REVIEW HHHHH
CBSO
In 1974 the CBSO Chorus, formed just four months earlier, performed their first concert. It was a testing one too: Berlioz’s ‘Damnation of Faust’. Berlioz makes huge demands on his choral forces, requiring them not just to sing but also to act.
Their roles include peasants lustily enjoying the advent of spring, solemn Easter celebrants, roistering drunks, students and soldiers, gnomes, sylphs and will o’ the wisps. At the work’s climax they take both sides of the theological divide: the chorus of demons in Pandemonium and a heavenly host wafting the soul of Marguerite to heaven. Their debut performance was a triumph and, no surprises here, so was this one under Kazuki Yamada.
Symphony Hall looks especially resplendent when the chorus is on duty and here they were joined by the tenors and basses from The Hallé Choir. They showed tremendous bite and vigour in the Auerbach’s wine cellar scene but also humour in their mock ‘Amen’, first intoned in a nasal mocking whinny and then in a grand, fullthroated straight rendition. Crucial details were observed: in the Easter Hymn where their first ‘Christ has Risen!’ was muted in wonder, the second exultant and soaring. The ladies sounded terrified when almost being mown down by Faust and Mephistopheles’ hell-bound horses, and supernally radiant in heaven. It was a coup-de-theatre when they were joined by the CBSO Children’s Chorus and CBSO Youth Chorus with Miku Yasukawa, as the Celestial Voice, spotlit in the lower circle.
Berlioz’s phantasmagoric opera also needs a quartet of excellent soloists... Pene Pati was a resplendent Faust, his tenor voice combining lyricism and elegance in ‘Merci, doux crépuscule’, but with the power and vocal reserves for ‘Nature immense’. The mezzosoprano Grace Durham was a radiant Marguerite, her final “Ah” of the ‘King of Thule’ expressing a world of longing in a sighed syllable, eloquently accompanied by Adam Röhmer’s solo viola. If Jonathan Lemalu (Brander) sounded below his best, the Argentine bass Nahuel di Pierro was a devilishly fine Mephistopheles – hands in pockets, smiling sardonically, like a gambler with loaded dice. His ‘Un puce gentile’ and mocking ‘moral song’ were ferociously biting and sardonic, while ‘Voici des roses’ was satanically seductive. Yamada and the CBSO provided stupendous support: the swaggering Hungarian March, lilting minuet for the will o’ the wisps, thrilling ride to the abyss and cataclysmic arrival in Hell just some of the highlights.