Nicola LeFanu’s new work, The Crimson Bird, an RPS Elgar bursary commission, feels at once timeless and urgently up to date. A mother sings of feeding her baby, and of a siege. So far, so Trojan. But John Fuller’s text turns us away from mythical times and towards the present. A house sliced open, children dead in the dust, mortars exploding in the citadel; we could be in Aleppo.
LeFanu’s 25-minute score, for soprano and full orchestra, knits all of this together. A lilting clarinet figure at the start, as the baby sucks in his sleep, becomes the sound of starving dogs whimpering outside the gates – with the brass players humming down their instruments – and finally the keening of the mother, whose now-adult child has been killed without her knowing whether he is murderer or hero. It was written for Rachel Nicholls, who gave a gleaming, soaring performance, yet the orchestral heft was such that even a voice as powerful as hers was sometimes obscured. But LeFanu, with her long experience of writing opera, ensured the most shocking words were heard: the listener is brought up short as the orchestral turmoil suddenly cuts out and the soprano resorts to speech.
In an inspired bit of programming, the LeFanu followed the rarely performed Nachtstück from Franz Schreker’s opera Die Ferne Klang, and seemed to grow out of that piece’s lush, glittery but unsettled soundworld. The BBCSO didn’t quite show its mettle until Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 3. It was pacily, fluidly conducted by Ilan Volkov, and showcased a crisper, more defined orchestral sound and some gorgeous solo playing.
