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Ivan Hewett reviews the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Andrew Davis at the Barbican
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Then we came down to earth with a bump for Tsunami, a new piece commissioned by the Elgar Bursary and co-authored by composer Dominic Muldowney and poet James Fenton.
This offered a sung narrative in which an unnamed man tells us in savagely embittered tones about the break-up of his marriage.
He rubs salt into his wounds with masochistic gusto, while the orchestral backdrop summons up with brilliant suggestiveness a bitter-sweet, lonely-city ambience, in a style not so far from Stephen Sondheim.
Baritone Philip Quast had just the right tone as the man, emotionally distraught and yet musically exact. In his lonely rented flat, he obsessively watches footage of the 2004 tsunami on television, while the music builds in agitation.
You get the symbolism. As with the fishermen in Thailand, a great tidal wave has washed through the man's life, leaving a trail of devastation that time gradually heals.
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