It's still cold, but there have been a handful of wonderfully sunny days filled with the promise of future warmth. The daffodils and hyacinths are out (though a bit late, due to the unusually harsh winter) and flowering trees are starting to decorate the roadsides. Hallelujah.
Which is exactly
what the Royal Choral Society was belting out on Good Friday at Royal Albert Hall. They've been doing Handel's "Messiah" here for the holiday every year since 1878, and are reckoned to have sung this piece more than any other choir in the world. Handel's music is so magnificent it's hard for anyone to do badly, but when you have experts at this level, performing in such an august venue, it's truly sublime. The music ranges from quiet and contemplative to dramatic and celebratory, giving opportunities for the large chorus, each of the four soloists and the orchestra to have their own bits of the spotlight.The Hallelujah chorus must be one of the best known pieces of music on Earth. But how many people have sat through the whole "Messiah"? I'd never managed it. A shame, because it was a delight. There's many a musical experience, whether pop concert, classical symphony or opera, where you go to hear one bit and are actually disappointed by the rest. Not so with the Messiah, which has several little-known sections that are almost as stirring as the famous chorus, while the chorus itself is enriched by being heard in its intended context.
Equally uplifting, though visually rather than audibly, are two of the current exhibitions on in London at the moment.
"Kingdom of Ife", on at the British Museum until 6 June, brings together sculptures from an ancient and sophisticated civilisation that once dominated what's now Nigeria. Their bronze casting is amongst the most sophisticated ever done anywhere in the world, and would have been positively jaw dropping to the late Medieval artists of Europe who were working at the same time. It is so stunningly beautiful, in fact, that early white explorers couldn't believe such art could be created by Africans, casting about for evidence of lost tribes and visiting European craftsmen. Fortunately we're all a bit wiser these days, and it's a real treat to see something so beautiful and rare from a continent that's still a mystery to many of us.
What was most striking to me about this exhibition was the serenity. The Ife people believed that the ultimate quality a leader could possess was calm. These portrait heads manage to convey a quiet confidence, of competence and benevolent unflappability. Sadly, I've never seen this look on a modern leader's face. And perhaps the Ife never looked like this, either. But these 600+-year-old portraits are magical. In front of several, I had what I call the Pygmalion effect, where the art was so lifelike I felt it was almost real, and could be animated by just one divine puff of will. (The other time was looking at classical kouros statues in the National Museum in Athens.)
There's much more to the show than the heads. Some full figures, some ceremonial objects, some fragments of clay moulds (explaining how the bronze images were made), smaller decorative objects. But the portrait busts are the main point, and the things that will stay in your mind's eye long after you leave.
Across town at the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace (an exquisite little jewel that's one of my favourite exhibition spaces in London) you can explore a different kind of serenity: that inspired by the warmth and support of a great relationship. "Victoria and Albert: Art and Love" explores this famous royal relationship in the context of the art collection they built together, mostly through the thoughtful gifts they exchanged, and the way their love of each other developed their tastes and their artistic commissions. (Through 31 October.) One wonders why they didn't tie this exhibit to Valentine's Day, frankly, because I've never seen an art exhibit so purely romantic. Oh well, better late than never.
Over the course of their 21 year marriage the couple, famously mad about each other, made a point of using art, sculpture, jewelry and furniture to demonstrate their affection. Early on in the exhibition you're confronted with some spectacular portraits. The one of Albert, dashingly handsome, leaves no question why Victoria would have fallen for him. And the one of Victoria ... hair unbound, lying back on a pillow ... conveys a touchingly i
ntimate private moment. (It was never displayed publicly when they were alive.) This Victoria is not the queen of England, she's a wife who wants her husband to think of her as she is in their quietest moments. Of course, when you're the rulers of England you have the money to procure something better than the average gift. There's a whole room of Victoria's jewelry, all of it enviable. I loved the portrait of Albert's favourite dog Eos, and the scene of the couple playing happy highlanders at Balmoral. It's a magnificent hotch potch of stuff, from massive paintings to palm-sized collectibles, furniture, watercolours of their favourite homes and rooms, portraits of the children, china, Albert's guns and walking sticks ... the list goes on and on.
The exhibition only has three main rooms, with a few side niches and ante chambers, but you can easily wander here for hours. Poignantly, and as you would expect, it ends with Albert's death and the model of his tomb at Frogmore. As the kind of girl who cries easily over romance, beauty or dogs in trouble, it should be no surprise that I was surreptitiously wiping away tears at this point. This show delights and dazzles, but beyond that it gives you a sense of the strength, depth and beauty of that relationship. It explains Victoria's life-long mourning after Albert's death in a way nothing else has for me.
Of course I cried. And yes, beset by emotion, I wept during the Hallelujah chorus as well. I clearly lack the serenity of the rulers of Ife. I suspect, however, that I'd make a grand, gift-giving queen of England, besotted by her culturally literate husband.
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