Macaulay's Week: A New Atlantic Requiem and a Gang of Three

By Elena Vasquez

The world premiere of David Önaç's Atlantic Requiem at LSO St Luke's on Sunday 11 October anchors a week of London performance surveyed by critic-in-residence Alastair Macaulay, spanning new drama, Bach, Schubert and Mozart.

What did The Gang of Three deliver?

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky's The Gang of Three, seen at the King's Head Theatre in Islington, dramatizes three Wilson and Callaghan ministers of the 1960s and 1970s: Anthony Crosland, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey. Alan Cox plays Crosland, the first to die, in 1977. Macaulay writes: "Not a moment is bland. Although this is not profound drama, it's a keenly reimagined and entirely enthralling slice of history."

Cox, Macaulay notes, belongs to the rare breed of performers who communicate their own pleasure in performing — a category he assigns to Victoria de Los Angeles, Lucia Popp, Antoinette Sibley and John Gielgud. Hywel Morgan and Colin Tierney co-star, directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward. The production visits Cambridge, Chichester and Guildford next.

How intimate can a B minor Mass be?

Bach's B minor Mass with Solomon's Knot at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 10 October used just ten singers. Macaulay calls it "infectious" — a first in his experience of the work — and "the fastest account of the B Minor Mass I have ever heard: it is not rushed but it has amazing impetus." Rearrangements of singers and players added visual fascination on the packed stage.

What is the Atlantic Requiem?

Önaç's new work, modeled on Britten's 1962 War Requiem, juxtaposes the Latin Requiem text with words from Lloyd's of London on the insurance of ships for slave-bearing Atlantic crossings. Malcolm J Merrieweather conducted soprano Brittany Renee, mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges, tenor Orson Van Gay II, the BBC Singers and the London Symphony Orchestra — with the composer present. Macaulay finds the music admirably suggests layers of marine voyages, urban negotiation, slaves' suffering and confinement amid a vast ocean.

The venue itself carried resonance: LSO St Luke's, designed by John James and Nicholas Hawksmoor and built between 1727 and 1733, echoes the churches the choreographer Richard Alston longed for during his New York years of 1975-1977.

Did the Wigmore recitals convince?

Two Schubert programmes divided the critic. Fleur Barron, singing some twelve Winterreise songs on 11 October with pianist Jong Sun Woo and shamisen player Hibiki Ichikawa, drew a harsh verdict: "too much of this production is about mere surface." Dancer Suleiman Suleiman's mock-Kabuki elements struck Macaulay as coarse.

James Newby's all-Schubert recital with Joseph Middleton on 13 October commemorated Johann Michael Vogl (1768-1840), the baritone who pioneered the Liederabend. Newby's singing has "excellent features" — especially phrases of glowing tone — but "keeps us at a distance from the hearts of the songs."

The week's revelation was the twenty-two-year-old pianist Yunchan Lim on 15 October. Playing four Mozart sonatas and a fantasia from 1775-1783, Lim read dynamics unlike other players of our time, using greater contrasts of volume and attack than received Mozart style allows. Macaulay's verdict: "He is certainly some kind of master... his style is strangely riveting — and rivetingly strange." This was the first of three or four Mozart programmes on Lim's tour; how his interpretation evolves in later repertoire will be fascinating to track.