Review
Frank Martin - Golgotha
BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Stephen Cleobury
Chapel of King's College, Cambridge, 22 April 2011
26 / 04 / 2011
Golgotha - Frank Martin
Ailish Tynan - soprano
Susan Bickley - mezzo-soprano
Christopher Gillett - tenor
Roderick Williams - baritone
Mark Stone - bass-baritone
Philharmonia Chorus
Chorus Master - Stefan Bevier
BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Stephen Cleobury
If asked to name the choral masterpieces of Holy Week and Easter, one inevitably turns to the Renaissance and Baroque - to the anguished motets of Gesualdo and Victoria, the austere (and too little performed) passions of Schütz, and the sublime epics of Bach and Handel. But the tradition of narrating Christ's Crucifixion in music has never died out. Elgar, Arvo Pärt, Martinu, Pendercki and more recently James MacMillan have all produced fervent responses to the Passion story. And on Good Friday beneath the fan-vault of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, another 20th-century account was resuscitated.
The Swiss composer Frank Martin wrote Golgotha in the years of sober reflection after the Second World War, when the existence of a benevolent God was called into question as never before. Martin's Calvinist faith never wavered, but in the dark orchestral colours of his two-hour work you can certainly hear (if you choose) a response to the inhumane horrors uncovered in 1945.
The most obvious influence, however, is Bach. Though Martin's musical language, chromatic and complex, doesn't directly suggest the 18th century, his use of obbligato woodwinds, the mixture of biblical narration and medidation (setting the texts of Augustine) and the massive scale of the framing choruses are all reminiscent of Bach. But Martin uses several soloists to narrate the piece, rather than one Evangelist, and carries the story onwards to the Resurrection: an ecstatic chorus, pre-echoing Messiaen in its swirling harmonies.
Mystical chord progressions sometimes evoke Vaughan Williams, while the embedding of the organ into lower-string textures inevitably recalls Fauré's Requiem. But Martin's style is essentially his own: sombre, sincere, way of extrovert gestures and therefore hard to grasp initially, but eventually casting a deep, spiritual spell.
I was glad to hear it, especially performed as nobly as here (as part of the Easter at King's Festival) by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Philharmonia Chorus under Stephen Cleobury's painstaking direction.
Some climaxes almost sent that fan-vaulted ceiling into orbit. And inevitably, the King's acoustic, there was some loss of detail. But there was also much rapt intimacy, particularly from Roderick Williams, superbly lyrical as Christ, and Ailish Tynan, Mark Stone, Susan Bickley anbd Christopher Gillett. Catch it on the BBC iPlayer until Friday.
Richard Morrison, The Times, 25 April 2011
Nobody seems quite sure when Frank Martin's Golgotha was last heard in the UK, though Malcolm Sargent certainly conducted a performance for the BBC in the 1950s. It has remained rare enough for the composer's widow, Maria, now in her 90s, to make the journey from her home near Amsterdam to hear this one, which was part of the Easter week music at King's, with Stephen Cleobury conducting the Philharmonia Chorus and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Martin composed the 90-minute work immediately after the second world war, spurred into tackling the subject by seeing Rembrandt's late etching The Three Crosses. He took the French text from the gospels, punctuating the narrative with extracts from St Augustine's Confessions, which are mostly sung by the chorus. The narrator's role is shared out between four soloists, with a fifth, a baritone, delivering the words of Christ. Though Bach's passions are models, it is only in the opening chorus and in the alto solo at the beginning of the second part where that influence is obvious; otherwise the declamatory word setting and its chromatic, dark-hued orchestral framework recall Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande more than anything.
It is an exacting, highly wrought work, and in the chapel's swoony acoustic it was the austere grandeur of the choral writing, imposingly delivered by the Philharmonia Chorus, that made the biggest impact. The fine soloists – Ailish Tynan, Susan Bickley, Christopher Gillett and Mark Stone, with Roderick Williams as Christ – struggled to get many words across, and listeners to the live BBC relay probably heard more of their contributions and the orchestral detail than we could in the chapel.
Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 25 April 2011
