Superb Dame Evelyn never misses a beat

Dec 21 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal

Northern Sinfonia with Evelyn Glennie at The Sage Gateshead

A DRAMATIC concert with a religious theme set the tone for Christmas while giving performers young and old the chance to shine.

The Northern Sinfonia Chorus performed John Tavener’s The Lamb, a simple yet haunting setting of a William Blake poem.

This then melted into the vocal introduction to James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, a concerto for percussion and orchestra.

Dame Evelyn Glennie has made this work her own and it is extraordinary to hear and to see her perform it.

Bare-footed and with long hair flapping, she walloped a gong and was away, pacing between keyboards at one side of the stage and drums on the other.

Percussion is a highly physical instrument, demanding strength, versatility and extraordinary confidence (there’s nowhere to hide if you miss the beat with a gong).

Evelyn Glennie never misses a beat. There’s an animal-like quality to her playing, perhaps because her other senses are having to compensate for her profound deafness. The composer says this work, inspired by 15th-Century French Advent plainchant, can be taken on different levels.

I was prepared to submit to the visceral qualities of a performance in which percussionist and orchestra gave it everything under conductor Simon Halsey.

The climax, as Glennie climbed a stepladder above the orchestra to chime tubular bells, was stunning. As the long echo faded, so did the house lights so only the stars on the Christmas tree shone out.

After the break came Benjamin Britten’s Saint Nicolas, a choral telling of the painful life of the patron saint of children in which many people played a part - including the audience.

Joining orchestra and Chorus were tenor James Oxley, as the saint himself, and Quay Voices, the youth choir based at The Sage Gateshead.

Daniel Vening, aged 11, confidently sang the part of young Nicholas while three of his fellow choristers from St Nicholas’ Cathedral were the pickled boys, saved by a miracle.

The concert was a memorable opening contribution to the Sage’s fifth birthday weekend.