A concert of post-minimalist choral music seems an unlikely prospect. But music for choir forms an important part of the work of John Adams and Philip Glass, and at the Barbican, the Crouch End Festival Chorus contrasted their different approaches to the medium.
John Adams's Choruses from the Death of Klinghoffer are culled from his controversial opera based on the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists. The six numbers are expressive and varied - the chorus switch from playing exiled Palestinians to exiled Jews - and make a satisfying suite. Conductor David Temple inspired the Crouch End chorus and the London Orchestra da Camera to effective, dramatic performances. The first chorus, for the exiled Palestinians, grew from a melancholy lament into a scream of defiance and hatred; the chorus of exiled Jews was a reflective dialogue between an elderly couple.
For all its subtlety, Adams's music never tries to compete with the elliptical richness of Alice Goodman's texts. Instead, his repertoire of riffs and ostinatos creates a musical parallel for the words. The Crouch End singers exploded into this final number, crying out the prophetic last line: "I am afraid for myself."
Adams's dramatic vision of the chorus could not be further from the effect of Philip Glass's Songs of Liquid Days, another suite of six numbers for choir, soloists and orchestra. Setting texts by Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson, Glass's piece is a glimpse of contemporary life and love: a mysterious electrical hum that pervades a room, or a dream interrupted by ghosts of ex-lovers.
Glass intended to create an expressive clarity in his word setting, but the writing is heavy-handed and clumsy. The music makes every emotion sound the same, and the repetitions of the melodic figures and arpeggios become tedious. The sound of Glass's music is a simulacrum of surfaces in which there is no perspective, no depth and no expressive richness. Temple and the Crouch End singers performed with conviction, but even they could not rescue the piece.
