When it was completed in 1981, what is now Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, was reportedly the largest glass building in the world. This was the venue for which James MacMillan wrote his 2020 choral work Fiat Lux. Its UK premiere, with MacMillan himself conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, was in the very different, subterranean setting of the Barbican Hall.
It started with faint, glimmering breaths from the orchestra, introducing the two soloists, the soprano Mary Bevan and baritone Roderick Williams – he singing Latin, she English. With the horns tracing elemental rising figures, this opening section felt like Britten’s Canticles meeting Wagner’s Das Rheingold, a not unhappy prospect. Further episodes turned in different directions: the men of the excellent chorus intoning Latin against decorative choral soprano lines; perky, cyclical dances on woodwind; a huge organ chord of arrival, coming at us through loudspeakers in the absence of a suitably colossal instrument. The text seemed to evolve almost organically from biblical phrases to Dana Gioia’s evocative poetry.
The half-hour score culminated in a huge wall of sound: at the premiere it must have felt as though those glass walls might shatter. Here it was certainly impressive, but one felt the lack of an inspiring venue: elements of repetition earlier in the work, which might have felt devotional and meditative in another setting, had a hard time conjuring magic in this context.
Fiat Lux came as the culmination of a thoughtfully put together programme exploring light and loss. It began with the mesmerising descending scales of Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and continued with the work Britten wrote on the death of his own parents, the Sinfonia da Requiem. MacMillan set steady tempos in the latter that emphasised the work’s mournful tread yet made for low levels of momentum.
Things grew more optimistic after the interval – first, MacMillan was presented with Fellowship of the Ivors Academy, joining a distinguished and eclectic roster that includes Pierre Boulez and Kate Bush. Then, paving the way for Fiat Lux at the end, came the teeming textures of Rautavaara’s Into the Heart of Light, a warm, slightly bittersweet string piece full of thickly woven, glowing harmonies. Every piece had an impact, and MacMillan held the large audience silent to let each one sink in.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 14 April.
