Performances of The Soldier's Tale that honour the intentions of both Igor Stravinsky and his Swiss librettist CF Ramuz are all too rare. In its billing, this concert appeared to offer the usual compromise of an actor/narrator (Paul McGann) with the seven-piece instrumental ensemble. But what emerged was a faithful and thoroughly compelling realisation, with the full complement of three actors restoring the work's proper dramatic element, and the dark struggle between the everyman soldier and the devil that is at the core of Afanasyev's tale and, as this production underlined, of most things.
Though action was tightly contained in the semi-circle described by the musicians on the small St George's stage, it felt anything but confined and, while lack of pirouetting space precluded the use of Stravinsky's dancer (the only real departure from the original), director Andrew Steggall's staging was positively choreographic in its involvement of all the protagonists, even the excellent conductor Robin O'Neill.
By the time the initially dispassionate McGann was moved to goad Tom Burroughs's wide-eyed soldier into playing the devil at his own game, the atmosphere was sizzling, thanks not least to an exuberantly satanic John Telfer, black as hell in a dishevelled, unbuttoned cassock.
Crucial to this retelling was Jeremy Sams's new translation, heard here for the first time. Sinewy and unsentimental, it brought a sharp wit to the rhyming couplets with an occasional naivety appropriate to the homely innocence of the soldier, but often erupting with angry passion. When Joseph - having sold his violin, his soul, his better self, to the devil - awakened to his betrayal, the pain of his cries "You bastard, you liar!" was searing. It made the biting irony of Stravinsky's score, brilliantly executed by the soloists of the Philharmonia, all the more vibrant.
The composer is sometimes accused of complacent isolation from the grim reality of the first world war but, lest it be forgotten, the music dates from 1918, the programme printed Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est, posing profound questions about that and every war.
