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| Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride - Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Roderick Williams, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martyn Brabbins - The Three Choirs Festival (Photo: Dale Hodgetts) |
Ronald Corp: Hail and Farewell; Ralph Vaughan Williams: Flos Campi; Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride; Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Roderick Williams, Rebecca Jones, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Martyn Brabbins; Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral
A contemporary retelling of a Welsh folk tale makes a vivid and engaging climax to this concert mixing contemporary and classic repertoire
Gavin Higgins' cantata The Faerie Bride was premiered at last year's Aldeburgh Festival by Martyn Brabbins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at Snape Maltings, and the same forces also performed it at St David's Hall, Cardiff, and the work received its third performance at the Three Choirs Festival on Sunday 23 July 2023 at Gloucester Cathedral. Martyn Brabbins conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons, baritone Roderick Williams and the Three Choirs Festival Chorus in the world premiere of Ronald Corp's Hail and Farewell, RVW's Flos Campi (with viola soloist Rebecca Jones) and Gavin Higgins' The Faerie Bride.
Corp's song cycle Hail and Farewell, for baritone (Roderick Williams) and string orchestra was written in memory of Catherine Pascall, a board member of the Three Choirs Festival until her recent death. Corp's choice of poetry for the cycle reflected Pascall's love of carousels, with Verlaine's Chevaux de bois and Diana Jones' Roundabout, plus Pascall's favourite poem, Shakespeare's sonnet, When in disgrace, with fortune and men's eyes, Catullus' Ave atque vale, the anonymous early English Pleasure it is and Robert Bridges' My spirit sang all day. The result was a rather diverse group of texts, lacking a particular thread, something emphasised by Corp setting the Verlaine in the original French and the Catullus in Latin.
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| Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride - Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Martyn Brabbins - The Three Choirs Festival (Photo: Dale Hodgetts) |
The cycle began with Pleasure it is, Tippett-like string textures full of lively cross-rhythms against a more declamatory vocal line. This was the prevailing sound world of the cycle. In the Verlaine setting, the vocal writing was more lyrical yet it was the string writing that remained memorable. Here, and in several movements, the balance rather favoured the strings, unusually for Roderick Williams, the words were occluded. The Shakespeare and Catullus settings were the serious centre of the cycle, though the interest was more in the relationship between voice and instruments rather than the vocal line itself. Diana Jones' poem, written specially, proved engaging and the cycle ended with a setting of the Bridges poem that featured more engaging Tippett-esque string writing.
RVW's Flos Campi is a strange but haunting work. Inspired by lines from the Song of Songs, it pits a viola soloist against chamber orchestra and wordless chorus. The use of wordless chorus might evoke RVW's friend and teacher Ravel, but the sound world with its modality and major/minor uncertainty is pure RVW. Rebecca Jones is the principal viola of BBC NOW and she proved to have a lovely mellow singing tone and her haunting opening duet with the oboe set the tone for the whole work.
RVW punctuates the piece with these moments when the solo viola emerges from a strong ensemble texture, duetting with individual instruments and Jones made these lyrically melancholy, giving a feeling of the viola not a poet hymning their beloved but more reflecting on lost, past pleasures. RVW does not shy away from the more erotic, and some of the choral moments were wonderfully orgasmic. His use of he chorus is innovative as, at times, we had solo viola and choir alone, magical textures sensitively handled by Brabbins. During the fuller ensemble passages, Jones' viola disappeared somewhat. But the viola is less concerto soloist and more primus inter pares.
A big shout out for the 27 singers from the Three Choirs Festival Chorus. I have previously only heard this work performed by professional singers; it needs a small group of singers able to give the music control and flexibility, this they did wonderfully.
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| Vaughan Williams: Flos Campi - Rebecca Jones, BBC National Orchestra of Wales - The Three Choirs Festival (Photo: Dale Hodgetts) |
Gavin Higgins' cantata, The Faerie Bride is a retelling of a Welsh folk tale with words by Francesca Simon, with whom Higgins collaborated on his 2019 opera, The Monstrous Child (which featured Marta Fontanals-Simmons in the title role, see my review) As Higgins pointed out in his programme note, the Welsh tale belongs to a tradition of European 'watery wife' folk tales involving a woman coming out of the water. But unusually, these Welsh faeries have agency, the women set the rules. In this tale, it is three strikes and you are out, and the story depicts the three episodes where the Man goes against the Woman's faerie nature.
We began with a prologue where the Man (Roderick Williams) contemplated the watery other world. Higgins music was positively Wagnerian at the opening, starting low, low in the orchestra and rising gradually. Throughout the work, Higgins' writing for the orchestra impressed and he used orchestral interludes to colour and shape the narrative with lots of vivid and evocative writing.
In the prologue, the writing for Roderick Williams was poetic arioso, allowing space and time for Williams' voice, the orchestra often thinning when the voice was present. The long first scene showed the Man's wooing of the Woman (Marta Fontanals-Simmons) with a variety of different types of bread. The three types of bread echoing the three blows the Woman demands. These three latter are depicted in the central scenes, a wedding where the Woman will not dance as she sees trouble for the couple, a christening where she cries as she sees the child's death, and a funeral where she laughs because the deceased is in a better place. Each of these was structure the same but within this Higgins wrought immense variety, from the wonderful folk fiddling of the wedding to the chill bleakness of the funeral
Williams' dramatic scenes were written so the voice was almost in alternation with the orchestra, Higgins vivid orchestral writing dying down to a drone whilst Williams' sang. A sensitive way of handling the voice which enabled Williams to get a lot of the words over.
Whenever Fontanals Simmons sang, Higgins gave her a clear sense of the other. A lot of her role was in Welsh, which added to this sense, and a series of haunting folk melodies provided sharp contrasts with the Man's sharply dramatic questioning, why not dance at the wedding, why cry at the christening, why laugh at the funeral. Fontanals Simmons sang radiantly, capturing the Woman's firm independence or spirit whilst her final section where she called all the animals and her sons to follow her back to the lake developed from folkishness to disturbing intensity. The ensuing ending was short but touching, the man going down to the lake each day, listening to the silence and leaving an offering of soft bread.
Francesca Simons words gave the piece structure, whilst she had the knack of creating memorable, poetic, folk-like lines, short and spare enough to leave space for the music. There was one other element, at the end of each of the central three sections, there was a chorus of villagers, vividly done here as they enunciated their dislike and distrust for someone not like them.
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| Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride - Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Roderick Williams, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The Three Choirs Festival Chorus - Martyn Brabbins - The Three Choirs Festival (Photo: Dale Hodgetts) |
The remarkable thing about this telling of the tale was the way Higgins and Simons evinced sympathy for both the Man and the Woman. Higgins sensitive and careful handling of the voices alongside his vivid orchestral writing made it a notable achievement.
The performance was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast.
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