The Seven Last Words Of Our Saviour On The Cross

English National Opera, London Coliseum 

Rating:

Joseph Haydn is every bit as great a composer as Mozart or Beethoven, but you could be forgiven for not noticing.

Works of the stature of The Seven Last Words Of Our Saviour On The Cross, given a welcome live performance by English National Opera two days before Good Friday, lurk in undeserved obscurity.

Indeed, while I am familiar on CD with this masterpiece in all three of its manifestations, I have never before heard it live.

So well done ENO. And they turned in a fine performance, with the chorus up to its usual high standards, singing with precision and eloquence under the baton of Eamonn Dougan, the assistant conductor of another great British choir, The Sixteen.

All four soloists were black, and all sang beautifully throughout, especially the soprano Nardus Williams, a real rising star, and a sonorous bass with a little bit of Paul Robeson about him, Soloman Howard.

Haydn was commissioned in 1785 by the cathedral in Cadiz to provide sacred orchestral music for Holy Week, the intention being that an orchestral sonata would be played each day as part of the congregation’s reflections and contemplations.

This group of beautifully turned slow movements obviously caught his imagination, because two years later in Vienna he made them into pieces for a string quartet, no doubt to try to ensure more performances.

Then in 1795 Haydn encountered a choral setting of this music by another, inevitably inferior hand, and was stimulated to do the job himself.

And so this oratorio emerged, providing a thoroughly engrossing and varied experience, much more than might have been expected from seven slow movements, and culminating in a magnificent orchestral tempest, storms being one of Haydn’s party pieces.

Thought-provoking and often moving music, which could with advantage become a regular feature of Easter at the Coliseum.