Britten Sinfonia
David Hill conductor
Lyrita SRCD.452
The two main works on this disc are The Black Lake and Songs of Nadia Anjuman. The first is a cantata based on scenes from Caradog Prichard’s novel, One Moonlit Night. The novel is semi-autobiographical and traces the mental decline of the boy’s mother and her eventual confinement in an asylum.
The musical results are far from being as bleak as may be supposed. The texts are drawn from the novel, and the boy is characterised by a solo clarinet. The composer describes the novel as having a dreamlike quality and the musical scenes subtly suggest this. There is plenty of contrast with some superb choral writing and thrilling climaxes. Elizabeth Watts is magnificent in projecting the drama while never sacrificing vocal quality.
Songs of Nadia Anjuman are an astonishing work based on the poems by Nadia Anjuman (1980-2005). Originally written in Dari, they have been most skilfully translated into English. and the texts must be regarded as inseparable from the poet’s life. Born in Afghanistan, she was 15 years old when the Taliban captured Herat. At once women’s liberties all but disappeared.
Facing a future with no hope of an education, she attended an underground educational circle called the Gold Needle Sewing School. Under the guise of learning to sew, the meetings were actually discussions on literature with Herat academics. If detected the punishment could be imprisonment, torture or execution.
Richard Blackford has chosen a group of poems which vividly expresses the stark contrasts in Anjuman’s own life. The joy in her own creativity, black despair at the absence of personal freedom and even the possibility of self-destruction. Again, the effect of setting such texts should be unremittingly bleak, but that is not the case.
The wide emotional range allows the composer to exploit all the expressive possibilities. In the first song, Turmoil, which lasts less than five minutes, the beginning is a celebration of the night and its beauty which moves to a yearning to be free and a plea for help. The quiet opening becomes more agitated and insistent and the music more dissonant, almost overpowering the vocal line.
Not only are there strong contrasts within the songs, but the individual settings are very different from each other. This ensures that, despite the tragedy inherent in the poems, the impression that remains with the listener is one of an affirmation of faith in the resilience of the human spirit and the power of creativity to sustain that spirit.
Both of these works deal with tragedy and yet the music is not tragic; it is moving, unmistakably contemporary and ultimate life-affirming. Both the Britten Sinfonia and the Britten Sinfonia Voices make distinguished contributions under David Hill’s direction which gives every element in the work its place in the complex structure.
Review by Martyn Strachan