Elgar’s unloved oratorio makes for a mighty and moving occasion
Following The Apostles, first heard in 1903, Elgar originally envisaged The Kingdom as the second part of a trilogy of oratorios that would culminate in a treatment of the Last Judgment. Only a few rough sketches remain of the latter: waylaid by his chronic insecurity and other commissions – as well as perhaps a deeper sense that he had nothing more to give in the expressing of ineffable sublimity – he would never complete his grand design, leaving The Kingdom to live on as a meditative slow movement that lacks a grand finale. I guess that it now ranks as the least popular or recorded of Elgar’s mature major works.
Focused on the feast of the Pentecost in the upper room and the inauguration of the apostles’ ministry, it lacks drama, irony, or any shades of ambivalence. Sceptics may well find its relentless religiosity sanctimonious, perhaps even enervating, and there are passages of accompanied recitative which seem pompously turgid and rhetorical.
But it also contains much superlative music, including the incandescent orchestral prelude, palpitating with the glorious melody that serves throughout as a leitmotif and that Elgar labelled the “New Faith” theme; the radiant soprano aria The Sun Goeth Down; and a striking final choral setting of the Lord’s Prayer. Conductors find its overall nobility of
manner hugely satisfying; Hans Richter, Wagner’s right-hand man and not a man easy to please, admired it greatly and a deep-dyed Elgarian as distinguished as Adrian Boult claimed that it made the The Dream of Gerontius seem like the work of a “rank amateur”.
This tremendous performance made the best possible case for The Kingdom’s merits. It was to have been conducted by Mark Elder, but when he withdrew on account of a trapped nerve, Martyn Brabbins took his place; also called in at a late hour were Catherine Wyn-rogers and David Butt Philip, substituting for the ailing Alice Coote and Michael Fabiano. Despite these disappointing changes in personnel, nobody could have left the Usher Hall feeling they’d been short-changed.
Expert in the repertory of 20thcentury British romanticism, Brabbins drew rich and supple playing out of Elder’s Hallé Orchestra, keeping the score from sinking under the weight of its own pretensions and honouring all its delicacies – special praise to the leader Amyn Merchant for his playing of the exquisite violin obbligato that introduces The Sun Goeth Down, sung with intense, glowing rapture by that rising star Natalya Romaniw.
Stalwart but never stolid contributions from Wyn-rogers and Butt Philip, both in excellent voice, were complemented by the everimpeccable Roderick Williams. You couldn’t ask for better.
At the heart of the performance, however, was the Edinburgh Festival Chorus (EFC), on which Elgar has placed great demands. It met them all triumphantly, its diction lucid, its balance finely calibrated and its heart in the right place: this is music intended to bring spiritual uplift, and that it certainly did. All praise to the EFC’S new choirmaster Aidan Oliver, hotfoot from his other new posting at Glyndebourne.
Three years ago at the Usher Hall, Edward Gardner conducted a stupendous interpretation of The Apostles: this reading of its grandiose but lovable successor was every inch its equal, a mighty and moving occasion.
No further performances