Tenebrae, National Museum of Flight review: 'even sent a quartet of sopranos up Concorde’s steps'

Tenebrae perform Path of Miracles in the shadow of Concorde at the National Museum of Flight | Stuart Armitt

Tenebrae – Path of Miracles at Concorde, National Museum of Flight, East Fortune ★★★★★

Is a concert nestled underneath Concorde at East Fortune’s National Museum of Flight anything more than a gimmick? It’s not the first time that the Lammermuir Festival has held a performance there, and there was a definite theme of travel and movement linking the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela – the subject of Joby Talbot’s hour-long choral work Path of Miracles, to which the concert was devoted – and the massive machines of movement that seem to be snoozing in the Museum’s vast hangar. Not to mention the opportunities for strolling round the space offered to audience members, invited to follow singers in sombre processions, or to get up close to soloists who’d broken away from the larger group.

It was a simple but profoundly effective staging that even sent a quartet of sopranos up Concorde’s steps to convey the brightness of the northern Spanish sun shining down on weary pilgrims. But more than movement, it was a sense of awe and wonder that seemed to bring music and location together in such a revelatory way, whether in Talbot’s expansive, sometimes infuriating but ultimately transcendental choral writing, or the sheer scale and checked power of the Museum’s massive exhibits.

There was awe, too, at the pristine purity, beauty and richness of the performance from chamber choir Tenebrae under Nigel Short’s eager direction, sometimes breathtaking in its immaculate blending, but bold enough to be forthright and strong-willed when needed – notably in the trudging, dissonant music of Talbot’s second movement. The hangar provided an appropriately reverberant, cathedral-like acoustic, used to thrilling effect in the weird sliding growls of the piece’s opening, and the gentle caresses of joy and exhaustion at its close.

So, it was far from a gimmick – instead, another of the Lammermuir Festival’s uncannily effective collisions of place and sound. And judging by hankies dabbing cheeks as the audience filed quietly out, a profoundly moving experience too.