Kodály An Ode for Music
Giles Swayne Three Shakespeare Songs
Wood Full fathom five; It was a lover and his lass 
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi Four Shakespeare Songs 
Cecilia McDowall When time is broke (world premiere)
Paul Mealor Let Fall the Windows of Mine Eyes
Vaughan Williams Three Shakespeare Songs

DAVID HILL conductor

Following Fiona Talkington’s introduction and a promise that ‘spring [would] be in the air’, conductor David Hill and the BBC Singers begin a performance that, although springy, dares to venture into the darker tones of 20^th and 21^st century Shakespearean incidental music.  After a triumphant opening with Zoltán Kodály’s ‘An Ode for Music’, remarkable soprano and alto soloists illuminate Giles Swayne’s ‘Three Shakespeare Songs’. 

Hill’s set list flows smoothly between these brighter pieces and more complex Shakespearean moods, which are demonstrated through elements such as the bell-like pulse and sublime chords of Charles Wood’s ‘Full fathom five’ and the darker tones of Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Macbeth-inspired composition.  The BBC Singers grin wickedly while listing potion ingredients with eerie, witch-like diction for ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’. 

The Singers’ knowing smirks return again before a surprise encore which Hill prefaces by turning and saying, ‘Shakespeare like you’ve never heard it.’  With a jazzy rendition of ‘A Lover and His Lass,’ the Singers most definitely leave spring in the air.

However, before the bebop finish, the audience is rewarded with the most celebratory aspect of the concert: the premiere of Cecilia McDowall’s When Time is Broke.  Her ‘How sour sweet music is’ rhythmically suggests the sort of confused harmony that surely would have been playing in Richard II’s deteriorating mind.  It grows in rhythmic difficulty, at last ending in a melancholic relenting sigh.  The piece which captivated me most of the entire concert is her ‘Give me some music’.  This composition exhibits McDowall’s thorough understanding of Shakespeare’s Beatrice as well as his view that ‘wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig.’  Beatrice’s wit is sounded in the thrilling influences of Scottish mouth music which eventually softens into a more sombre reflection on what melodically represents Beatrice’s biting façade.

The concert is the finale of a four-part series of BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts and an amazing contribution to Shakespeeare400.  It can be experienced again when it airs alongside the full series on 29 April.