Staged in the majestic surroundings of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, Mendelssohn’s Elijah provoked the inner senses

Birmingham Triennial Music Festival at the Town Hall

Mendelssohn: Elijah; Carolyn Sampson, Sarah Connolly, Andrew Staples, Simon Keenlyside, BBC Singers, BBC Concert Orchestra, Daniel Hyde; King’s College Chapel, Cambridge at part of the Cambridge Music Festival
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 1 November 2024

A comfortable and remarkable performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, blessed by an extremely fine and stellar quartet of soloists

As part of the Cambridge Music Festival, Daniel Hyde, director of music at King’s College Chapel conducted Mendelssohn’s Elijah in the chapel on 1 November 2024, with the BBC Singers and BBC Concert Orchestra. A comfortable and remarkable performance of Elijah was blessed by an extremely fine and stellar quartet of soloists admirably led by Sir Simon Keenlyside, a strong lyrical baritone who proved ideal for the part of Elijah while Carolyn Sampson’s clear and distinctive-sounding soprano voice projected round the vastness and majesty of King’s College Chapel with such consummate ease as did, too, the warm and rich-sounding mezzo voice of Dame Sarah Connolly with the tenor, Andrew Staples, adding so much pleasure to a brilliant and exhilarating performance that would be extremely hard to beat. 

An epic Old Testament oratorio on a grand scale, Mendelssohn’s two-part work Elijah (the culmination of his life’s work) was first performed in the newly-built Birmingham Town Hall to a 2,500-strong audience who regularly interrupted proceedings to offer a round of applause while eight numbers, a popular occurrence of the day, were encored. Thankfully, this would not happen nowadays but the half-hearted applause that often breaks out between movements in today’s world I find irritating to the extreme while the misuse of mobile phones in performance stirs my anger. 

Conducted by the composer, the performance (Wednesday 26 August 1846) was, by all accounts, triumphant and formed part of the 1846 Birmingham Triennial Festival who, incidentally, shared their festival with Leeds and Norwich while the other Triennial – the Three Choirs Festival – rotates to this very day with the cathedral towns of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester.  [see Robert’s article, In search of Elijah, exploring that first performance]

Notwithstanding the work’s triumphant reception in Birmingham, Mendelssohn revised the score before embarking upon another group of performances in London at the Exeter Hall, a large public meeting-place in the Strand, in April 1847. The site has been occupied by the Strand Palace Hotel since 1909. 

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert graced the second performance at Exeter Hall on 23 April and afterwards Albert sent the composer his programme with an inscription written in German: ‘To the noble artist who, surrounded by the Baal-worship of debased art, has been able, by his genius and science, to preserve faithfully, like another Elijah, the worship of true art, and once more to accustom our ear, amid the whirl of empty, frivolous sounds, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and legitimate harmony: to the Great Master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his conception, through the whole maze of his creation, from the soft whispering to the mighty raging of the elements.’  

Interestingly, Mendelssohn (who was born in Hamburg in 1809) had a tenuous relationship with the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival as he was approached by the festival’s secretary in 1843 to become conductor of the 1845 meeting. There’s no record of any reply. The direction, therefore, fell to the German/British composer/conductor, Sir Julius Benedict (1804-85), a friend of Beethoven and Weber and, indeed, a composer favoured by King Charles III who, by all accounts, favours his Piano Concerto in E flat. 

However, Norwich was not in the mood to give up on Mendelssohn and he was approached once again to write an oratorio for the 1848 Triennial. He declined the invitation on the grounds that he was too busy but indicated that he would write something for a future festival. Sadly, this did not happen. He died in November 1847.  

Standing upright and proud as a great and inspiring choral masterpiece, Elijah offers a host of storming choruses complemented by some generous and inviting arias equating, I feel, to that of Handel’s Messiah. Receiving its first performance in East Anglia at the 1848 N&N Triennial in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, the ‘home’ of the festival since its inception as a triennial event in 1824, Elijah proved a ‘winner’ all the way and it duly became the city’s most popular work receiving no fewer than 13 performances from its first Norwich outing leading up to 1930.  

In essence, Elijah (which received its German première in Leipzig on the composer’s birthday, 3 February 1848, shortly after Mendelssohn’s death, under the baton of the composer, Niels Gade – found fame and fortune with audiences throughout the UK and, indeed, farther afield, but failed to impress or inspire the likes of George Bernard Shaw. He was scathing about it. But he was scathing about so many musical works including stagings of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen. 

Depicting events in the life of the Jewish biblical prophet and miracle worker, Elijah, who according to the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Ahab in the 9th century BC. Although Elijah is modelled (and influenced) by the spirit of Mendelssohn’s baroque predecessors, Bach and Handel, whose music he loved so dearly, its lyricism and use of orchestral and choral colour clearly defines and reflects his own genius as an early romantic composer.  

In fact, it was Mendelssohn who organized the first performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829 since the composer’s death in 1750. Strangely enough, Bach’s work had gone out of fashion so one can truly thank Mendelssohn wholeheartedly for bringing this great work and other significant works by this world-famous baroque composer to widespread popularity and, in doing so, made Leipzig a musical magnet once again. By contrast, Handel’s oratorios never went out of fashion and Mendelssohn prepared a scholarly edition of some of them for publication in London.  

Interestingly, Mendelssohn first discussed writing an oratorio based on the life of Elijah with his friend, Karl Klingemann, in the late 1830s. He provided him with a partial text that he was unable to finish so Mendelssohn turned to his childhood friend and Dessau pastor, Julius Schubring, the librettist of his earlier oratorio, St Paul, premièred on 22 May 1836 at the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Düsseldorf with the English première held in Liverpool on 3 October in the same year.  

However, Schubring abandoned Klingemann’s work and produced his own text that combined the story of Elijah as told in the Book of Kings. The German text was translated into English by William Bartholomew who wrote and translated many of Mendelssohn’s works during his time in England including that adorable anthem for soprano solo, chorus and organ ‘Hear My Prayer’, premièred in Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, city of London on 8 January 1845 and one of Mendelssohn’s most popular and best-known choral works.  

Equally well known, of course, is Elijah and this performance at King’s College Chapel was a choral feast like no other. The hero of the work, Elijah, fell to Sir Simon Keenlyside who was exemplary in the part projecting a strong and authoritative voice when standing up to the likes of an angry and fickle crowd out for his blood as opposed to being such a gentle and humble figure when floundering in the wilderness fighting against the tide, picking up the courage to just stay alive gloriously depicted in the lovely and moving aria found in Part II ‘It is enough, O Lord, now take away my life’ inspired by ‘Es ist vollbracht’ from Bach’s St John Passion.  

Performed against a strong cello accompaniment, the passage expresses Elijah’s desperate weariness with life. And the a-cappella piece that duly follows ‘Lift thine eyes to the mountains’ was serenely and beautifully sung by an off-stage female chorus while the BBC Singers truly showed their colours in that rather grand and encouraging chorus, ‘He, watching over Israel, slumbers’. 

However, Part I of Elijah concludes with the large-scale choral number ‘Thanks be to God’ (‘Rain miracle’) which introduces a dialogue between Elijah and The Youth (sung diligently and so tenderly by Auberon Adams, a chorister of King’s College Chapel) sent up to Mount Carmel in search of rain. Spotting a little cloud about the size of a man’s hand rising from the sea, it brought an end to the long-suffering drought highlighting the supremacy of a compassionate God over the false and evil Tyrian god, Baal, whom Queen Jezebel (King Ahab’s wife) duly supported. 

An outstanding soprano, Carolyn Sampson put in a terrific and compelling performance as the Widow of Zarephath, who shelters Elijah and whose son he resurrects. Her rendition of ‘Hear ye, Israel’ originally written for Jenny Lind and the opening aria of Part II, was evenly and so sensitively sung while mezzo-soprano, Dame Sarah Connolly as the Angel (doubling as Queen Jezebel, was forcefully heard in a recitative with Elijah and full chorus in ‘The Lord hath exalted thee’) comforts Elijah in the wilderness while directing him to Mount Horeb where he sees God while singing that lovely and inviting aria ‘Woe unto them who forsake Him’ in a most tenderly way. A former chorister of St Paul’s Cathedral, Andrew Staples as Obadiah and head of King Ahab’s household more than hit the mark in an extremely powerful performance. His vocal delivery was so clear, concise and expressive that it was joyful to hear in the beautiful surroundings of King’s College Chapel. 

When Elijah persuades The People (represented by the BBC Singers who comment on the drama as found in ancient Greek theatre) to repent and kill Baal’s prophets, Jezebel, furious as ever, forces him into exile calling for his death. Treacherous old cow! Consoled by a host of heavenly angels, Elijah ascends to paradise in a charging fiery-winged chariot in a fabulous and emotive scene punctuated by a couple of rousing, fulfilling and dramatic choruses with the BBC Singers riding high in ‘And then shall your light break forth’ and ‘Lord, our Creator, how excellent Thy Name’ thus bringing this glorious work to a triumphant close punctuated by an emotional and elongated ‘Amen’. 

This performance of Elijah proved a brilliant affair showing the prowess and professionalism of the 24-strong BBC Singers heard to great effect throughout the oratorio while lifting the lid in that towering and rousing chorus heard at the beginning of Part II ‘Be not afraid!’ (who needs 2500 singers – perhaps Huddersfield?). Marvellous stuff! And exemplary playing came from members of the BBC Concert Orchestra led by Charles Mutter and firmly under the baton of Daniel Hyde, a choral conductor of great standing. He paid close attention to every minute detail of Mendelssohn’s marvellous and exciting score to deliver a masterful and memorable performance staged by the Cambridge Music Festival. 

Director of Music at King’s College Chapel since October 2019, Hyde has worked with many of the world’s leading ensembles including the BBC Singers and now, of course, the BBC Concert Orchestra, a well-disciplined and versatile bunch of players who are at ease in so many musical disciplines. For instance, I heard them under the direction of jazz trumpeter, Guy Barker, at this year’s BBC Proms performing a tribute to American vocalist, Sarah Vaughan, on the centenary of her birth. Therefore, a brilliant night at the Royal Albert Hall and, indeed, a brilliant night at King’s College Chapel.  

The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 3 December, and subsquently available on BBC Sounds.