For the past 10 years the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has been charting music's voyage towards the 21st century in its epic Towards the Millennium series. As a grand finale it offers three concerts, each containing a work commissioned to mark the occasion. If Judith Weir's We Are Shadows (the second of these three new works) has anything to tell us about humanity's collective feelings on reaching Y2K, it isn't a comforting message. The texts, taken from Ancient Chinese and Latin poetry plus inscriptions on Scottish tombstones, are full of dread and nervous humour. Life is a shadow; not even death is certain. One may end up reincarnated as something hideous - like a rat's liver, one Chinese poet whimsically suggests.
As in a lot of Weir's work, the emotions in We Are Shadows often seem to be kept at a distance, or at most expressed obliquely. The music often drums or fidgets anxiously, as though waiting for a catastrophe that never materialises. On the face of it the language seems familiar - surprisingly so: at several points I was reminded of Holst, or even the quirkier Vaughan Williams. But the handling of the sounds, the connecting of the gestures, is disconcerting, elusive.
One thing one can say for certain is that it is beautifully written. The orchestration is masterly, and always slightly surprising in the way it brings colours together - mostly strikingly liquid flutes and quietly growling tuba. The writing for the choir, and particularly for the children's voices, was just as impressive - secure, polished singing there from the City of Birmingham Chorus and Youth Chorus. It left me with a strong desire to hear We Are Shadows again - it plainly has much more to reveal.
In fact I would have sacrificed Messiaen's immensely long, vastly scored Eclairs sur l'Au-Delà for an opportunity to hear the Weir once more, despite the luscious performance by the expanded CBSO under Simon Rattle. Messiaen's last work is mostly very slow and, despite some stunning orchestration, weirdly uneventful. Either one buys into Messiaen's idiosyncratic religious philosophy or one doesn't. For the initiates I'm sure it was bliss. For me the sounds were sporadically attractive, but as a whole baffling.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
