The Burning Boy at the Three Choirs Festival
“McNeff produced a sparkling, multi-coloured, beautifully inspirational accompaniment - by turns legato and lulling, pointilliste and piquant, animated or subdued, pure or fierce, with an instrumental refinement that never ceased to delight.” Roderic Dunnett (see full review below)
Click here to see the Church Times review of The Burning Boy at the Three Choirs Festival
(John Linnell - The Harvest Cradle) Image Wikimedia/Public Domain
After its Cornwall premiere in 2017 by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, The Burning Boy comes to the Three Choirs Festival in a concert performance. Based on a libretto by the much loved Cornish poet Charles Causley, the story is based on the Biblical tale of the boy struck down in the harvest field and his being brought back to life by the prophet Elisha. It mixes this narrative with the mystery of death and rebirth and firmly places the action in a West Country location. For full details of performance time, tickets etc, please visit the Three choirs Festival website here: https://3choirs.org/whats-on/the-burning-boy/
Composer Stephen McNeff, who frequently collaborated with Causley, has done him proud posthumously — setting his lines to music that is frequently lyrical and folky, but also harmonically alive to the mystical shadows behind the words… Richard Morrison, The Times
Charles Causley - by Stan Simmonds
For more on Charles Causley’s work, go to: https://causleytrust.org
RODERIC DUNNETT reports from the
2019 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester
Another visit to Tewkesbury featured drama, presented by a mixed ensemble - professional adult singers, some teenage soloists, and a notably fine seven-strong ensemble - to perform The Burning Boy, a work based on an idea and a text by the late Gloucestershire poet Charles Causley, which reflects Causley's love of countryside and rural folklore, and composed quite recently by Irish-born (and Wales-educated) Stephen McNeff. I didn't know McNeff's work at all before this, and now I know what I've missed. His ingenious instrumental handling had all the delicacy of a lightly scored Church Parable, but most importantly, the whole work benefited from the subtlety of his scoring for a mere seven instruments.
Not all was shy, pastoral and innocent: indeed the beginning was quite wild, even disconcerting: a kind of squeal or screech. Perhaps the only criticism of the presentation - if one is needed - was that the sound early on obscured the soloists' text - though it might as easily be argued that the soloists - except one, the Farmer's Wife, Trinity Laban's Kay Huntley, who early on tended to overbear the orchestra! - did not project sufficiently in the spacious Abbey acoustic. The smallest children seemed a bit lacking in confidence, so that even they were overborne too.
With a piccolo and bass clarinet (plus some inspiring percussion) to vary the textures, McNeff produced a sparkling, multi-coloured, beautifully inspirational accompaniment - by turns legato and lulling, pointilliste and piquant, animated or subdued, pure or fierce, with an instrumental refinement that never ceased to delight. The story would have carried across better had the words been supplied, or if the superior enunciation of bass-baritone Paul Carey Jones had been matched by the others, who only impacted when placed or moving among the audience, in the fairly basic but perhaps adequate staging by Edward Derbyshire. But the younger soloists were exemplary. Two young women or girls, currently or recently at London Colleges - Charlotte Levesley (ex-Trinity Laban) and Johanna Harrison (Guildhall) shone, bringing a delicious light touch to their 'Harvester' roles. Tenor Oliver Vincent (Gehazi) made some impact, with able projection, but along with Carey Jones the best voice of the afternoon was Cassian Pichler-Roca. A Tewkesbury Abbey chorister, schooled at Dean Close, he won BBC2's Young Boy Chorister of the Year in 2018. No wonder. Gorgeous (especially low) timbres; a beguiling voice: what an astonishing rare talent.