Tavener’s timeless treasures touch the ethereal
John Tavener at 60
Evening Standard Nick Kimberley
6th February, 2004
Stephen Layton/London Sinfonietta

Like most churches, only more so, the Temple Church is innately theatrical. Last year, John Tavener’s seven-hour The Veil of the Temple exploited this quality to the full, transforming the act of listening into a communal ritual that even this heathen found irresistible.

Tavener could not be expected to write another all-night vigil, but this concert, marking the composer’s 60th birthday, began with three brief extracts of The Veil.

Yet while soprano Patricia Rozario, and the anonymous player of the duduk (an Armenian reed instrument) who accompanied her, achieved the right mixture of the earthy and the ethereal, the cumulative effect was inevitably lost.

Paradoxically, short bursts of Tavener easily become repetitive, while the long haul engenders the trance-like timelessness he’s looking for.

On the other hand, with conductor Stephen Layton allowing no time for applause between works, the almost unbroken slowness of Tavener’s tempos made it possible to feel that we were, in fact, listening to a single piece rather than a greatest-hits compilation in which few of the works lasted more than five minutes.

Highlights, if that’s not too assertive a word for music of such enveloping serenity, included two movements from The Protecting Veil, Tavener’s ecstatic plaint for cello (Natalie Clein) and strings (the London Sinfonietta); and Song for Athene, made famous when it was performed at Princess Diana’s funeral, and hardly less moving here.

Layton clearly loves this music, and communicated that love to his performers. The boys of the Choir of the Temple Church were as irresistable as unbroken voices should be, but often aren’t; while the basses of the Holst Singers achieved the kind of resonant drone that passes right through the listener’s body.

That’s the key to Tavener’s success: his music touches the listener more viscerally than cerebrally. that may be limiting, but it is also tremendously powerful.

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