The late Sir Andrew Davis was a life-long advocate for the music of Sir Michael Tippett so it’s fitting that one of his last recordings (perhaps the last?) should be of that composer’s A Child of Our Time. It’s an unusual piece in many ways. It’s an oratorio for solo quartet, chorus and orchestra and its structure reflects both Messiah and the Bach Passions. The subject matter is anti-Semitism in Germany as a specific example of “man’s inhumanity to man” more generally.
It’s built around the story of Herschel Grynzpan; a Jew who shot and killed a minor official; Ernst vom Rath, at the German embassy in Paris which was used as an excuse for Kristallnacht. Ironically, it’s not clear that it was even a political act. There’s some suggestion that Grynzpan and and vom Rath were lovers. In any event, Tippett (who wrote the libretto himself) uses the story as a basis for a Messiah like three part structure. Part 1 is in the style of prophecy and deals abstractly with “oppression”. Part 2 is a narrative in which Grynzpan becomes the scapegoat for the Jews as a whole; the “Child of Our Time” in fact and then in Part 3 we get a series of philosophical reflections which seem, ultimately, to boil down to “this too shall pass”. That last idea seems a bit jarring in the light of what we know now but the work was written in 1939-41 so well before the Wahnsee conference. Even the first performance (19th March 1944) happened before all but a handful of people in official circles in Britain knew what was happening in Poland.
The other interesting structural feature is that spirituals are used rather as Bach uses chorales in his sacred dramatic works. It’s a form that wasn’t at all well known in Britain pre WW2 and Tippett, who had studied them intensively, chose to use melody and text but set it in a way that sounds distinctly odd today. They don’t “swing”. They are sung with rhythmic precision and the orchestration, a few diminished sevenths aside, is pretty conventional. There’s also no deviation from standard British choral diction. The orchestral music too shows little jazz influence. Certainly less than in say his Third Symphony.
Sir Andrew understands all this I think and conducts an idiomatic performance that combines emotional intensity with great precision. He’s supported in this by a chorus (the BBC Symphony Chorus) and a fine quartet of soloists (Pumeza Matshikiza, Dame Sarah Connolly, Joshua Stewart and Ashley Riches) who take no liberties and sing strictly in the English oratorio tradition and with diction so perfect that the libretto in the booklet is essentially redundant. Stewart is especially effective with simple, direct singing as the Christ-like “Child of Our Time”. There’s fine playing too from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The recording was made in Fairfield Halls in Croydon in May 2023 and it’s engineered to Chandos’ usual high standards of wide frequency/dynamic range, precise placement and excellent balance. I listened to the SACD multi track which is usually the best bet on these hybrid SACDs (which also include a high resolution stereo version playable on an SACD capable player and a standard CD layer playable on (most) any CD player). It’s also available digitally as MP3 and FLAC in both CD quality and 96kHz/24 bit hi-res. The booklet contains the libretto, a really useful essay and bios.
There are quite a few recordings of A Child of Our Time in the catalogue, including several by Sir Colin Davis, and one with the composer at the helm (aged 87) but none of them are particularly recent or use the latest recording technology. This one has that and concedes nothing musically. So whether you want a first rate modern recording of the work or an example of Sir Andrew Davis as one of the premier conductors of 20th century British music this disk is well worth listening to.
Catalogue information: MC SWEETHEART