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Madcap Ives would have broken the mood of Vaughan Williams and Holst, but the job had already been done by Dominic Muldowney's 'Tsunami', the second RPS Elgar Bursary commission, here receiving its world premiere. I was immediately taken by this monodrama in five songs about a man in the aftermath of his marriage break-up, who moves away and rails against the past until seeing news reports of the 2004 South Asian tsunami, which offers a perspective on his own anguish and allows him to contemplate a way forward.
With texts by James Fenton and music that wouldn't sound out of place played by a Palm Court orchestra, there was a distinct flavour of the theatre to this 25-minute work. The soloist, with a head-microphone, was Australian baritone Philip Quast, well known in the National Theatre's production of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as well as South Pacific and, most recently (something omitted from his biography), Le Cage aux Folles at the Menier Chocolate Factory at the beginning of this year.
These songs are definitely non-operatic, so Quast was ideal: indeed it wouldn't surprise me if Muldowney and Fenton's exquisite work finds a place in cabaret concerts: the orchestra is small, dispensing with oboe, trumpets and trombones.
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