A glorious, uplifting giant helps unite a wounded city

A city united, again. Less than two miles from Ariana Grande’s benefit concert on Sunday evening, the Bridgewater Hall hosted Schoenberg’s gigantic cantata,

Gurrelieder, with Manchester’s two professional symphony orchestras, the Hallé choir and the men of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir.

With its sunset-to-sunrise saga of the doomed love of King Waldemar and his mistress Tove, Gurrelieder can be almost uniquely uplifting. But it does demand an almost impossible conjunction of talents. Above all, it has to have a conductor who can keep the orchestration in check. This it had in Mark Elder, whose control was sovereign. The last time I saw

Gurrelieder in the concert hall (under Pierre Boulez) the singers might as well have been miming. This time, their audibility was close to 100 per cent.

Schoenberg also requires singers capable of riding the tsunami of orchestral sound. Step forward the triple male chorus that represents King Waldemar’s vassals in their macabre Wild Hunt. The final Sunrise

Chorus was also breathtaking, though it could have done with a few dozen extra sopranos and altos.

Then, it needs six soloists with an almost superhuman combination of power, flexibility and sensitivity to the words. Here we had a show-stoppingly dramatic account of the news of Tove’s murder, from Alice Coote as the Wood Dove. And we had Graham Clark as Klaus the Fool, bringing all his performances of Wagner’s Loge and Mime to bear. Johan Reuter and Thomas Allen also made their mark.

As for the lovers, Brandon Jovanovich had the stamina and most of the vocal colours, but not the ease above the stave. Emily Magee, on the other hand, had thrilling top notes and made a good deal more of the words, but sometimes at the expense of ideal smoothness of line and tone.

The concert’s messages of love, light and collaboration were perfect for the occasion.