REVIEW by Eric Page
In the 1990s, London Sinfonietta recorded Symphony of Sorrowful Songs with Dawn Upshaw singing, selling an unprecedented million copies, driving Gorkeski to the notice of the wider public and birthing this piece as one of the most loved modern symphonies, holding the top of the classical charts for eight months. A meaningful meditation on motherhood, love and loss, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs adapts texts in Polish taken from sources spanning the centuries, giving perspectives from both a mother having lost their child, and a child separated from their parents.
Isabella Bywater’s production is stark, a triangular stage with seamless complex projections from Roberto Vitalini of water in various perspectives suggesting feelings of slow timeless movements, tides, rivers, flow. Everything is measured here, the solo singers’ movements are choreographed with the music’s sudden changes of direction, allowing what little ‘action’ there is to provide a visual narrative that felt more art installation than opera. It fitted. Its lack of gimmicks – simple bold lighting and shadows allowing the clockwork motions to reveal themselves into moments of revelation – no surprises, but the understanding of the staging urged its obvious conclusions.
The sets – apparently solid – appear to melt, flow, shift whilst staying the same, the solid walls become ropes through which ghostly forms push and appear – a birch forest appears; tall, silent trees witness people searching for loved ones, all is ashen. The sombre lighting from Jon Driscoll underscored the emotions being sung, the monochrome theme of the static stage induced a deeply reflective mood in me, I found my mind wandering off into the most extraordinary spaces, then having to bring myself back to sitting at the ENO. The music is soporific, but in a soothing way, as if you’ve cried yourself out into a state of exhaustion and slipped away to the welcome grasp of unconscious, unfeeling sleep.
This was a piece of music which was not written for the stage and I had reservations when I saw ENO’s intent to bring this project forward. It is a meditation on loss, grief and mourning, but scoured through with the golden threat of life’s moving on, breathing through the agony of family bonds wrenched apart by cruel fate and overwhelming feelings which crash in on us.
Soprano Nicole Chevalier’s rich, redolent voice was unwavering in its commitment to detailing the delicate fronds of grief and loss which pour out of this unstoppable crepuscular piece of music. Rising and falling, lifting and groaning into the remarkable cadences that mark this piece of music, wrenching into appalling loss then soaring up into the ethereal vaults of resilience, she was delightful. Singing in the original Polish and literally rising and falling across this stage in silent, slow movements, Chevalier’s physical stage presence was as potent as their voice, folding her singing up in evocative searing depictions of anguish, pain and loss.
The orchestra was superb, catching the important hypnotic metrics of this subtle piece, keeping the narrative tension always just, just out of grasp while driving us relentlessly onwards. At last, when the final movement started – the staging reflecting the change of tone and light – it felt as if all of us were waking into the light, released of this awesome burden of life, and the misery it generates at its departing. Lidiya Yankovskaya – first time at the ENO – conducted the pit, wrapping a deep warmth into the sound and music, allowing the slowly unfurling artistic interpretations of the many metaphors of grief to very slowly play out on the stage.
And then it stopped. Suddenly, absolutely resolved.
The auditorium took a collective slow intake of breath before the applausive thundered out.
Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony, his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, is fantastically complex but presented in the simplest way, clear lines lift and fall, spaces are created and slowly collapse around on, constant movement, slow, relentless, powerfully urgent music drives us onwards to the breathless almost unbearable clarity of the conclusion. When it comes it crashed through the darkness giving us a moment of utter resolution, pure, nonjudgmental and satisfying.
The ENO’s chief executive, Stuart Murphy, who is about to leave, started this stark sober evening with a speech reminding the great and good of the arts council and political classes of what the ENO has achieved and means to so many different types of people and that the unforgiving eyes of history are on them. Let’s hope they listen.
This haunting performance of Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony is a startling but soothing staging from the ENO yet again showing us what a dedicated team of people can do with imagination, flair and a determination to explore and share the very best of music with a diverse and invested audience. Recommended.
Until 6th May
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