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Blackford: Voices of Exile
Amnesty International Gala
25 April 2007
Royal Festival Hall, London
Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo)
Gregory Kunde (tenor)
Gerald Finley (baritone)
The Bach Choir
New London Children’s Choir
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor: David Hill
Richard Blackford: Voices of Exile
1. Prelude
2. Memories of Home - Bengal
3. Memories of Home - Tibet
4. Memories of Home - Zaire
5. Journeys - Somalia
6. Journeys - Tibet
7. Journeys - Austria
8. Journeys - Somalia
9. Prison - Chile
10. Prison - Nigeria
11. Prison - Turkey
12. Exile - Bosnia
13. Exile - Macedonia
14. Exile - Algeria
15. Freedom - Greece
16. Freedom - Kurdistan
17. Freedom - Angola
18. Epilogue
Click the photo for details of a related recording:
From classicalsource.com 6 April 2005
The Bach Choir honours Peter Benenson, Founder of Amnesty International
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_news.php?id=313
The Bach Choir will give a world premiere performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday 20th April 2005 - raising money for Amnesty International with an evening dedicated to its founder, Peter Benenson, who died in February. Joining the Choir is the Philharmonia Orchestra, the New London Children’s Choir and the distinguished soloists Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Gregory Kunde and Gerald Finley. The conductor is David Hill, world-renowned choral director and Musical Director of The Bach Choir.
The Bach Choir is working with the composer Richard Blackford to present the first full orchestral performance of his oratorio “Voices of Exile”. Quartz Records are recording the work after the performance.
Passionate, heartbreaking, uplifting and of our time, the work includes recordings of songs and voices made in the field by Blackford. His music calls on poetry and writing from 13 different languages, set in English, of the politically alienated, including prisoners of conscience from all over the world.
Mike Blakemore, Media Director for Amnesty International UK, said:
“The Bach Choir promises a delightful evening of music, married with thought-provoking writing that brings to life the sort of issues tackled by Amnesty International around the world.”
What the critics say
Richard Morrison, The Times, 22 April 2005
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article383753.ece
Rating: four out of five stars
I always have to suppress a groan when a concert opens with a pious speech by an Amnesty International bigwig, followed by the portentous lighting of a candle which is left to flicker symbolically in front of the stage. So it says much for Richard Blackford’s Voices of Exile that my sardonic mood was dispelled well before the end of this hour-long oratorio.
Premiered three years ago, but newly reworked with full orchestral accompaniment, it’s a sincere, well-calculated work: a kind of extended protest song against the manifold persecutions that turn innocent victims into refugees, and refugees into innocent victims. Blackford draws his texts largely from poems, songs and testaments of exiled writers from many different countries and eras — often heard via tapes of the exiles themselves. He then weaves a lush cocoon of very English choral polyphony round these haunting foreign voices, rather as David Fanshawe did 30 years ago in his African Sanctus.
At its best, as when a recording of a beautifully inflected Macedonian folksong is counterpointed with its own translation and then against a live choral backing, the technique is evocative and touching.
But Blackford sets other texts to original music of his own. And here the work falters slightly. His orchestrations are resourceful, his tonal harmonies old-fashioned but strong, his use of classic forms such as fugue and passacaglia apt, and his word-setting intelligent — yet the piece lacks the stamp of memorability or the ability to startle. It’s like a good film-score: impeccably crafted, but too politely subservient to a non-musical objective — in this case, the human rights movement.
Still, this is an eminently singable, thought-provoking choral work that deserves wide circulation. Good to hear, then, that the performers who gave it such a polished interpretation under David Hill’s exuberant direction — the Bach Choir, New London Children’s Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra and soloists Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Gregory Kunde and Gerald Finlay [sic!] — are recording it for Quartz.
Boosted by battalions of extra brass, the choir and orchestra then gave a tremendously punchy account of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Indeed, Hill hurled his forces through the last chorus at such a lick that I feared the whole thing would end in a spectacular accident. So it did. About 20 bars from the end, the conductor’s baton flew from his hand, pirouetted dangerously over the first fiddles, and then plunged into the stalls. Great stuff. Bach Choir concerts haven’t been this frisky for decades.