It's a
threnody for the brevity and difficulty of human life, and it's a celebration of human courage.
Racism, the exploitation of black artists (white domination of show business comes under Ritz's fire, but he doesn't let Motown off the hook), the central role of the church in black culture, the politics of sex--all are deftly woven into the soulful
threnody of Marvin Gaye's life.
Alice Neary, so richly effective in Tovey's Elegiac Variations the day before, here gave a stunning account of Sculthorpe's Cello Dreaming, her solo part singing over the complex string accompaniment and exotic percussion (beautifully fashioned by Vass and his PFO) in a glorious
threnody, at other times keening like a bird (wonderful control of harmonics) and even imitating a didgeridoo.
Actually, the leap from Penderecki's modernist string classic
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima to Hammer horror doesn't seem particularly great.
At the heart of the first of the three the lamenting violin
threnody is movingly given, followed by a fulsome, tender reminiscence of the First Symphony whose disastrous premiere under the drunken Glazunov was to cause Rachmaninov to suffer a severe nervous breakdown.
Saturday's premieres are Concert Overture, the symphonic poem Macbeth and
Threnody on the Death of Gilbert Vinter (the much-loved conductor of the BBC Midland Light Orchestra and composer of many effective works, including for brass).
A subtle ebb and flow of phrasing brought us to the galactic reaches climaxing the adagio's noble
threnody.
Mansfield have a history of playing Dr Hook's grotesque, toe-curling
threnody Sylvia's Mother at half-time.
Typical for the composer, it is once again tautly-built, intervals of major sevenths and minor thirds predominant, and, again, its finale grips with its inevitability, this time as a quietly insistent
threnody.
Basically a sustained
threnody until its measured tread stops like an extinguished heartbeat, resourcefully tonal and weaving an ornamental skein of anguished melodic lines, it drew a response of committed intensity from the performers.
twitter-tweet]Watch Roger Waters recite verses of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's eloquent
threnody "The Speech of The Red Indian", his epic elegy to dispossessed indigenous peoples everywhere.
Needless to say, Murray's
threnody for Europe is as fundamentally incoherent as its late-19th-century originals.
