A grand piano, two chairs, a table of books, candles and a decanter and glass of wine awaited the performers, pianist, Anna Tilbrook, soprano, Sarah Fox and our master of ceremonies, Henry Goodman, playing Nicholas Lanier, the very first ‘Master of the King’s Musick’. This is a post similar to that of Poet Laureate, given to people eminent in classical music who are tasked with writing pieces for special royal occasions. The evening started with an aria. It wakes our hero from his slumber and he tells us that he is trying to write a piece for the coronation of Charles ll. We learn that the aria was penned by Lanier himself, ‘It’s rather good, don’t you think!’, he quips to the audience. He discovers, or dreams up a book on the table which describes the Masters of Music through the ages and their various monarchs.
The form of the evening was very much anecdotes about composers, royalty, or both, with appropriate musical interludes interspersed. Some were well known like Elgar (or Eljar, as Lanier spouts, disparagingly) and others like Eccles, less renowned. However, did you know that Eccles was Music Master for 35 years for no more than four monarchs! No mention was made of our present day, first female Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, but I don’t know how much she has specially composed in her two-year reign.
The musical highlight for me was a song called Chase Me Charlie by Noel Coward, who was a personal friend of the Queen Mother. Not a Master, but a welcome light hearted piece in an otherwise fairly sombre musical evening. Less successful musically was Zadok the Priest, which really demands a full choir and orchestra, or not at all, but Handel was rightly given hearty recognition as one of the most famous Masters, and this piece of music has been performed at every coronation since George ll.
Let the People Rejoice has been written by Ian Skelly, who is a Radio 3 presenter and speech writer for HRH The Prince of Wales. It was an interesting musically educating evening but it may have worked better in a smaller more intimate space, perhaps ‘in the round’ rather than The Oxford Playhouse. Henry Goodman is a fine, Olivier Award winning actor who Anthony Sher has called ‘quite simply the best’ Shylock ever. He performed well as the slightly embittered, increasingly louche Lanier but Goodman was clearly reading from the script, (this was, I learnt, the premier of the work) which lessened my enjoyment of the evening. ★★★☆☆ Karin André 9th November 2016
