The Age of Aspiration, Three Choirs Festival, Gloucester Cathedral, Friday 28 July, 2023.

4****: David Gray & Paul Gray

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs & Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Graham Fitkin – The Age of Aspiration

This was very much a concert of two halves, the first of which gave us a feast of Vaughan Williams with two of his most well-known and accessible works.

Baritone, Dominic Sedgwick sang Five Mystical Songs with a rich tone and good clear diction, really getting into the awe and wonder of Herbert’s marvellous texts. The chorus provided an ethereal, translucent background, and the orchestra played with warmth and gravity. Love bad me welcome and The Call, were particularly compelling. Sedgwick delivered the first of these with a highly appropriate feeling of fragility, and the second with a growing hope and confidence that seemed to segue very naturally into the explosion of joy that is Let all the World. Chorus and band raised the roof in a rousing rendition of this final number.

There followed a reading of Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis that was quite simply gorgeous. Conductor Samuel Hudson really brought out the contrast between the timbres of the full orchestra, a foreground quartet of soloists and the more distant ‘semi-chorus’ to create an impression of sonic perspective. He used this and strong dynamic contrasts to accentuate the piece’s shape and make us aware of how very well structured it is. The strings played with a burnished, glossy tone and striking intensity. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it performed better.

After the interval, a newer work, The Age of Aspiration by Graham Fitkin. The problems with this work start with the text, which tries to tie together a number of disparate and really quite loosely related ideas via a flimsy socio-historical overview. The result is not intellectually cohesive. But, given that it is factual science and verbatim history rather than lyrical poetry, it is not particularly emotionally engaging either.

The most emotionally charged part of the libretto, Wilberforce’s speech to the Commons condemning slavery is not even sung, but spoken. Given the above, it is hardly surprising that the music to which the text is set is undeniably clever, but rather dry.

The organising structural principle is a dynamic arch. From an opening few moments comprised of laboured breathing, the work crescendos almost imperceptibly to a fortissimo middle section with strident orchestral textures. It then fades, just as gradually, away. And that really is about it.

Undeniably a piece with many technical challenges. All the performers are to be applauded for carrying it off so well. Countertenor James Hall has a magnificent voice. Actor, Samuel West delivered the afore mentioned Wilberforce speech with fire.

The overall impression was, sadly, underwhelming.

James Hall – Countertenor

Dominic Sedgwick – Baritone

Samuel West – Narrator

Worcester Cathedral Choristers

Three Choirs Festival Voices

Philharmonia Orchestra

Samuel Hudson - Conductor