Holst's one-act chamber opera is one of the quiet masterpieces of British music, arguably the most successful of all attempts to bring the culture of the East into the Western musical tradition. Holst took his interest in Indian philosophy very seriously, learning Sanskrit to study the literature, and composing a whole series of works on Indian themes, including a massive, still unperformed, opera. Savitri, finished in 1909 and based on an episode from the Mahabharata, is the most perfect of them, though, and an obvious choice for the City of Birmingham Symphony's Classic Asia season, though the orchestra's imagination didn't stop at a straightforward concert performance. This was a pretty elaborate semi-staging, involving dancers from Sampad, the Birmingham-based south Asian company, and choreography by Piali Ray.
That extra element was sometimes a distraction - one of the strengths of Holst's score is its directness and unadorned simplicity. But the musical performances were still the main focus of attention. Simon Halsey conducted the performance with an instrumental ensemble from the CBSO, and the wordless female voices supplied by the orchestra's youth chorus. Sarah Connolly had exactly the right mix of eloquence and strength for the title role of the wife whose love for her husband Satyavan (Mark Padmore) defies Death (a restrained, powerful performance by James Rutherford) when it comes to claim him. The vocal lines are haunting, even if some of them sound as if India is being viewed on a day trip from AE Housman's Wenlock Edge, but this is a work in which a little means a lot, and every inflection of the word setting, or gesture in the orchestra acquires enormous significance.
Earlier Padmore had the stage to himself to Gerald Finzi's Dies Natalis with Halsey and the CBSO strings. He invested the cantata with a natural sense of line, even tone, and particular care for the weight and balance for every particle of the Traherne poems it sets - yet more proof that he is the finest, most musical British tenor around today.
