LONDON, Christ Church Spitalfields

Britten Sinfonia

Wednesday June 13, 2001

Fifty years ago, the idea of a work based on Sappho being performed in a church would have been unthinkable. Christianity's track record on female sexuality, let alone lesbian desire, has been dreadful. Sappho's poetry, with its images of blinding beauty, has contravened the normative, male proscriptions of western culture for two millennia. It's not surprising that the 19th- and early 20th-century literary avant-garde homed in on her in protest at contemporary sexual strictures. The gay and lesbian rights movement has finally brought those strictures crashing down. Sappho is now centre stage.

For any composer who is thinking of setting her lyrics, however, Sappho is still a challenge. There's a completeness of language and rhythm in her work that seems to make music unnecessary. Undaunted, David Matthews has added his name to the list (which includes Henze and Carl Orff) of those who have made the attempt. A Congress of Passions was written in 1994 for counter-tenor, piano and oboe. Matthews subsequently orchestrated the work for the Britten Sinfonia, who gave the London premiere at the Spitalfields festival. Michael Chance was the soloist, Nicholas Daniel the oboist and director.

The piece is impressive, strong in its brevity and aphoristic tension. Lush strings - the Britten Sinfonia sound is very opulent - and ricocheting oboe phrases encapsulate the "bitter sweetness" of desire. The "fire that races beneath the skin" cues a twitchy, obsessive blues. The cantata ends with a famous meditation on the setting moon and Pleiades. The strings unfold a sequence of shivery Bergian chords, and voice and oboe briefly entwine before the singer is left in solitude. Throughout, Chance's voice hovers in a world beyond gender, perhaps acknowledging that we at long last accept a universality of emotion in Sappho that transcends orientation.

Tim Ashley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,3604,506156,00.html