Review: Glagolitic Mass at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall ****1/2

Conductor introductions can be an illuminating way into a concert programme for audiences.

But when Dinis Sousa produced a microphone at the start of this Saturday night concert, I’ll wager no one had what he said next on their bingo card.

One of the tips I was given as a young reporter, back in the mists of time, was ‘how would you describe it to someone down the pub?’

So bravo to Sousa for following much the same maxim when he explained that Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was ‘more an orgy than a mass’. Orgy in the sense of a riotous celebration of life than a carnal mass of bodies one presumes.

With so much riot promised (and delivered, but more of that anon) after the interval, this concert of two halves – being recorded for Radio 3 – opened on firmer, more familiar ground with Beethoven’s gloriously sunny and open-hearted Pastoral Symphony.

Under Sousa, a conductor of liquid movement and attention to detail, the orchestra painted a vivid and boisterous picture of joy, freedom and spaciousness – with the Phil’s wind section busy in the heart of the action creating a cacophony of birdsong which would keep an app identifier busy.

There was also plenty of rumbling drama in the sturm und drang allegro, a warm-up for the full throttle, resistance-is-futile musical maelstrom after the interval.

Sousa, in his earlier introduction, sought to draw a parallel as well as consider a comparison between the programme’s two disparate but similarly natural, or perhaps elemental is a better word, parts.

Above; Organist Daniel Greenway takes a bow. Top: The RLPO, Choir and soloists with conductor Dinis Sousa. Photos courtesy of Sandra Parr.

Apparently Janáček started writing his Glagolitic Mass (Glagolitic being an ancient Slavic alphabet) during a huge electrical storm at his country retreat, declaring it ‘life-affirming’ and more a patriotic expression of his Czech homeland’s new nationhood more than a religious experience.

Its introduction, announced by trumpets and timpani, with clarinet and harp introducing a wider, lustrous sound (and an echo in the clarinet of Beethoven’s birdsong), didn’t quite prepare the audience for the wild ride to come.

The first hint of this came in a Gloria led by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir which produced a wall of sound of – despite the piece’s secular bent - Biblical proportions and buoyed on a torrid orchestral wave.

Together it gave the four soloists a challenge to project sufficiently over the tumult, Czech tenor Ladislav Elgr in particular forcing his voice perilously close to a shout which meant he lost a little tone as a result.

The hall’s organ made an appearance in a rip-roaring central Credo, returning later for a solo movement with Daniel Greenway giving the recently restored instrument a blazing workout which earned him a well-deserved ovation at the end of the evening.

In between meanwhile, the Svet (Sanctus) came with lovely harp, celeste, strings and a sweet solo from Thelma Handy in the violin’s highest register, while the movement and the following Agnus Dei were enjoyably monumental.