Earthly Paradise

'Songs of Eden' London Choral Sinfonia Sinfonia Smith Square Tuesday 15th April 2025

This concert forms part of an enterprising Easter Festival at Sinfonia Smith Square (formerly St John's Smith Square) and was one of three mounted on a single day. 'Songs of Eden' is billed as 'A powerful programme of contemporary music celebrating planet earth' and if there had been any initial doubts as to how this might fit into a programme of music for Holy Week, these would have been completely dispelled by the end of a highly concentrated hour of exemplary music making. The famous words of William Blake from 'Auguries of Innocence' came to mind:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

The first half of the concert consisted of four choral pieces, all with an ecological subtext. 'Vasara' by the Lithuanian composer Onute Narbutaite, is a visionary celebration of an idyllic childhood summer's day. 'and the swallow' by American Caroline Shaw, takes words from Psalm 84, and is a moving meditation on the importance of finding house and home. 'Tundra' by the celebrated Ola Djeilo impressed as a profound evocation of a quasi sacred remote Norwegian mountain landscape. The final piece of the quartet, and the most substantial in every sense, was Eric Whitacre's 'Cloudburst' a setting of a poem 'The broken water-jar' by Ovtavio Paz, and is concerned with the need to reconnect, literally and metaphorically, with a damaged earth. Whitacre has described this piece as 'a ceremony' and here, as with the other choral works, the London Choral Sinfonia gave a performance that is best described as definitive, adding clapping, finger clicking and sussuration to virtuosic singing. Conductor Michael Waldron was the bedrock of this superb achievement, ably abetted by pianist Hannah Watson Emmerich and six hardworking percussionists. The audience reaction to this part of the proceedings was little short of ecstatic.

But the main event that followed was very far from an anti-climax. 'Out of Eden' by Edward Picton-Turbervill, is very clearly a labour of passionate conviction and concern, sixteen years in the making. In his deeply felt programme note Picton-Turbervill delivers the sobering message that there is nothing to be done to save the Earth from ecological collapse. 'Out of Eden' is essentially an act of penance and catharsis that will allow us to confront our destiny and yet still recognise 'that every child represents an opportunity for us to do things differently'.

A single hearing was insufficient for me to be able to discuss this important work in any depth or with any authority but I can bear witness to its immense power and the profound effect it had on a rapt audience. Taking words mainly from the King James Bible, focussing on the expulsion from Eden outlined in Genesis, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Crucifixion, and the Valley of the Dry Bones described in Ezekiel, the work is often austere but also surpassingly beautiful. Picton-Turbervill's idiom is recognisably contemporary but also links back to the Bach Passions and the great church music of the English Renaissance. His performers did the composer proud. A particularly striking feature was the setting of the words of God, here sung with earnest beauty by bass Hugo Herman-Wilson; his voice was often augmentated with an accompanying aural halo of higher voices from the choir - an exquisite effect. Tenor Ed Lyon was a predictably expressive evangelist and mezzo-soprano Jessica Gillingwater was similarly impressive. The diction and response to text from all three was immaculate. The choral singing was again as close to perfection as I'd wish to hear: the sopranos particularly impressive with some chandelier tintinnabulating togp Cs. It was also a telling idea to encourage audience participation in the Miserere, so that we too were part of the penetential ritual. Michael Waldron was again the totally assured, inspirational conductor, with Michael Foyle an eloquent violin soloist. Organist Hugh Rowlands seized his opportunities at moments of climax and the skilful percussionists were again very much to the fore. All in all: a triumph.

'Out of Eden' concludes with a most eloquent setting of Philip Larkin's 'The Trees'. Copyright issues prevented the publication of the text in the programme but I am under no such constraint, so reproduce the poem below. Larkin's genius is a fitting conclusion to a review that has tried to give you a taste of an hour of rare magic.

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.