Mothers Shall Not Cry Royal Albert Hall/Radio 3 ****
Aftershocks from the Bach anniversary last week continue to pulse through the Proms. Two of his organ works framed Wednesday's programme given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jac van Steen. To start, there was the C Minor Prelude and Fugue in its original form, played on the Albert Hall's elephantine instrument by Martin Neary; and to end, the "St Anne" Prelude and Fugue, in Schoenberg's ebullient but rarely heard orchestration.
Between these slabs of German Protestant counterpoint came an eloquent, intimate account of Brahms's Double Concerto with the immaculately musical violinist Joshua Bell in partnership with cellist Steven Isserlis, and the first performance of a Proms commission from Jonathan Harvey - Mothers Shall Not Cry.
Harvey's brief from the BBC was to compose a "millennium cantata" that embraced the religions of the world. His response is fascinating: a choral work with elements of theatre, which confronts the evils perpetrated by males on the 20th century with "the sort of values that mothers routinely display in their unconditional love and cherishing of their children", as the composer puts it in his programme note.
The 40-minute work opens with a litany of names, innocent victims of countless conflicts, proclaimed by the all-female chorus before the "latent opera", as Harvey calls it, begins.
A soprano soloist offers up Buddhist and Christian pleas for reconciliation, and the clash between male-induced suffering and the liberation that the sacred feminine offers is exemplified by the appearance of the tenor, the Unknown Warrior (Robert Brubaker), singing an aggressive, invented language. His encounter with female wisdom produces reconciliation and the work ends in a ritual chant.
It is tautly organised and the orchestral writing, using sophisticated electronics to project and modulate the sound around the auditorium, is full of finely imagined detail. The writing for the chorus, full of tightly knit canons, occasionally lapses into English choral tradition blandness, but the solo parts are sharply characterised.
Whatever one thinks of the message, Mothers Shall Not Cry works out its theme lucidly, though the amateurish theatrical elements - kitting out Brubaker like a blindfold refugee from Parsifal, giving the soprano (the excellent Susannah Glanville) a diamante tiara and having the orchestra gradually leave the stage during the final section - are an unnecessary distraction. The music and the texts are really what matter.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
