This performance of Britten’s Turn of the Screw should have been conducted by Sir Colin Davis. But the much-lamented death of the maestro meant the performance was dedicated to his memory. It was prefaced by short but eloquent speeches by LSO chairman Lennox Mackenzie and managing director Kathryn McDowell, followed by a moment’s silence — all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
Sir Colin may not have been a Britten specialist but Turn of the Screw was a personal favourite and the performance proved a worthy and appropriate tribute.
I have to confess, however, that I always find concert performances of opera problematic, since the visual, dramatic component can at best be suggested. With composers of a meditative or esoteric bent such as Messiaen, Tippett or even Vaughan Williams, that may matter less. But the majority of composers — Wagner, Janacek, Britten and all the rest — for whom the drama is intrinsic to the experience can only suffer from partial performance.
Turn of the Screw, like Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, suffers doubly. For these works make their impact largely by the conjuring of a mysterious atmosphere, to which the stage setting makes as much of a contribution as the music.
The bright lights of the Barbican Hall — not to mention a forest of BBC microphones — rendered any such evocations impossible. But there was at least a nod to theatricality in the raised placing of ghostly couple Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The four female roles were well characterised. The steely edge to Katherine Broderick’s tone was used to great effect to suggest Miss Jessel’s malevolence. Catherine Wyn-Rogers was a sympathetic, maternal Mrs Grose, Lucy Hall a girlish Flora and Sally Matthews a splendidly focused, anguished Governess whose horror at the unfolding events was palpable.
Andrew Kennedy was no less impressive doubling as the Prologue narrator and the sinister Quint. The Miles of the 11-year-old Michael Clayton-Jolly, a chorister in the Chapel Royal, was not only admirable in intonation but also exhibited a musicianship and composure well beyond his years.
Richard Farnes grappled well with that other potential problem of concert performance: an over-prominent orchestra. The bells, intended to create unease, all but obliterated the children’s rendering of the Benedicite. But diction was generally clear, the performance well played and surely paced.
Repeated tomorrow (0845 120 7511, barbican.org.uk)
