BBC Proms 2011 (Concert Review - The Financial Times, 2011)
The Prom the night before brought another major premiere (though not a BBC commission). This was Colin Matthews’s No Man’s Land, set to a text by Christopher Reid, in which we encounter two dead soldiers in the trenches of the first world war. A feeling of remembrance is everywhere in this piece, not least because it so strongly recalls Britten’s War Requiem with its two soldiers walking “friendly up to Death”. There are echoes of Berg and Mahler, too, as Matthews brings in a honky-tonk piano and parodies of popular songs.
Everything works in this collage of wartime sounds and yet No Man’s Land never quite pins down what it wants to say. What do these soldiers really want to tell us? Tenor Ian Bostridge and baritone Roderick Williams made the most of Matthews’s graceful vocal writing and the City of London Sinfonia under Stephen Layton relished the atmospheric accompaniment. Afterwards their performance of Mozart’s Requiem was notable for the outstanding singing of the vocal group Polyphony.
Reviewed by Richard Fairman
The Financial Times