Like belief itself, it seems that the Southbank Centre’s year-long Belief and Beyond Belief festival can justify almost anything. Here, the label was attached to a concert by members of the London Philharmonic that included one of the greatest achievements of pure, entirely abstract minimalism, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.
It’s a piece that used to be the exclusive preserve of bespoke ensembles, following the template laid down by Reich’s own performances. But here, 14 LPO instrumentalists, together with the four members of Synergy Vocals, showed that it could become the repertory work it deserves to be. This was a performance of tremendous concentration and sustained energy, even if didn’t have quite the savage precision that specialist groups bring to it.
The two early works by Gavin Bryars that preceded the Reich sheltered more convincingly under the festival’s broad umbrella – at least both involve hymn tunes. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars’ electro-acoustic recreation of the 1912 disaster, and now one of the signature works of 1970s British experimentalism, was gently evocative under Micaela Haslam’s direction, but it was the other piece, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, that made the stronger impression.A tape loop of a homeless man in London singing a short hymn, with the orchestral accompaniment added layer by layer, it seems to take on a succession of different guises as the work goes on, sounding like a Tom Waits song at one point, a revivalist meeting or a Salvation Army singalong at others. Played with perfect understatement by the LPO, it was unexpectedly affecting; where Titanic seems almost sentimental now, Jesus’ Blood has a genuine heart.
