Page 261 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

14 August 2019

Prom 37: Hallé – Maxime Pascal conducts Berlioz’s Childhood of
Christ

Wednesday, August 14, 2019 Royal Albert Hall, London

Written by Nick Breckenfield

Like the work itself – which grew organically over four years from a rustic ditty Berlioz was asked to
compose at a card game for a friend’s album in 1850 – this performance morphed from the originally
advertised line-up. Following the news about Sarah Connolly, Julie Boulianne was quickly announced
(she’d sung in John Eliot Gardiner’s Roméo et Juliette in 2016 here). But then Mark Elder also had to
withdraw at short notice – requiring surgery – and was replaced by Maxime Pascal, who at the Royal
Festival Hall in May conducted Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht.

How much of the stage layout was pre-planned by Elder I’m not sure – antiphonal violins, the six double
basses forming the back line of the orchestra; the Angels up in the Gallery, the positioning during the
interval of the harp (Marie Leenhardt) front of stage, joined by two flautists (Amy Yule & Sarah Bennett)
for the Ishmaelites’ trio: all could have been Elderisms – but baton-less Pascal adapted to them. He is
something of a dancer on the podium, flexing naturally to the music whilst sculpting entries as if from the
ether. His Berlioz was as lean as he is, and seemed dangerously slow at the end, but he carried his musicians
and singers – just the men of the Britten Sinfonia Voices and Genesis Sixteen in the first part – with him all
the way, and the Hallé particularly seemed to enjoy his terpsichorean technique. In this most intimate of
Berlioz’s large-scale works, Pascal fashioned a truly intimate performance in that barn of a venue, the Royal
Albert Hall.

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