Summer Music In City Churches – Taking Refuge
When the temperature in London is higher than Naples at its grimiest, taking refuge within some mediaeval stone walls is a delightful thought. In truth, the interior of St. Giles without Cripplegate was still quite warm enough on 19 June, but at least the steam was not rising from its floor. The solution was to apply mind over matter and fuse with the trout in Schubert’s great quintet as it luxuriated in a mountain stream. That was the culminating work in the second concert from ten days of Summer Music in City Churches, now in its seventh season.
The series is imaginatively curated, combining a succession of choirs with players drawn from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and various singers and chamber soloists. It opened with the venerable Sir John Rutter conducting Fauré’s Requiem and ends with the rather astonishing edition by Richard Blackford of the Requiem by Verdi, whose massive orchestra is reduced to two pianos, an organ and a selection of percussion. St. Giles is the main venue, but in between the festival migrates to a few of those churches with magnificently resonant names: St. James Garlickhythe, St. Mary Abchurch and St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. It’s amazing how many saints had to do without in the City of London. St. Giles has to do without a bridge over the lily pond to the Barbican Hall, which has always seemed a pity.
The programme on Thursday reflected the ethos of the artistic directors; slightly spiritual in a gentle way, with a well-known classical work balanced by a couple of slightly less obvious ones — in this case the Trout Quintet, preceded by Poulenc’s Flute Sonata and John Ireland’s Phantasie Trio. The pianist throughout was Mark Bebbington, joined by Emer McDonough in the Poulenc and the string Principals of the RPO in the rest. Bebbington’s playing was a little four-square compared to McDonough’s soaring elegance, but integrated much more effectively in the Schubert, no doubt carried along by its irresistible momentum.
In comparison, John Ireland’s Phantasie Trio is pale and slushy stuff, rather like my early love poems that used to be received with a despairing sigh by their recipients. But if Ireland veered towards the musically obvious, it was nothing compared to the sheer banality of the premiere that opened the concert by the mid-life French composer Manu Martin. His Lim Fantasy of Companionship was written to illustrate the relationship between AI machines and humans. Unfortunately, the lofty concept was undermined by Martin’s trivial music: somewhere between a Disney cartoon score and the less inspired ideas of Maurice Jarre. Frankly, even an AI computer would have needed no extra help to have come up with a more interesting quarter of an hour.
The disappointment of Martin’s offering should not detract from the overall excellence of the festival itself, though. It fills a hole in London’s artistic life as the main concert season draws to a close and before the BBC Proms take over. The series receives no public funding (mind you, after the recent parsimonious set of grants to the arts, precious few good music organisations do) and it is a success. When the staff start having to put out extra chairs, it’s always an encouraging sign.
For more on London’s independent music scene and the concerts that give our city its soul, visit EyeOnLondon.
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[Image Credit | Ben Wright]
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