ROTHKO CHAPEL
St John’s Church, Waterloo
★★★★
“an excellent evening of chamber music in a beautiful setting”
St John’s Church at Waterloo, a nineteenth-century Greek Revival style building with white plaster walls and golden detailing, falls silent in expectation for start of the first piece. The three musicians that will play the first selection, Andrew Norman’s The Companion Guide to Rome, sit beneath the large image of the crucifixion, flanked by two murals painted in 1950 by Jewish German artist Hans Feibusch, depicting parables in views from Waterloo Bridge, which form the centrepiece of the beautiful and sonorous church space.
Suddenly, the string trio erupts into dissonant glissandos that interweave one another, creating a dense tapestry of sound that envelops the space. Over the thirty-minute duration of the first piece, which was a finalist of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for music, Norman responds to nine churches within Rome, channelling the art, architecture, tiling and spatial quality of these places of worship within the ancient city. The musicianship of violinist Tania Mazzetti, cellist Kristina Blaumane, and viola player Scott Dickinson, all members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, is of the very highest standard. This is especially evidenced in the third movement, where Dickinson stands to take a solo lead, beginning in an almost-imperceptible pianissimo with a humming, scraping tone before building in a long, slow crescendo towards the climax of the movement. Likewise, Mazzetti’s solo, performed with her back to the audience, offers her a space to demonstrate her consummate ability.
l: Morton Feldman (photo by Rob Bogaerts) r: Andrew Morton (photo by Craig T Matthew)
The Companion Guide to Rome is a thrilling and experimental opener to a programme of works inspired by places of worship. Full of juxtapositions, it is both fizzing with life and replete with silent spaces for reflection and is chosen to complement Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel – written as a tribute to the artist to be performed at the eponymous chapel in Houston, Texas, which is decorated with fourteen large Mark Rothko canvases. The selection of Rothko Chapel also elaborates on the twentieth-century dialogue established by the altar pieces of St John’s between Jewish artists (both Rothko and Feldman were Jewish Americans) and Christian spaces of worship.
The pairing is fascinating and daring, following the arresting and often fast and chaotic composition by Norman, comes Feldman’s quieter and more contemplative work, scored for choir (performed by the New London Chamber Choir), viola (Scott Dickinson returns), percussion (Andrew Barclay, LPO) and celeste (Catherine Edwards, LPO). Contrasting with Norman’s self-expressed interest in narrative, Feldman responds to Rothko’s abstract expressionism: in a move that echoes the artist’s eschewing of the figurative, the choir vocalises, producing a wordless melody of mesmerising beauty. The interplay between the choir and the musicians is faultless, and the final two sections of the pieces are sublime, with soprano solo Lucy Humphris taking a leading role in the penultimate section before moving into a final led by Dickinson and Barclay, playing the vibraphone, who are then joined by the choir in an arresting denouement. Conductor Charlotte Corderoy is also fantastic. As she guides the ensemble through the piece, she brings in sections with a placing movement of the hand that invites an exactitude to which the choir respond with exquisite delicacy.
Both Rothko Chapel and A Companion Guide to Rome are beautiful, and thought-provoking pieces. In the case of the first, giving space for meditative thought within a rich polyphonic sound texture, and in the case of the second an alternately reflective and enlivening piece. They combine for an excellent evening of chamber music in a beautiful setting.
ROTHKO CHAPEL
St John’s Church, Waterloo
Reviewed on 22nd February 2025
by Rob Tomlinson
Previously reviewed by Rob:
HAUNTED SHADOWS: THE GOTHIC TALES OF EDITH NESBIT | ★★★ | January 2025
THE LONELY LONDONERS | ★★★★ | January 2025
NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) | ★★★★ | November 2024
SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE | ★★★½ | October 2024
JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | September 2024
THE SANDS OF TIME | ★★★½ | September 2024
NOOK | ★★½ | August 2024
DEPTFORD BABY | ★★★ | July 2024
CARMEN | ★★★★ | July 2024
THE BECKETT TRILOGY | ★★★★★ | June 2024
