“I’m ready to weep”
BBC Symphony Orchestra
At the tail end of the Barbican’s Fragile Earth season, we are presented with an idealised vision of America’s past and a stark warning about its (and the world’s) future if the climate crisis is not averted.
Aaron Copland wrote three ballets between 1938 and 1944. The final one was for the modern dance choreographer Martha Graham and premiered (after much of her characteristic tweaking) in the Washington Library of Congress in 1944. Set before and during the Civil War, we hear the gambolling farmer and his new bride, followed by sweeping militarism and the mournful abandonment of the land by the menfolk. Copland’s inclusion of the Shaker melody Simple Gifts (later reworked into the better-known “Lord of the Dance” by Sydney Carter) draws this pre-industrial world and the pastoral idealism of America to the forefront. Martyn Brabbins conducts, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra bends itself to the score’s expansive prettiness, giving welly with drums and agitated strings where needed. It ends with harp and xylophone chiming like church bells across the fields, allowing dust to settle on this long-lost utopia.
Now the gigantic, half-globe hanging over the musicians comes into its own with Julia Wolfe’s UK-premiere, a three-part investigation into the relationship between climate catastrophe and youth. It is vividly realised by the Finchley Children’s Music Group, National Youth Voices, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and soloist Else Torp. Throughout, the bisected globe is lit with Lucy Mackinnon’s projections, and Ben Stanton’s lights wash it in vibrant colour. Churning waves, flowing grasslands, and montages of life in all its profusion and incomparable beauty unfold. The visual element is certainly not forgotten, with white-clad young performers (the combined choirs) raising their hands in earnest, literal choreography that mirrors the quotations projected overhead.
We begin, of course, with the Bible-Genesis, the Flood to be precise: “Like a monster devouring the Earth, tell everyone they may not listen,” the young singers lament, the voice of youth finally given space. Those of us in the older cohorts begin to shuffle in our seats, guilty of our greed and plundering. Angry-looking waves and the hungry, rising sea accompany this swell of feeling. As a millennial, I want to stand up and point at the many boomers, jabbing an accusatory finger and shouting, “I inherited this hellscape too-it was them!” But I suspect that might pull focus somewhat, so I remain seated and silent.
Next comes forest life, green unfurling’s, as the men’s chorus explores the different words for “tree” in many languages, highlighting humanity’s dependence on nature. Rhythmic and chant-like, it takes on a religious quality as they roll through the varied sounds: “tsin, ki, baum, shu, ped, croov, atiz, trae, strom, unmai, puu….” Else Torp wails and whoops at intervals, drawing the words of Emily Dickinson’s Who Robbed the Woods? into a magical, poetic sally of sound. I think we all know the answer Emily…
Finally, the terminology of climate science is hurled out with vengeful clarity. Can a choir be both righteous and sarcastic? This one can. “Deforestation, habitat fragmentation, animal migration!” they musically shriek like a curse, as the globe burns with images of humanity’s rampant destruction. I’m ready to weep-which, I suppose, is the desired effect.
This clarion call for hearts and minds is fought valiantly, if a little heavy-handedly by Wolfe and company. Yet even the most cynical spectator cannot help but look into the gleaming eyes of the young singers and feel moved. “Hope requires action”-repeat until true.