Kristine Blaumane (cello), London Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra / Andrey Boreyko, recorded Live on 18th March 2023
LPO D932 [23’ 42”] (Digital release only)
The genre of the choral cello concerto is rarefied to say the least. Choral piano concertos (and I am using the term in its loosest sense!) are a touch more numerous, starting with Beethoven’s Fantasy in C, Op 80, and continuing with those by Busoni, Daniel Stebelt (No 8), Henri Herz (No 6), Alan Bush, and Mikko Heiniö (No 4). For cello, Nordheim’s cantata-cum-concerto Wirklicher Wald (which also features a prominent part for solo soprano) springs immediately to mind, also his earlier ballet suite The Tempest (which also includes solo roles for baritone voice and trombone) and Dobrinka Tabakova’s briefer On the South Downs … and that was about it, until Elena Langer produced The Dong with a Luminous Nose, the premiere of which from March 2023 is the basis of this new digital-only release.
The LPO co-commissioned the work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (who gave the US premiere almost exactly one year later) as a cantata with chorus, but having decided to set Edward Lear’s famous not-so-nonsense poem she added in the additional instrumental element of the cello—for the LPO’s principal player, Kristine Blaumane, who has performed a number of Langer’s pieces in the past—to add an additional, often plaintive voice to the mix. Langer concedes that the work does not ”fit into any genre – it is a cross between a cello concerto, an opera for chorus, and a symphonic poem”. The chorus cover many of the main roles as they sing Lear’s text—whether the narrator, the Jumblies (whose arrival and sudden departure is the catalyst for the main action of the poem), and The Dong himself, of course—but are mirrored in parallel by the cello. Langer commented in the programme note for the premiere that the cello “might be the soul of the Dong. The Jumbly Girl has no voice in the poem, but perhaps the cello represents both her and the Dong.”
What is delightful about Langer’s setting of the text is that she treats it quite straight as a comic-tragic love story set in a strange and fantastical world. Thus, after an atmospheric and yearning opening cello solo, the chorus intone the dark and penumbrous opening lines:
When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; —
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore…
with appropriate sombreness and gravity, little different to any number of worthy dramatic cantatas. This is, of course, all part of Langer’s deliciously deadpan and reverential approach. The alternation of the choral and cello sections set up a sympathetic vibration with the text as it shifts perspective between those observing The Dong, his love for the Jumbly Girl, and his crushing loss at her departure. The fantastical world of the Gromboolian plain and the island surrounding it are wonderfully evoked in some of Langer’s richest and most gorgeous orchestration which glories in blending unusual combinations of instruments. It sounds like a fascinating and grateful sing—it certainly is to listen to—a lyrical delight that darkens harmonically as The Dong sets out to find the Girl, losing his senses in the process; only at the end are the harmonic tensions resolved and a measure of serenity attained.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra performed The Dong last year—with Blaumane’s former LPO front-desk colleague, Pei-Jee Ng (the RSNO’s principal cello) as soloist—and liked it so much they have commissioned an orchestral song cycle from Langer to be premiered in March 2026. That will be a busy year for Langer premieres: her 2016 opera Figaro Gets a Divorce—the suite from it is one of her most luminous orchestral scores—is to be staged in a new production at Royal Swedish Opera (no plans yet to bring it to the UK) while her new opera, The Suicide [A Comedy] (after the play by Nikolay Erdman), which Langer considers “probably my best work”, will finally be premiered in the Netherlands, with three performances in Buxton. Catch it if you can. Elena Langer’s star is clearly on the rise, and it is The Dong, with his Luminous Nose, which is leading the way.
[Listen to it here – https://lnk.to/the-dong-with-a-luminous-nose]