Mendelssohn: Elijah

Fiery chariots, a whirlwind, a mighty flood and a wicked queen are among the marvels of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The oratorio, once a staple of British choral life, has plunged down the repertoire pecking order since the 1970s, victim of its association with Victorian values. Antonio Pappano, an outstanding solo team and the combined forces of the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus show why the work deserves a new place in the sun. Their interpretation, recorded live at London’s Barbican Centre, unleashes the score’s full dramatic power and equally compelling lyrical tenderness. The cumulative effects are overwhelming. “Elijah is one of my favourite pieces of all time,” Antonio Pappano tells Apple Music Classical. “When we think of Mendelssohn, we tend to think of his piano pieces and symphonies. But that music is somehow contained. Elijah’s not like that. When Mendelssohn hits hard here, it’s really hard. And that opens the door to the opposite. You have to nail those big moments for the music to become either prayerful or contemplative. “Why this guy didn’t write an opera, or at least one that’s known today, is beyond me. The big moments and the proportion, and his sensitivity to the words, are incredible! And how he uses the soloists in terms of colour, the difference between the sound of the bass-baritone, the soprano, the mezzo and the tenor, and the tonal variety they bring. It’s a real development, I think, in the oratorio pantheon.” Gerald Finley’s authoritative performance as Elijah embraces the Old Testament prophet’s enduring faith in God, his thundering triumph over the followers of the false god Baal, and dignified acceptance of his persecution at the hands of his nemesis, the Canaanite queen Jezebel, brought to chilling life here by Sarah Connolly. Her call for Elijah’s death is met by blood-curdling curses from the London Symphony Chorus and a sublime intervention by Allan Clayton, whose delivery of the short recitative “See, now he sleepeth beneath a juniper tree” comes as close to perfection as possible. It follows Finley’s peerless account of “It is enough”, by turns touching, noble, defiant, meek. South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, meanwhile, personifies Israel’s moral conscience and comforter in her big aria, “Hear ye, Israel”. Antonio Pappano’s deep connections to Elijah are perhaps surprising for a conductor most closely associated with grand opera and late-Romantic symphonies. He first performed it in its original German in the mid-1990s during his time as music director of the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie in Brussels. “There’s even a recording,” he notes. “I don’t recommend listening to it! But we had a strong cast, with José van Dam as Elijah. That’s when I got to know the piece—I was just overwhelmed by it.” Further German-language performances followed, most recently with the orchestra and chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Pappano opted to perform the work in English with the LSO. He explains that it was an easy decision given the oratorio’s history. Mendelssohn wrote Elijah for the Birmingham Music Festival and conducted its first performance in Britain’s booming industrial town in 1846; he revised the score soon after and gave its premiere the following year in London. Pappano revisited the original English version of the oratorio’s libretto—a translation fashioned by the chemist, author and musician, William Bartholomew—and made discreet changes to its more archaic language. He moulded Elijah’s language to suit modern ears and to match more closely the stresses of Mendelssohn’s German setting, which preceded the work’s English incarnation. “I think you have to be practical about these things,” notes the conductor. Those raised on Bartholomew’s libretto will maybe regret the substitution of “perhaps” and “reviveth” for “peradventure” and “laveth”. And yet the supreme value placed by Pappano on words and their meaning, amplified by his soloists and chorus alike, is what matters in this Elijah. “We’ve kept the great majority of the original English text. But here and there, it needed to be clearer. I think the spirit is certainly maintained. There’s no disrespect in making these changes. If you’re going to do Elijah in English, you have to make the text as intelligible as possible. And if the soloists don’t keep the interest of the listener in their characters, through their attention to the text and all its subtleties and drama, then you’re sunk. That’s why I think Elijah attracts opera conductors, because it requires you to shape these narrations and the story. It becomes a real snooze if it doesn’t have that theatrical grip.”