The City of London Festival’s USP is allowing audiences access to venues that are usually hidden from public view. Last night’s concert, bearing an ominous title, The Fateful Voyage, took place in Drapers’ Hall, a building so splendid that it’s tempting to review it rather than the event.
But no, prima la musica. FS Kelly and William Denis Browne were composers and friends of Rupert Brooke. Like Brooke, they died in the First World War, but while Brooke’s poetry remains popular their music lies neglected. The Fateful Voyage unearthed a generous handful of pieces, interspersing them with a spoken narrative devised by Kate Kennedy and readings of Brooke’s poems, both delivered by Matthew Cammelle.
The story began with the three men leaving for Gallipoli on a troop ship, blithe optimism the presiding emotion. At first, the music was politely tuneful, engagingly sentimental, as if it had barely escaped the 19th century, let alone engaged with the 20th. A song about Eton was school assembly stuff, a piano duet would not have been out of place in a music hall. Eventually proceedings became darker. With Iain Burnside a sympathetic accompanist, tenor James Gilchrist sang everything with beseeching ardour, yet the most moving passage was non-musical: an excerpt from Kelly’s diary, written in 1915, listing the works he hoped to finish. He never did.
Broadcast 7.30pm Tue Jun 24, BBC Radio 3. Festival continues until Jul 17 (0845 120 7502, colf.org)
