TIPPETT: A Child of Our Time – Ute Selbig, soprano/ Nora Gubisch, contralto/ Jerry Hadley, tenor/ Robert Holl, baritone/ Dresden Staatskapelle/ Colin Davis, conductor – Hanssler Profil

A Child of Our Time, Michael Tippett’s dark and rather pessimistic oratorio, was once upon a time fairly popular, though subsequent years have softened its once sharp-edged message. Tippett, inspired (or feeling threatened) by the years after WWI, saw with great trepidation the ascension of the Nazi powers.

 

In 1938 a young man named Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew hiding in Paris, found his way into the German embassy in Paris and shot dead the embassy secretary Ernst vom Rath. The result (and politically calculated overreaction by the Nazis) led directly to the “Kristallnacht” on November 9 and 10 where the destruction of Jewish property and businesses took place, along with the deaths and arrests of thousands of Jews. Tippett recognized in Grynszpan the “child of our time”,

 

The libretto involves no specific political connection, but instead the story of a boy and his reaction to the persecution of his mother, bucking the convention of society to try and rescue her. Distraught by his own helpless situation, he feels forced to act, and shoots an official. “Society” then takes its revenge, savaging people everywhere and destroying their possessions. All of this takes part in the middle of the oratorio (based on Bach’s Passions in structure), linked to Handel’s three-part division of Messiah. In the first part we are presented with a world in winter, bleak and with little hope. The last part promises the advent of a new spring, born out of mankind’s patience and fortitude, saved in part by the boy, the “child of our time” whose sacrifice has led to hope for the future.

The reason this still feels bleak is because, despite the Christian allusions, one comes away with the feeling that Tippett’s optimism at the end is contrived; according to the very story that he sets before us, there is no real basis for hope, only the hope against hope that things will get better. If he had lived longer he might have wished to revise his views on this.

There are five recording of the piece available: two by Davis, one by the composer, Pritchard, and Hickox. The reading on Carlton Classics by Rozhdestvensky, and the Previn both seem unavailable, though the latter might be found as an import. This one under consideration is from a radio air check in 2003, and the sound, though excellent, features a rather recessed balance, and vocal contributions (including one of the last recordings by the late Jerry Hadley) are somewhat uneven. Davis’s interpretation is more measured than his 1975 Philips recording with Jessye Norman and Janet Baker—still the greatest recording of this work yet made, and available on order from Arkivmusic.com), though supposedly he has made yet another recording from the end of last year on LSO Live – yet to be released. So this is interesting as an historical document (and for a broadcast, very impressive sound), and seeing where the conductor was with this piece in 2003, but as most people will only need one copy of this work, I would opt for the 1975, in far better sound and with far better vocal characterizations.

— Steven Ritter