works show unique orchestral brilliance,
daunting in the war-tattoos which give the Fátima ritual some universality as a plea for peace in 1917, peaking in
the astonishment of the symphony's central apostrophes to "living water" where at one point strings go presto-
feral against accented low-brass triads. The final movement of "Le Grand Inconnu" is less of an apotheosis than
the quasi-Orthodox blazes at the end of The Sun Danced. Was I moved? Not as much as during the previous
Genesis commission, the Stabat Mater, and not enough to stand like the greater part of the audience, but both
works are effective in communicating widely without compromising with anything saccharine, and will repay
regular listening. Whether the opening diptych of Arvo Pärt's Cantus to the Memory of Benjamin Britten and
Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia - from A
minor to A major in the twinkling of
an eye - was MacMillan's idea or
Christophers', I don't know, but it
laid masterly ground for the
younger composer's scalic patterns
and choral complexity to come.
In the relentless beam of Barbican
acoustics, Pärt's kicks and jabs as
the strings descend ever so
gradually to a baseline only
highlighted the individuality in one
of his earliest returns to the
essence (can it be nearly 40 years
since I first heard it, as an
unexpected encore to a
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
London concert conducted by a then unknown-to-us Neeme Järvi?). A much-augmented Britten Sinfonia packed
all the punches necessary throughout the evening, while The Sixteen (actually 24, and later to be joined by their
younger companions in the Genesis Sixteen) projected the meaning of Auden's wonderful homage to the Patron
Saint of music, celebrated on Britten's birthday, with wonderful lightness of touch under Christophers.
Special kudos both here and in the Symphony to high-wire Sixteen soprano Julie Cooper, not oveshadowed by
Mary Bevan's soprano solos in The Sun Danced (a Virgin wrapped in cotton wool, perhaps, but sympathetic and
note-perfect all the same). The good news is that both the MacMillan works were recorded for release on The
Sixteen's Coro label; so there will be a chance soon enough to get to know them better.

222