The Barbican presented Darkness Visible, an ambitious collaboration between violist Lawrence Power and film director Jessie Rodger, known together as creative studio Âme. The concert blended live and filmed performance, aiming to reimagine the concert hall experience for the 21st century. While not all experiments felt successful, at its best the show was mesmerising.
The title, taken from Milton's Paradise Lost, refers to infernal flames that generate 'no light, but rather darkness visible'. The production used a scrim over the stage, alternating between opaque and translucent, to play with sight and blindness. Behind it sat Collegium Orchestra and conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips, while Jessie Rodger's images of London were projected onto the scrim.
The journey through the city after dark included Anders Hillborg's arrangement of Bach's chorale Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, with Power leaving the stage and wandering into the City of London, followed by a handheld camera. Digital Power appeared with vocalist Maddie Ashman for a skeletal performance of John Dowland's In Darkness Let Me Dwell in St Bart's Great Hall, and Power encountered violinist Vilde Frang in the Guildhall art gallery before returning for Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante.
The highlight was the closer, Cassandra Miller's Simone Weil-inspired viola concerto I Cannot Love Without Trembling. This extended lament played with in-between spaces, with Power bending time and pitch in dialogue with the orchestral sound. The piece was mesmerising, and notably featured no digital effects.
