Of course I’ve heard many performances of Verdi’s Requiem and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sung (alto) in the chorus for amateur attempts. Never, though, have I heard or felt it delivered with such heartfelt passion as in this memorial for Opera Holland Park employee, Debbie Lamprell, who died in nearby Grenfell Tower in June. Every one involved in the performance including two conductors (who swapped before the Offertorio), City of London Sinfonia, all the singers and a huge front of house team had given their services in order to raise funds for the Rugby Portobello Trust which is supporting Grenfell Tower victims.

In many ways, this really is Verdi’s greatest opera. Atheist he was but he certainly understood emotion wherever it springs from. The Lacrymosa (conducted here by Peter Robinson) is a terrific B flat minor dialogue between the woodwind and mezzo. Yvonne Howard who has the clarety richness of an old fashioned contralto in the lower registers squeezed every drop of feeling out of those sexy chromatic shifts.

Anne Sophie-Duprels (who sang the title role in Opera Holland Park’s Zaza this season) started Libera Me in a restrained, understated way – clearly a deliberate decision because she builds it to a terrific climax.

Neal Cooper is very actorly singer to watch and I suspect he’s more at home in opera than oratorio. He throws himself, face screwed up, somewhat disconcertingly into every note although the sound is good especially when he reaches the pianissimo of “Salva me” in the Rex Tremendae movement with all its contrasts and mood shifts.

Bass Barnaby Rea makes a lovely edge-of-your-seat start on the dramatic “Mors” passage in the Tuba Mirum. It’s marked pp but he does it at an even lower dynamic which gives a sense of death creeping in insidiously – and totally appropriately for this particular event. On the other had he sings the rest of his part so gently that it felt more like a rehearsal sing-through than a performance which mean that he was, often , overpowered by the other three when he shouldn’t be.

The chorus sang with immaculate precision, power and control. Many OHP principals and guest artists were included and that really showed.

Full marks too to City of London Sinfonia who played magnificently. There’s something about the layout and acoustic of Opera Holland Park (and the direction of Peter Robinson and Sian Edwards) which allows you to hear aspects of Verdi’s orchestration which usually get muddied away.  There was some delightful, very audible, work in this performance, for example, from principal flute Alison Hayhurst and timpanist Tristan Fry. And what an inspired idea to place the offstage trumpets at the back of the auditorium for Tuba Mirum – total immersion in the last trumpet and the day of judgement.

A note in the programme, signed by Opera Holland Park’s directors James Clutton and Michael Volpe “and the staff and trustees of Investec Opera Holland Park” declares: “We can think of no better way for commemorate the victims or to express our feelings than to make music”. They are right.

Royal Albert Hall, Saturday 29 July 2017

Imaginative programming meant there were three contrasting styles from three different centuries in this vibrant concert. All credit to the BBC too for investing in an expensive modern work (The Greatest Happiness Principle by David Sawer) which requires seven percussionists, harp, masses of brass and extra strings most of whom were not required in the rest of the programme. It would have been more economical to pair it with, say, a Mahler symphony but more original and probably more enlightening to hear it before Haydn.

The evening began with a thoughtful rendering of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with its compelling D minor melancholy and mood swings. Stephen Hough gave a highly accomplished performance including a sumptuously lyrical middle movement.  Both grandiloquent Brahms piano concerti are effectively big symphonies with a piano part. It was interesting, therefore to see Hough turning respectfully away from the audience and piano whenever he wasn’t playing to watch Mark Wigglesworth and the orchestra of which he evidently regards himself as part. He’s a totally unprima-donna-ish team player.  It took Wigglesworth a while to get the orchestra into overdrive – the strings sounded hesitant in the first movement’s exposed pianissimo passages – but they played  with panache once warmed up.

The 1997 Sawer piece is a rhythmic and unexpectedly melodius exploration of symmetry inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s design for a new prison at Milbank where Tate Britain now stands. Wigglesworth and the BBC Philharmonic had a lot of fun with all that percussion and repeated phrases with lots of colourful variation. And, of course, David Sawer was the only one of the three composers who was bodily present in the hall – the others were there only in spirit.

And so to reduced forces and Haydn’s 99^th symphony. In this perky work Wigglesworth established a fine balance between tempi and dynamics to allow all the orchestral detail to shine smilingly through. He gave us a crisp and witty first movement, a minuet which really danced into the trio and caught most of the audience by exaggerating that typical Haydn joke – the false ending.

SE