Page 224 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

16 October 2019

Ambition and overkill from composer James

MacMillan at the Barbican, plus the best of

October 2019's classical concerts

Composer and conductor James MacMillan CREDIT: HANS VAN DER WOERD

Ivan Hewett, CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC

15 OCTOBER 2019 • 3:18PM

The Sixteen, Britten Sinfonia, Barbican ★★★☆☆

If sheer ambition, burning sincerity of intention and deafening climaxes are enough to make a
masterpiece, then James MacMillan’s new symphony Le Grand Inconnu (The Great Unknown)
must be one. He takes on the loftiest theme – the nature of the Holy Spirit – and calls on every
musical resource to paint its mystery.

The singers of The Sixteen, the chamber orchestra Britten Sinfonia and conductor Harry
Christophers certainly gave their all. And there were moments during this 50-minute, three-
movement piece that were poetically suggestive. The very beginning, which evoked the breath of
the spirit in subdued whisperings and fluty harmonics, was one such. The opening of the second
movement, which summoned the “life-giving waters of the spirit” with wide-eyed chimings on
piano, harp and plucked strings, was another.

The problem is that MacMillan no sooner thinks of an idea than he pumps it with steroids, so that
it will be more awe-struck, innocent, joyous or whatever. Or worse, he transforms it (with
undeniable skill) into something completely different.

So a bit of cod-Renaissance polyphony might morph by degrees into a hazy tangled weave
borrowed from modernist master György Ligeti, or rapt choral clusters lifted from that wonderful
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