BBCSO/BBC Singers/Brabbins: UnEarth review – Wolfe faces the climate crisis head-on | classical music

HHow do we deal with the issue of climate breakdown in art? Doing so indirectly risks diminishing the urgency of the matter, but going too far risks being reckless or slipping into cliché. In its UK premiere, Julia Wolfe’s UnEarth speech ultimately leaned towards the latter, although it left some startling impressions on the way.

UnEarth is produced by Wolfe collective Bang on a Can, and premieres in 2023 in New York. Wolfe developed some of his script with a local youth choir that sang at the premiere. Here was the Finchley Children’s Music Group on stage, positioned behind the BBCSO and conductor Martyn Brabbins alongside the BBC Singers and National Youth Voices. All sang from memory, all amplified – as was Else Torp, singing a solo line in a high, languid soprano matched by the orchestral sounds.

While the singers moved around in the first show, here they remain in place, leaving the visual spectacle largely to Lucy McKinnon’s performances on a circular screen suspended like a moon above the stage, where the music works excitingly with and against the images. As the men sang verses from Genesis about the annihilation brought about by the flood, and the images of the night sky turned to waves and water, the rain fell violently, and the violins bounced with their bows on the strings. The second movement began with the men singing “Tree” in dozens of languages, each word a surprising little snapshot of life; These were combined with cross-rhythms that had the wind players almost dancing in their seats, backed by busy images of plants and fungi.

But the final movement, with teenagers staring from the screen and kids on stage chanting lines including “I’m taking the bus”: this movement felt preachy, as did a list of climate science buzzwords sung by the men in thunderous syllables. Was it meant to point out the futility of well-intentioned measures? Is this another case of putting the onus on children to fix the mess that plagues the older generation?

Whatever the answer, it seemed heavy-handed — especially since for the first half of the concert we heard Copeland’s Appalachian Spring . With its deceptively simple clarinet and flute solos, and its powerful rhythms emerging like unstoppable green shoots, Copland’s score seemed like an easy paean to nature’s resilience.