fri 08/11/2024

The Bernstein Project - Mass, Royal Festival Hall | reviews, news & interviews

The Bernstein Project - Mass, Royal Festival Hall

The Bernstein Project - Mass, Royal Festival Hall

Total artwork, nine months in the making: 500 mostly amateurs rock Lenny's masterpiece

Marin Alsop and the electric guitars, tip of the 500-strong iceberg in Bernstein's 'Mass'Sam Peach

It's been quite a week for youth and the vernacular in the world of so-called “classical” music. Multiply by four the seven fledgling stage animals currently firing up John Adams’s “earthquake-romance” in London's East End, add an orchestra of 13-to-24-year-olds from four continents, student dancers, amateur choirs young and old and just a handful of professionals, and that's only the starting-point for this hair-raising, goosebump-inducing, 500-strong performance of what many of us believe to be Bernstein's most cohesive masterpiece.

It's been quite a week for youth and the vernacular in the world of so-called “classical” music. Multiply by four the seven fledgling stage animals currently firing up John Adams’s “earthquake-romance” in London's East End, add an orchestra of 13-to-24-year-olds from four continents, student dancers, amateur choirs young and old and just a handful of professionals, and that's only the starting-point for this hair-raising, goosebump-inducing, 500-strong performance of what many of us believe to be Bernstein's most cohesive masterpiece.

Comments

The Paul Simon lines are in the 'Gloria': "Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election: Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction"

Thanks, Timothy; they do rather stand out from the rest, now that you've cited them.

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