“Turning the angelic trumpet of Alison Balsom into something demonic,” was Guy Barker’s aim in The Lanterne of Light, given its premiere at the Proms by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Keith Lockhart. Struck by comments about the purity of Balsom’s tone and style, Barker decided to write a concerto that would “go completely the other way,” and opted for a depiction of the seven deadly sins. The title derives from a 15th-century tract that equates the demons of Renaissance cosmogony with the sins themselves. The starting point, however, is Paradise Lost and Milton’s portrait of the rebel angels after their expulsion from heaven.
A discursive prologue depicts Lucifer’s fall, as Balsom’s lyricism gradually acquires a virtuoso arrogance that conflicts with a sequence of immovable chords suggesting God’s majesty. Barker finds his feet in the movements that follow. A snarling cadenza prefaces a big allegro in which envious Beelzebub threatens to revolt. Lustful Asmodeus is given a slow movement of extraordinary sleaziness, while the pandemonic closing toccata represents wrath. Barker, primarily thought of as a jazz composer, writes deftly for a large orchestra. It was superbly played, and Balsom, ferociously dexterous, did indeed sound far from angelic in it.
Its companion pieces were Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre and Orff’s Carmina Burana. You either like the latter or you don’t, while debate continues to rage about whether the work, first performed in Frankfurt in 1937, has fascist overtones. It could have done with a bit more precision in places, though there was some resplendent choral singing from the BBC Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir and Southend Boys’ and Girl’s Choirs. The soloists – Benjamin Appl, Thomas Walker and Olena Tokar – were outstanding.
- On BBC iPlayer until 5 October. The Proms continue until 12 September.
