A Big Existential Question

MIKE WHEELER listens to an all-American programme from Sinfonia Viva

Sinfonia Viva's all-American programme mixed the familiar and the less well-known to fine effect - Derby Cathedral, Derby, UK, 26 March 2025. The Prologue from Copland's Music for the Theatre represented the composer in his brash twenties, with a stylistic mix verging on the Ivesian - resounding brass, a parade, jazz, pastoral moments, early indications of the folksy Copland of the 1940s (who we would meet again later), and an unexpected fade-out at the end, all relished by the players, and conductor Olivia Clarke.

In a refreshing take on Barber's Adagio, Clarke and Viva did not treat it like a solemn memorial (which I don't believe Barber ever intended). There was plenty of tonal warmth, while at the same time it was good to be aware of the music's bone-structure.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is, for me, Barber's supreme masterpiece. Soprano Helena Dix took us into her confidence with her scene-setting at the start. The passing street car disturbed the quiet evening, to edgy effect, and the soft ecstacy of 'Now is the night one blue dew' hit the spot. The homely sentiments of the family in the back yard gradually gave way to agitation as poet James Agee approached his big existential question. Knoxville is more than just a nostalgic childhood memory, and Dix found real heartache in the last line, as Agee reflects on his family - beloved, but who 'will not ever tell me who I am'.

Australian-born soprano Helena Dix

After the interval, Copland's Quiet City was a natural follow-up, with Maddy Aldis-Evans and Anthony Thompson taking the obbligato cor anglais and trumpet parts, conducting their nocturnal dialogue across some kind of wide space, keenly supported by their string colleagues.

Augusta Read Thomas wrote Plea for Peace in 2017. Asked for a work to mark the anniversary of the first nuclear reactor, she turned the idea round into just what the title says. Scored for strings with wordless soprano - a mother's voice? - it rose to an anguished climax, then subsided, to leave an eloquent single held violin note at the end.

Sinfonia Viva with Helena Dix and Olivia Clarke rehearsing in Derby Cathedral for their American Odyssey concert on 26 March 2025

Finally, it was back to Copland. Appalachian Spring was played in the hybrid version comprising the selected numbers from the orchestral suite, in the thirteen-instrument scoring of the original ballet. Its varying facets were vividly etched - the early-morning freshness, the lithe, airy springiness, the racing energy, with playing delicate, earthy, and rhythmically alert by turns or, indeed, all at once. We were eased gently into the Shaker song 'Simple Gifts' and the following set of variations, and the epilogue spread a benign hush over everything.

There are more articles here about classical music in Derbyshire, Derby Cathedral, Sinfonia Viva, orchestral music, ballet music, vocal music, folk music, women composers, Australia, Ireland, UK, USA, twentieth century classical music, 21st century classical music, contemporary classical music, and you can read our latest concert reviews here.

The background image on this page has been derived from the 2020 photo Freedom by Claudia Lam, taken at La Jolla, California, USA.

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