America divided in a scene from Bernstein's MASS
(All images by Mark Allan for Southbank Centre)
Sergio A. Mims writes:
The London
concert of Bernstein's Mass at the Southbank Centre this week with
conductor Marin Alsop with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
with junior division of Chineke! Orchestra has gotten incredibly rave
reviews.
By David Nice
Saturday, 07 April 2018
Live exposure to centenary composer Leonard Bernstein's anything-goes monsterpiece of 1971, as with Britten's War Requiem
of the previous decade, probably shouldn't happen more than once every
ten years, if only because each performance has to be truly special.
It's been nearly eight since Marin Alsop last conducted and Jude Kelly
directed MASS at the Southbank Centre.
The new era of Barack Obama still had an early-days sheen then. No-one
could have imagined when this similar-but-different spectacular was
planned how its vital youth component - not just among the singers but
also in an orchestra of 11 to 18 year olds - would chime so
tear-jerkingly with the anti-NRA crusaders we've seen take flight in the
past month.
Now, it seems, the world as a whole is closer to the
collective breakdown characterised by Bernstein's constantly widening
rift between the Latin words of the Christian Mass - many of them
pre-recorded, in quadraphonic sound at the premiere - and the vernacular
response which ranges from the desperate will to believe through
cynicism and anger to rejection. Should it be an entirely American
issue? As before, Kelly gives us images from the time of hope in JFK
onwards, stylishly incorporated on screen canvasses by designer Michael
Vale. They bring us as up to the minute as we can get; there is sight
for one moment of the American Horror-Clown in Chief as the visuals
rapidly fast-forward, and it is meant to pierce us, just when the crisis
reaches its overwhelming zenith (caution: ear plugs needed, if only for
three minutes).
Given the specific framework, which involves one Groundhog Day return
to flower-power ritual, I wonder how much the children and young adults
this time connected with our own rift, where resistance isn't nearly as
strong as it is in the States. But they certainly put their hearts and
souls into the performance. It’s not the most precise or focused in its
punch you’ll ever hear, but unless you fold your arms in response to
Bernstein’s unusual openness, you can’t help but be moved.
This
time the colossal role of the Celebrant, worn down by confrontational
questioning to a tricky 14-minute nervous breakdown Bernstein calls
“Fraction" and which surely owes something to Peter Grimes' mad scene,
is taken by Paulo Szot (pictured above centre), born in
Brazil to Polish émigré parents. He has what the part takes but rarely
gets: an operatic baritone of warmth and power matched to the natural
intensity of a show singer (his award-winning performance in South Pacific
on Broadway really put him on the American map; he's found more often
today singing Mozart). Rightly the vociferous-at-the-end but attentive
audience reflecting the diversity on stage – where the National Youth
Orchestra of Great Britain shared desks with players from the junior
division of Chineke!, the pioneer of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME)
players in classical music – went wildest for him.
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