CityLife

Halle’s World Aids Day concert @ Bridgewater Hall

Mark Elder

THE Halle’s World Aids Day concert was notable not just as an example of what an arts organization can do when its entire team pulls together in a good cause, but for the world premiere of a new composite work.

Walking Down The Red-Dust Road is a setting of poems by Manchester writer Jackie Kay, by seven different composers. It was performed by soloists Rebecca Bottone and Roderick Williams, with the Halle Choir, Halle Youth Choir and Halle Orchestra under the baton of Sir Mark Elder.

The concept was a little bit like the Mazzoni requiem to which Verdi and others contributed, which led (as we now know) to the composition of the complete Requiem of Verdi. Maybe some section of this new piece could be the seed, also, of greater things.

But for now we have a series of independent movements, in different styles, which came together remarkably to form a piece with its own shape and dynamic power. All were, necessarily, written to fit the instrumentation as well as the solo line-up of Faure’s Requiem, which followed later in the concert.

Paved

Craig Urquart’s meditative, accessible opening movement paved the way for Colin Matthews’ contribution – a characteristically subtle and texturally skilful one, with its own, appropriate sense of incompleteness – and then the most astringent section, by David Horne, almost all stark declamation for baritone solo.

There were flashes of drama and large expression in a small space of time as the victims of epidemic disease spoke through Bechara El-Khoury’s writing for soprano solo, and the emotional peak of the sequence came in Niel van der Watt’s lyrical, warmly harmonious choral movement, with its beatific major chords (almost akin to Faure’s).

There was anger and mourning in Marc Yeats’ setting for the soloists and a worthy finale for full forces from Errollyn Wallen, rhythmically purposeful as it urged us to remember the victims – the boy, the girl, the woman, the man.

One problem: the whole work would have been easier to appreciate if a printed text had been available.

For the Faure, Sir Mark brought a punchy and dramatic reading, a long way from the insipid versions so often offered. Rebecca Bottone’s Pie Jesu was bell-like in its purity and Roderick Williams’ singing rich and humane. The choral sound had great richness, and the orchestra nearly scared us into Verdi’s visions in the Libera Me.

What did you think? Have your say.