Mistress of the grand gesture, cult diva Jessye Norman arrived for her Prom in her usual inimitable style, sweeping onto the platform in swathes of lime-green tulle to receive the cheers of a strangely less than packed house. Some, one suspects, might have felt a bit shortchanged, for this was not so much a recital as a London Sinfonietta concert in which Norman took part in two out of four items.
The focus inevitably fell on the UK premiere of woman.life.song, the song cycle which Norman commissioned from Judith Weir to specially written texts by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It charts the passage of a woman's life from birth to contented old age, celebrates the continuity of female experience, and inhabits a world far removed from masculine visions of women's dependence on men, though the inherently feminist quality of the text is offset by a push on Weir's part towards the almost ritual expression of a universality of experience.
The act of singing is equated with vitality itself, as Norman turns from speech to song as the work's heroine gains her individuality, the process reversing itself at the close as the dissolution of death is quietly contemplated. The instrumental textures become more dense with experience, surrounding Norman with darkly sensual tendrils of sound as sexual maturity is reached, deepening still further for the haunting lullaby in which the heroine rocks her own mother into the final sleep of death. The influence of Stravinsky's Les Noces can be heard in the bell-like sonorities which bring the work to its close. Weir very much has the measure of Norman's voice, exploiting its velvety middle and lower registers (there's a very sexy descent to a low G at one point), keeping her for the most part out of the stratospheres where you can now, just occasionally, detect a beat in the sound. The whole has the timeless beauty of Weir's music at its absolute best.
Norman's other contribution to the proceedings is a performance of Schoenberg's Cabaret Songs, fruitily sexy, at times downright dirty, though occasionally sacrificing pitch to innuendo. As an encore, she gave us Strauss's Zueignung (Dedication), pivoting in a circle on the platform so that the reiterations of "Habe Dank" (Thank You) were grandiloquently addressed to all areas of the auditorium. Left to their own devices the Sinfonietta, conducted by David Robertson, played Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks with tremendous spike and panache, then were heard at their absolute best in Ravel's Introduction and Allegro, which was ravishingly done, its tremendous harp cadenzas exquisitely played by Helen Tunstall.
