Drawing the Organ Night and Aria Festival – and the whole summer season – to its profoundly rewarding artistic close, two performances of Benjamin Britten’s poignant Curlew River, op. 71 (1964) were given at Espoo Cathedral in a gripping production directed by Aleksi Barrière, presenting the audience with music theater in its most formidable guises. A joint feature by an exquisite artistic team of singers, players and stage production crew, Curlew River grew organically from the quasi-static ambiance of a late-summer evening, taking the audience on a gripping quest into sorrow and loss – in their private and communal guises alike – looking at different aspects of coping without any superficial sentimentality.
Premiered by by the English Opera Group at Orford Church, Suffolk, England, on 13 June 1964, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, Curlew River marked the first of the composer’s three forays into a medium of music theater labeled Parable for church performance in the score. Here, Britten and his librettist William Plomer combine two seemingly disjointed – yet beautifully interlocked – sources of influence, i.e. the early medieval English mystery plays – published in modern editions in the 1950s – and the medieval Japanese Noh-play Sumidagawa of Juro Motomasa – which the composer saw upon his visit to Japan in 1956 – into intimate stage ritual of focused intensity.
Regarding the artistic integrity found in Curlew River, Britten manages to keep the invitation to superficial imitation at arms length, coming up with an original – at least in the context of its time – concept of music theater. In terms of its religious appeal, the shared privacy of Curlew River bears stark contrasts to Britten’s large-scale public statements, as found in works like the War Requiem, op. 66 (1961-62), the composer’s terrific setting of the Missa pro defunctis intewoven with Wilfred Owen’s poetry.
The story of Curlew River is accounted by its four main characters who, akin to the customs of Noh theater and – for that matter – earlier western practices alike, are all assigned to male performers: the Abbot (a bass who also serves as a narrator), the Madwoman (a tenor), the Ferryman and the Traveller (baritones). Joined by a chorus of eight pilgrims (three tenors, three baritones and two basses), a treble voice singing the Spirit of the Boy and rather unconventional instrumental septet of flute, horn, viola, double bass, harp, percussion and organ, the ensemble of Curlew River is presented – in the manner of theater within theater – as a fellowship of monks, who enter and leave the stage in a processional chanting the hymn Te lucis ante terminum.
Although there are twenty people involved in singing and playing rather complex heterophonic passages of music, Britten insisted Curlew River to be performed without a conductor, in order to retain the communal essence of the music, calling forth reactivity and connectivity between everyone involved. Acoustically, this leads to certain flexibility of temporal alignment not unlike those natural phase-shifts induced by often-generous church ambiances. To keep his ensemble on track, Britten introduced a special – and quite literal – curlew sign into the score, to mark points of alignment, where the performers are to pick cues from one another, and the viola leader, in order to achieve the level of synchronization needed.
In terms of musical style, there are no direct references to Noh practices per se, whereas some of Britten’s instrumental writing – especially in the parts for flute, harp and organ – bear echoes of other types of Japanese traditions. However, the instrumental techniques applied by Britten are often based on quintessentially western devises; associating certain instruments to particular characters – in this case the flute to the Madwoman and the horn to the Ferryman – being a case in point. Drums are often used to prime vocal entries – a ritualistic feat similar to Igor Stravinsky’s treatment in his modern mystery play The Flood (1961-62).
For the vocal settings, Britten draws extensively from his life-long experience of writing for both the operatic voice and the choir, distilling these lines of work into refined musical expressivity. The solo voices and the chorus of pilgrims are often unraveled in telescopic manner, true to the dramatic subtext of all roles being performed by monks – a practice of religious theater not heard in English churches since medieval times.
Perhaps the single most striking musical feature of Curlew River is its treatment of theater time, which is allowed to flow rather gradually – in the manner of a river, as it were – aligning the score with some those stylistic quests of the 1960s that went on to manifest themselves in minimalist tendencies of Terry Riley and Steve Reich or Karlheinz Stockhausen, for that matter. As for Britten himself, Curlew River is often seen as the herald of his late style, which would eventually reach its summit in Death in Venice (1970-73).
Plomer’s libretto, set in medieval times, transpires in the fenlands of East Anglia, where, upon the fictional Curlew River, the drama is unfolded in the manner of a Christian parable. The Ferryman, tarried by the Traveller wishing to join the pilgrims onboard, is about to steer his boat across the Curlew River to transport his passengers to a memorial service held at that day in a shrine on the opposite shore. As the Traveller embarks upon the boat, the Madwoman arrives, yearning for her son, who disappeared a year ago. She wishes to join the crossing, but the Ferryman is reluctant to carry her on his boat. However, the Traveller and the other passengers persuade him to allow the grieving woman to embark.
As they cross the river, the Ferryman accounts the story of the shrine – a burial place for a boy abducted from his home near the Black Mountains a year earlier. Abandoned by the river by his cruel master, the sick boy asked the river people to bury him there near the chapel. According to the local lore, some special grace dwells upon the grave, to heal the sick in body and soul.
As it becomes clear that the dead boy is Madwoman’s lost child, the psychodynamics among the passengers are overturned. As she expresses her grief with the words of a poem, the others – taking their cue from the Traveller’s empathy – dispense with their mockery and pity the woman. Even the haughty Ferryman is moved, and the whole company escort her to the grave where she says her prayer, accompanied by the men. In response, the boy’s voice is heard, assuring her mother that they will once meet in heaven. The music concludes with a joint Amen, followed by transitory sequence and a closing processional.
As performed in Espoo Cathedral, Curlew River was given in all its astonishing complexity – and simplicity – by an utmost committed artistic team, whose joint contribution deserves praise and and admiration. Tenor Tuomas Katajala’s reading of the Madwoman was a truly commanding one – both vocally and psyhologically – yielding to gripping portrayal of private grief, which – as poignantly indicated by Barrière’s direction – runs so much deeper than the collective one. However, that aspect of grief is not without merit either, as demonstrated by the emotional journeys of the Traveller and the Ferryman – both sung with terrific insight by baritones Aarne Pelkonen and Arttu Kataja, respectively.
Marvelously led by bass Matti Turunen’s Abbot, the chorus Martti Anttila, Jarno Lehtola, Joonas-Ville Hietaniemi, tenors, Juhani Vesikkala, Greggory Haueter, Janne Helekorpi, baritones and Antti Villberg, Riku Laurikka, basses conveyed their intricate tapestries with notable fluency and vocal dexterity, to a stunning effect. Stage-wise, their presence bore aptly fraternal appeal and their reactivity to impulses from the three main characters was rooted in keen-eyed dramatic sosiology.
The instrumental ensemble, Antti Tikkanen, viola and leader, Kaisa Kortelainen, flute, Erno Toikka, horn, Tuomo Matero, double bass, Katri Tikka, harp, Heikki Parviainen, percussion and Petteri Pitko, organ tackled the many challenges found in Britten’s extraordinary score with awe-inspiring, note-to-note virtuosity and ever-attentive chamber music-making. Resonant acoustics notwithstanding, the septet performance was awash with pristine coordination and refined balancing.
Making their brief but ever-so-special appearance in the parable’s culmination, the Spirit of the Boy was beautifully portrayed by Onerva Merikanto, voice, and Otava Merikanto.
Combining absorbing video projections, delicate lighting and befittingly subtle costumes, the stage imagery of Barrière, Étienne Exbrayat and Lucia Schmidt was conceived with utmost insight, bridging the score and the venue together in organic manner. Neither overstated nor thinned down, the staging kept true to the score, while – wisely – keeping its distance to some of the most detailed notes and remarks on the initial 1964 production, described in detail in the published music. As a result, a stage realization true to Britten’s musical conception and the sensibilities of our own times alike was devised. A true dialogue between the private and the collective, the lessons of grief in Curlew River will long abide in soul and memory.
Organ Night and Aria Festival
Benjamin Britten: Curlew River, op. 71 (1964) – Parable for church performance. Libretto based on the medieval Japanese Nō-play ’Sumidagawa’ of Juro Motomasa by William Plomer
Tuomas Katajala, tenor (The Madwoman)
Arttu Kataja, baritone (The Ferryman)
Aarne Pelkonen, baritone (The Traveller)
Matti Turunen, bass (The Abbot)
Onerva Merikanto and Otava Merikanto (The Spirit of the Boy)
Martti Anttila, tenor
Jarno Lehtola, tenor
Joonas-Ville Hietaniemi, tenor
Juhani Vesikkala, baritone
Greggory Haueter, baritone
Janne Helekorpi, baritone
Antti Villberg, bass
Riku Laurikka, bass
Kaisa Kortelainen, flute
Erno Toikka, horn
Antti Tikkanen, viola and leader
Tuomo Matero, double bass
Katri Tikka, harp
Heikki Parviainen, percussion
Petteri Pitko, organ
Aleksi Barrière, director and stage design
Étienne Exbrayat, stage design and lighting design
Lucia Schmidt, video design
Jean-Babtiste Barrière, video technician
Jyri Suominen, lighting design
Maija Kühn, producer
Erkki Korhonen, répétiteur
Espoo Cathedral, Espoo, Finland
Thursday 31 August 2023
© Jari Kallio
AIM - Adventures in Music 
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