A Bohemian love letter at the Proms, plus the best of August’s classical concerts
BBC Proms/ Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/ Kirill Petrenko ★★★★☆
Only two hours after the super-trio of pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Yo-Yo Ma left the stage of the Albert Hall, the world’s most revered orchestra the Berlin Philharmonic took their place. Let no one say the Proms has lost its ability to attract the best.
With them for the first half of their first Prom of the season was Víkingur Ólafsson, the slender, seemingly eternally youthful Icelandic pianist who everyone speaks of in awed tones. That’s understandable. As Ólafsson reminded us in this performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, he has a technique that’s mesmerising in itself. He made the fast passagework shine like a string of pearls, and the interesting inner parts of the music you normally don’t notice were made to stand out like a hallucination. It was a marvel, but my response was “so what?”. All the deftness couldn’t hide an essential coldness to the playing.
This became especially noticeable in the slow movement, which ought to have a graceful spring in its step. Here the sluggish tempo and exaggerated inwardness (with much gazing at the Albert Hall’s ceiling) actually sent the music to sleep. The effect was magnified by the orchestra under its Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko, which seemed to be wading through treacle. Ólafsson’s encore, the slow movement from Bach’s Trio Sonata No.4 was simply bizarre, the music’s beautifully austere lines loaded with a romantic grandiloquence they couldn’t bear.
Fortunately a tremendous, uplifting performance of the complete Má Vlast suite by Czech nationalist composer Bedřich Smetana was in store for us. The famous second movement of the suite which represents the river Vltava has an irresistible surging melody which everyone can hum (while blinking back the tears), even if they can’t quite place it. The other five movements are hardly known. They represent sacred sites and stirring moments from Czech history, and varied and incredibly inventive though they are, 75 minutes of battles and sturdy Hussite hymns can leave the listener battle-weary before the end.
The fact that this performance held us on the edge of our seats throughout was a tribute to the fabulously lyrical and many-hued playing of the orchestra, and Petrenko’s vital, urgent pacing. He understood that though the music seems to be looking back, it is in fact always urging forward. So rather than simply luxuriating in that famous melody in Vltava, Petrenko made it light and impatient, as if mirroring the new vistas constantly hoving into view along that beloved river. The portrait of the mythical Bohemian warrior-maiden Šárka had the excitement of a final shoot-out scene in a James Cagney thriller.
But Petrenko was alert to the moments of quiet too, when Smetana pauses the battle and offers a glimpse of peaceful countryside. Perhaps the most touching moment came in the fourth movement, From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, where the intermingling of lively polkas and sad folk-songs was touched in with beautiful delicacy. It was a reminder that while history is being made, life’s eternal round goes on. IH
The Proms continue until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/ Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma ★★★★☆
Every Proms season has its “firsts” and Saturday afternoon’s Prom offered something I’ve certainly never seen before: a dazzling array of searchlights projected slantwise up from the stage, like a tunnel of light, together with swirls of dry ice. This wasn’t for some pop idol making a surprise guest appearance – it was to sprinkle some stardust on three global classical stars, pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. That wasn’t the only surprise. After the storm of welcoming applause they launched into Brahms’s great Piano Trio no. 2, which was quite a jolt given the programme told us we were going to hear Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony in an arrangement for trio.
It just shows that even on a tightly run ship like the Proms there will be moments when the right hand doesn’t quite know what the left hand is doing. But nobody could complain, when the music-making was so wonderful. These three have been busy recording Beethoven symphonies and trios, and their playing has developed a wonderful ease and naturalness. The character of each musician shines out, without disturbing the cohesion of the whole. Kavakos had a steely strength of tone, which can melt to tenderness when required. Ma was more overtly romantic, given to melodic swoops and gazing to heaven for inspiration, which he clearly found there. Ax, who looks like the witty, amiable uncle everyone wants at their Christmas lunch, played with a relaxed charm which turned at times to startling fierceness.
All these qualities were on heart-warming display in the Brahms trio, which launched off in major-key optimism but soon roamed into strange harmonic regions, which in this performance seemed to come from mysteriously different distances. Ax in particular was a marvel, able to make the dark-brown colours of Brahms’s dense piano-writing seem luminous rather than muddy. In the stark slow movement he and the players found a completely different, cold-sea-at-dawn colour. They caught the massive strength of the melody and the delicate intimacy of the variations – though here, and in the nimble-fingered elves’ dance of the third movement, the venue didn’t help them. The Albert Hall can work well for small-scale music when it’s intimate in tone, as anyone who remembers Maria João Pires’s spellbinding Chopin Nocturne concert in the 2010 season will testify. But with three players striving for an orchestral richness of sound, detail was sometimes lost.
Beethoven’s Archduke Trio which filled the second half worked better, possibly because the music is more magnificently spacious than the Brahms, and less overtly heroic. That spaciousness was communicated wonderfully, especially in the sublime slow movement, where the ever more filigree decorations draped over the melody were luminously clear. The wild hobgoblin dance of the Trio seemed a little tame, but the rumbustious Finale with its helter-skelter ending deservedly brought the house down. The evening’s best moment actually came in the first encore: the exquisite slow movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1, which the trio played in memory of Rosemary Gent, the much-missed artistic administrator of the Proms. Here finally was an intimate piece which was exactly right for the space, and the trio played it with immaculate tenderness. It was surprising and heartening to see this far from populist music holding 6000 people in rapt attention. Who said chamber music is elitist? IH
The Proms continue until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Martyn Brabbins ★★★★☆
Sir Andrew Davis, who was to have conducted this BBC Prom but died aged 80 in April this year, was a leading face of the Proms season for half a century: he appeared 132 times, and though most famous for conducting twelve Last Nights (and singing in a couple of them), his wide repertory was hugely eclectic. But among his many enthusiasms he never got to like minimalism, so it was a surprise that his programme announced for this concert included the UK premiere of a BBC co-commission by the veteran American minimalist Steve Reich.
At 87, Reich has been exploring his Jewish heritage in his later works. And there is more than a hint of melody in Jacob’s Ladder: it’s an appealing listen, just over 20 minutes underpinned by Reich’s habitual vibraphone ostinatos, but placing over that characteristic sound some short-breathed cantillation. The four singers of Synergy are amplified and well-integrated into a small mixed ensemble of strings and woodwind; there is just a short text from Genesis about the patriarch Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder.
For a minimalist, it must have been tempting to reduce this evocative image (vividly portrayed by William Blake in his painting of a staircase) to scales simply running up and down the instruments. This temptation, however testing, was successfully avoided. Reich’s echoes are more pseudo-medieval, luminous and chiming, creating a variety of textures with occasional resonant clusters and spiky gestures; after all the continuous activity the slow-down to the ethereal finish is effective, as if the climbing angels have finally run out of steam.
Conductor Martyn Brabbins had nobly taken over this concert, and directed the Reich with his trademark supple clarity and skill. Unfortunately, the special set-up for the piece necessitated a vast, over-long platform change which rather drained the momentum in the middle of the first half, and the opening Stravinsky’s Symphony of Three Movements had seemed careful rather than delivering the knockout blow it can achieve.
The second half, aptly reprogrammed to match Davis’s specialisms, brought together Tippett and Elgar, the Ritual Dances from Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage wonderfully alive from the ever-expert BBC Symphony Orchestra and glistening with the rhapsodic colours of wind and brass in this marvellous score.
Before the Elgar, Brabbins spoke eloquently of Andrew Davis’s good humour, professionalism and sheer enthusiasm. And the English classic of Elgar’s Enigma Variations then emerged with a restrained, thoughtful account, perhaps rather reserved for the occasion, and with some variations like the cello solo in Variation 12 rather too slow for this hall. But the central ever-famous Nimrod variation grew from absolutely nothing to resound as a powerful tribute to Davis as a leading Elgar conductor who had inspired so many Proms listeners over so many years, in what he famously described in his Last Night Gilbert and Sullivan parody as ‘the very model of a modern music festival’. A fitting tribute to Sir Andrew Davis, the very model of a modern music maestro. NK
Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Proms continue to 14 September; bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/ Czech Philharmonic Orchestra ★★★★☆
As the Proms heads into its final weeks the procession of starry visiting orchestras begins. Last night it was the turn of the Czech Philharmonic, founded in 1896 as a bold act of national cultural assertion. It still fulfils that role today. Glance down the list of players and you find every name hails from the home country. The contrast with most orchestras, which like to boast about their internationalism, is striking.
You can hear that unbroken tradition in the sound, which has a ripe richness and a lovely softness of attack. It was a pleasure just to hear the fruity sound of principal horn player Jan Vobořil and the nostalgic melancholy of bassoonist Jaroslav Kubita. And it was a pleasure to be immersed in an all-Czech programme from this all-Czech orchestra.
However it can’t be said all the music was as inspired as the playing. The evening began with the Military Sinfonietta by the 22-year-old Vítĕslava Kaprálová, a composer who gave the world some wonderful pieces in her tragically short life. Unfortunately this isn’t one of them. The programme note reminds us that Hitler’s Germany was already threatening Czechoslovakia when it was composed in 1937, but the young Kaprálová was clearly anxious to avoid a bellicose stance. The tendency of the music to veer away from martial uplift to romantic melancholy charmingly suggested an army of poets and dreamers. But overall it seemed vacillating, despite the urgent direction of conductor Jakub Hrůša.
There was more poetical dreaming in the Piano Concerto by Antonín Dvořák, which unlike his Cello Concerto has never really caught on. If any performance could persuade us it’s a neglected masterpiece it was this one. Japanese pianist Mao Fujita delved deep into the music’s romantic corners, and was equally responsive to the virtuosity, which veered between Chopinesque reverie and Liszt-like heroics (the fact that Dvořák hedged his bets in this way shows how ill at ease he was with piano virtuosity). Both he and the orchestra under Hrůša shaped the melodies with tender care, but that only served to show how uninspired they mostly were.
Fortunately a blazing masterpiece was in store for us, in the shape of the Glagolitic Mass by Leoš Janáček. Though the text recreates the Latin Mass in Old Church Slavonic, the piece is really a wild paean of praise to nature. The composer dreamed of performances on mountain-tops, with the pine trees for crosses and stars for candles. The Albert Hall proved to be the next best thing. The Prague Philharmonic Choir filled its spaces with triumphant shouts of praise in the Sanctus, and found a wonderful hushed awe in the Agnus Dei. The quartet of soloists rose heroically to the music’s challenges, though it was American soprano Corinne Winters who moved us the most. On the podium, Jakub Hrůša found that ideal balance between generosity and the discipline needed to make Janáček’s masterpiece glow. There have been many uplifting moments in this Prom season, but this topped them all. IH
The Czech Philharmonic gives its second Prom on August 29. Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer. The BBC Proms continues until September 14. bbc.co.uk/proms
Doctor Who Prom, Royal Albert Hall ★★★★☆
It has been over a decade since the last Doctor Who Prom enraptured its audience. Back in 2013, the show was coming off the one-two punch of David Tennant and Matt Smith’s hugely successful stints, and showrunners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat had given the programme a fresh and thrilling approach. Little wonder, then, that the previous Proms, complete with starry guest appearances aplenty, were some of the most popular in their respective years, despite some harrumphing about such an august institution lowering itself by celebrating a sci-fi series.
Much has changed since then. Successive Doctors, in the forms of Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker and the incumbent Ncuti Gatwa, have all had their admirers, but none have been as universally beloved as Tennant and Smith. The return of Davies for the new series and 60th anniversary specials – which featured Tennant, along with Catherine Tate as his companion Donna Noble – was welcomed, but Gatwa’s debut has been divisive, leading to murmurs about who still really loves Doctor Who.
Anyone who attended the latest Prom would have had this question swiftly answered. It was hosted with great vitality and humour by Tate – despite, or perhaps because of, her difficulty reading the autocue, with her ensuing ad libs lapped up by the hugely partisan audience – and with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in full force, conducted by Alastair John King with appropriate tongue-in-cheek vigour and more than ably backed up by the London Philharmonic Choir. It made for a highly enjoyable two-hour romp through space and time. The Prom mainly showcased the show’s regular composer Murray Gold’s cues from the most recent series, but found time to range back over the past two decades, too; a full-throated performance of I Am The Doctor, the signature tune for Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, was a particular highlight, giving both orchestra and choir room to shine.
Unlike the previous Doctor Who Proms, there was no special mini-episode, nor any in-person appearance by Gatwa or his co-star Millie Gibson, although he did offer a brief on-screen cameo. The many fans who were present were placated, however, by the presence of Davies in the audience, as could be seen by the lengthy interval queue for selfies and autographs. And there was a great deal of fun to be had even for the most casual of Whovians, too, whether it was marvelling at the appearance of monsters old and new around the Albert Hall and on stage – the highlight, of course, being the appearance of a Dalek at the end of the first half – or the orchestral rearrangement of Ron Grainer’s famous theme that concluded the show. It said a lot for the audience that the mention of the name of Delia Derbyshire – the electronic musician who realised and arranged the theme – elicited whoops and cheers.
An unmissable Prom for Doctor Who lovers and, for everyone else, a fun and occasionally nostalgic experience that reminded us why we once hid behind the sofa at the scary bits. Alexander Larman
BBC Proms/BBC Singers/ Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra ★★★★☆
The Proms’ regular excursions to other cities around the country has become a new tradition, and one of the many ways in which this great festival constantly renews itself. Over the Bank Holiday weekend the Proms pitched up at the Bristol Beacon (while also continuing at Albert Hall) where the locally-based Parorchestra – made up disabled and non-disabled performers – launched the celebrations, and the CBeebies Prom brought them to a no doubt riotously jolly end.
On the intervening Sunday came two concerts, the first given by the BBC Singers. This was officially to celebrate its 100th birthday, though every concert the Singers give also feels like a defiant celebration that they still actually exist, given the attempt by BBC management to kill them off in 2023. The BBC Singers are often praised for their technical prowess, and there was plenty of that on display, particularly in Ben Nobuto’s surreal Blip, which mingled sounds of whispering voices with random harmonies. The roving harmonies underpinning the bird-calls in Edward Cowie’s Lyrebirds – Dusk – Nocturne were crystal-clear, the rhythms in Judith Weir’s witty Madrigal razor-sharp.
But what really matters is the Singers’ ability to make fine-tuned precision seem moving. We felt it in the impressive new BBC-commissioned piece by 24-year-old Asteryth Sloane, which meditated on imperilled Nature in a language of stony, anguished individuality. We felt it at those moments when an individual singer emerged from the mass of sound, such as the tenor Stephen Jeffes’ pleading solos in John Pickard’s Mass in Troubled Times, and soprano Emma Tring’s perilous, lonely high note at the end of that piece. The really overwhelming moment came at the end, in the ecstatic, rich harmonies of John Tavener’s Song for Athene, which so moved everyone at the funeral of the Princess of Wales in 1997.
After a brief pause we all moved to the Beacon’s large auditorium, to see Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits give his last concert as Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. As has happened so often during his tenure, Karabits gave us a taste of the music of his beloved Ukraine, in the shape of the perfumed, mystical Angel (Poème-Nocturne) by Feodor Akimenko. Not so distant in feeling and sound was Knell by the Iranian-born, Brooklyn-based composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh, it’s melancholy bell sounds surrounded by a glistening string halo sustained with reverent care by the BSO players.
By contrast Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto was a tumult of pounding percussion rhythms. Famed percussionist Evelyn Glennie hurled volleys of rhythms at the orchestral percussion and brass, who certainly gave as good as they got, and she was lyrically tender on the vibraphone in the slower passages. But all her artistry couldn’t disguise the thinness of the music.
Fortunately we were given a proper masterpiece to end with: Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. It might have been the moment to relax into something familiar, but Karabits’ and the BSO’s performance had a wonderful brusque urgency, as well as lyrical intensity, that really made one sit up and take notice. IH
Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer. The BBC Proms continues until September 14. bbc.co.uk/proms
Proms 2024/Aurora Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall ★★★★☆
Two Proms traditions came together on Wednesday night. One was the annual performance of Beethoven’s huge Ninth Symphony, that great paean to universal brotherhood which fits the Proms’ aspirational quality so well. The other, only 10 seasons old but already a firm fixture, is the Prom performed from memory by the still youthful-seeming Aurora Orchestra. That’s a tall order in any symphony, but especially so in one lasting almost an hour.
You might want to ask: why put the players, chorus and soloists through that anxiety? Aurora’s rationale is that the musicians will play with an extra heartfelt freedom and spontaneity. And when unencumbered by music-sheets and music-stands, the musicians can stand and even move about – a freedom Aurora always makes use of.
Before we could see the theory tested against reality, the orchestra, together with conductor Nicholas Collon and two actors, offered a “musical and dramatic exploration” of Beethoven’s Ninth, ingeniously conceived by the orchestra’s creative director, Jane Mitchell. We learned about Beethoven’s thoughts on the piece, and the humdrum realities of his life as recorded in his Conversation Books. “Must have a haircut” seems to have been his obsession in the days before the premiere, which was near-chaotic but a triumph nevertheless. The actors Rhiannon May and Tom Simper made use of British Sign Language, as an emblem of the pathos of Beethoven’s deafness.
Interspersed with this was a fascinating anatomy of the music’s nuts and bolts from Collon, while behind him players and singers streamed on and off as required, with slickly choreographed precision. Collon even persuaded us all to sing the big tune using the sight-singing teching technique “tonic sol-fa”. “Proms audiences really are musical,” he said admiringly.
It was impressive, in the performance of the Ninth that followed, to see all the players and singers standing to attention, eyes fixed on Collon. It made one mentally sit up and take notice. And the discreet use of movement, with solo singers coming to the front and then merging into the choral mass, was a moving effective symbol of the music’s democratic message, without being distracting.
As for the musical performance, the most heartwarming aspect was the fervent sound of the National Youth Choir, fortified by the BBC Singers. I’ve rarely heard those top As ring out with such strength. South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha lent a melting softness to her solo passages, as she always does, and American-born tenor Brendan Gunnell was thrilling in his invocation of humanity running to victory like stars across the heavens.
In general, the performance was strongest when martial valour or aspiration was the keynote. The vast serenity of the slow movement didn’t communicate so well. The long, luxuriantly ornamented lines seemed a little bumpy, and I couldn’t repress the thought that players might have been more relaxed and confident with the music in front of them. But the blazing ending had a wonderful recklessness which stilled all doubts. IH
Broadcast on BBC Four on Aug 30. Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer for 12 months. The BBC Proms continues until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/Ensemble Resonanz, Royal Albert Hall ★★★☆☆
A Prom of four masterpieces by Mozart ought to be a recipe for musical bliss, a bliss heightened in some mysterious way by the emotionally dark and violent moments in his music. There were many of those on Tuesday night. They were especially dark in the slow movement of the wonderful double concerto for violin and viola known as the Sinfonia Concertante, and in the slow movement of his final symphony, the Jupiter. And his Don Giovanni Overture is full of the terror of the hereafter.
Or rather, it ought to be. In Tuesday’s performance, the terror simply passed us by, because the conductor Riccardo Minasi decided to take the blood-and-thunder, minor-key opening at twice the usual speed. As well as dissipating the terror, it meant that the high-spirited major-key music that follows actually felt slower.
This was only one of many weird moments that made this the most exasperating Prom so far this season. Granted, there were things to enjoy in between the frustration. The orchestra was the Hamburg-based Ensemble Resonanz, which conjured a bracingly light, energised sound (though with some distinctly sour tuning at the beginning). Like many orchestras, they’ve adopted a canny half-way house policy when it comes to creating an authentically “Mozartian” sound, combining technologically reliable and sweeter-sounding “modern” oboes and clarinets with the pungent flavour of old-fashioned valve-less horns and trumpets.
And it must be said that Minasi has charm. In between the pieces, he cracked a few jokes, while introducing us to his elderly aunt sitting in the stalls. He conducted with a manic energy, sometimes crouching down as if he’d spotted a piece of waste paper, sometimes spreading his arms ecstatically wide and beaming like a footballer who’s just scored. But the musical decisions were often baffling, such as the weirdly clipped way of playing the accented notes in the slow movement of the Jupiter symphony. He micro-managed not just every bar but every beat in every bar.
Of course, if a conductor keeps reaching into the grab-bag marked “striking and surprising gestures” he’s bound to pull out one that actually makes sense, once in a while. And to be fair, Minasi undoubtedly has a sharp musicality. He made us super-aware of interesting details that normally stay half-hidden. But the cost of this small gain was a loss in spaciousness and calm –apart from in one piece. The Sinfonia Concertante had those qualities in abundance, thanks to the violinist Clara-Jumi Kang and violist Timothy Ridout. In the slow movement, they found that combination of seraphic beauty and anguish one always hopes for in this piece, and the Mozart duet they played as an encore was actually the evening’s best moment.
Ensemble Resonanz is a fine orchestra, and Minasi has a winning energy and love of the music. But too often the performances had the wrong sort of energy, as if the conductor had been bingeing on junk food. Perhaps Minasi’s aunt needs to take her hyperactive nephew aside and have a quiet word. IH
Broadcast on BBC Two later this season. Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer for 12 months. The BBC Proms continue until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/ Britten’s War Requiem ★★★★☆
It was heartening as well as surprising to see an absolutely packed Royal Albert Hall for Saturday’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Completed in 1962, it is a difficult and disturbing piece, and hardly a traditional Proms crowd-pleaser. Those rapt and utterly silent 6,000 showed that, as the poet Philip Larkin famously put it, “someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself to be more serious”. Some might say it’s the anguished, turbulent state of the world that drew them there. But that’s always been the state of the world, at least since the work was first performed in Coventry’s new cathedral in 1962, alongside the bombed-out ruins of the old.
Sorrow at the never-ending suffering wrought by war is the only stable, uncomplicated emotion conveyed by this piece. Everything else is shifting and ambiguous. The consolation one expects in a requiem seems sometimes about to blossom, but it’s constantly undercut by the bitter sarcasm and furious denunciations of the nine poems by First World War poet Wilfrid Owen, which are interpolated within the Latin mass. The heavenly trumpets of the Sanctus are offset by the “sad bugles” of the battlefield, the “innocence” of the boys’ choir is soured by the troubled, dissonant organ. The constantly recurring bells seem gaunt, a portal to emptiness rather than the Last Judgement.
Clarity is the key to bringing all these many layers to life, and that’s a quality hard to achieve in the huge space of the Albert Hall. Last night’s performers managed it, magnificently. The diction of the combined London Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Chorus was pitilessly sharp, as were the menacing rhythms from the London Symphony Orchestra brass in the Dies Irae. Way up in the gallery, the excellent Tiffin Boys Choir and an unseen organist sent an ironic “heavenly” radiance down upon us. Only the beginning seemed a little too tentative to register in that enormous space.
As with the famous Requiem by Verdi that inspired Britten, it’s the soloists who bring the warm human perspective to the angry or terrified visions of the chorus. Soprano Natalya Romaniw, standing at the back with the chorus, was tenderly moving in the Lacrimosa (Full of Tears) and fiercely stark in the Rex Tremendae (King of Awful Majesty). Baritone Will Liverman brought a lovely soft-grained nostalgic quality to “Bugles sang, saddening the evening air.” The soloist who really caught the heart was tenor Allan Clayton. He could have been more jocular in the poem about soldiers sharing a jolly meal with Death, but he conveyed beautifully the twilight sadness of the first poem, alongside LSO bassoonist Nina Ashton. And he caught better than any performance I’ve ever heard the utter oddness of the final “Strange Meeting”, in which the spirit of a dead soldier encounters the enemy he killed.
Controlling all this to-and-fro between the hectic realm of the battlefield and the timeless world of the mass was Antonio Pappano, who next month becomes the LSO’s Chief Conductor. As you’d expect from a man with decades of experience in the opera house he made the dramatic transitions in the piece seem particularly eloquent, especially the final one between the tremendous outcry of the Libera Me Domine, where at last the mighty Albert Hall organ was heard, and the almost inaudible beginning of the final poem.
After that came the final “In Paradise”, where Pappano wisely reined in Britten’s too-sweet major-key consolation, brutally cutting it off with a gaunt bell-stroke. The chorus’s troubled groping for one last, comfortless major chord made disillusion seem both moving and true. IH
Broadcast on BBC Four tonight (August 18) at 8.00pm. Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer for 12 months. The BBC Proms continues until September 14. bbc.co.uk/proms
BBC Proms/ West-Eastern Divan Orchestra ★★★★☆
I have sometimes seen miracles on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall, and until now they’ve always been of the musical kind. They’re those performances of such spellbinding power you know you’ll remember them forever.
Last night a different sort of miracle occurred. On stage, 60 orchestral musicians gathered, half of them from Israel, half from various Arab countries (for security reasons, no list of players appeared in the programme). They were members of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, created in 1999 by the Palestinian activist and scholar Edward Said and the Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim. To simply keep going, amid the Israel-Gaza war right now, is a triumph for the orchestra. One can only imagine the potential tensions in their rehearsal rooms since October 7.
But they surely did overcome them, because last night’s concert, though short on sheer excitement gave every evidence of subtle, careful rehearsal. Barenboim and Said always insisted they weren’t trying to bring peace to the Middle East, they simply wanted to show that if Arabs and Israelis work together on something greater than themselves, it may open a door to a dialogue.
The other miracle was the appearance of Barenboim himself. He was struck down by an unnamed neurological disorder in 2022 and it’s only by sheer force of will that he keeps performing. But he is no longer that solid, forceful figure we knew so well. He’s acquired something we thought Barenboim would never acquire—the frosty-haired mildness of old age. When he came on stage to thunderous applause to conduct Brahms’s Violin Concerto, he leaned on the arm of soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter.
What followed was a performance of the first movement that was, shall we say, measured in tempo. Barenboim’s beat barely stirred, like a leaf on a windless day. But the fact that he conducted this and the following performance of Schubert’s ‘Great’ Symphony No 9 from memory showed that mentally he’s as alert as ever. However all eyes and ears were on Mutter. In the past I’ve found her steely perfection more admirable than moving, but something about the occasion unlocked a deeper vein of feeling in her. The slow movement in particular unfolded with lovely tender intimacy.
In Schubert’s Symphony that role of supporting the ailing visionary who’d made all this possible fell to the orchestra itself. And how well they fulfilled it. In Brahms’s concerto they had seemed a little stiff and unsmiling. Now they came to life, with beautiful expressive solo playing in the slow movement from the wind players, and overall a beautifully soft-grained unanimity that made the many repetitions and longueurs in the symphony seem enjoyable. In the Scherzo and Finale they summoned an adrenal excitement that briefly lit a fire in Barenboim himself. But the most moving moment came after the performance, when all the players hugged each other. Watching that incredible sight, one felt the stirrings of hope. IH
Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer. The BBC Proms continues until September 14.
BBC Proms/ Purcell’s The Fairy Queen ★★★★☆
Display and multimedia extravagance were big in the late-17th-century ‘semi-operas’ by Henry Purcell: these shows expensively brought music, speech, dance and spectacle together. So it was entirely reasonable for the French ensemble Les Arts Florissants to try out a new contemporary mix of those genres in bringing The Fairy Queen to a modern audience at the BBC Proms.
What disappeared completely on this occasion was speech: you would never have guessed that Purcell’s music was originally interspersed with a bowdlerised version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a fleeting mention in the lyrics of King Oberon’s birthday must have added to the puzzle. Instead we had a disconnected sequence of masque music, a celebration of the four seasons, high comedy from the Drunken Poet, Corydon and Mopsa, and a sluggish Hymen, plus the ever-ingenious dances with which Purcell sprinkled this peerless score. Deft re-ordering of several musical sections helped, but we seemed encouraged to let our fantasy take flight in a frenzy of free association.
The binding force here was extrovert dance from the six hugely talented members of Compagnie Käfig, some of whose hip-hop-infused gyrations had an Olympic gymnast’s skill that was lapped up by the audience. They sometimes shadowed – and often upstaged – the eight singers, echoing love, drunkenness, illustrating birds, but in Mourad Merzouki’s choreography it was all done with real precision and sensitivity to the shape of the music: the 14 performers cohered into one exuberant, fluid, ever-moving ensemble.
Les Arts Florissants have a history with this piece: it was their founder William Christie who directed the music in an Adrian Noble production of The Fairy Queen a generation ago, and they made a fine subsequent recording; Christie then conducted the hugely witty Jonathan Kent production at Glyndebourne. This semi-staging was in the musical hands of Paul Agnew, who is now Christie’s co-director of Les Arts Florissants; he delivered it with winning grace and rhythmic verve. He could perhaps have done with a few more players in the vast space of the Albert Hall, though the duetting recorders and cello continuo came across with clarity. The singers too, all drawn from Les Arts’ young academy Le Jardin des Voix, did not naturally fill the big arena with sound.
That however drew us in to the dream and made us concentrate, and the finest arias floated across the hall, capturing the languorous sensuality of ‘One charming night’ and ‘If love’s a sweet passion’, along with the high tragedy of the Plaint. The eight versatile singers were not credited with their changing roles, but each was characterful and together they made a surprisingly forceful chorus in the ensemble ‘Hail! great parent’.
I missed some of Purcell’s music for his most spectacular scenic effects (what became of the Symphony as the Swans Come Forward?), and it was a shock when the ecstatic ‘Now the night is chas’d away’ disappeared from its rightful place in the sequence – but it then aptly appeared near the end of the show as a lead-in to the final exhilarating Chaconne and chorus. A stimulating reinvention of the past. NK
BBC Proms/ London Philharmonic ★★★★☆
The BBC Proms is where the big beasts of classical music are most at home. A Mahler symphony or Verdi Requiem which might seem a bit pinched and over-bright at the Barbican takes on a beautiful amplitude in the Royal Albert Hall.
Last night we were reminded of another virtue of that space, which is that performers can be placed up above, so that their music seems literally to issue from the heavens. That was the spellbinding effect we witnessed in the final movement of Busoni’s Piano Concerto of 1904, possibly the only one to include a part for choir. From where I sat, the Rodolfus and London Philharmonic Choirs were out of sight in the galleries, which gave their fervent, radiant rendition of a Danish romantic poem exhorting us to “Lift up your hearts to the Power Eternal” an extra sublimity.
This finale came after 70 minutes of what must surely be the most gigantically taxing piano concerto ever written. On the platform was the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, and seated at the piano was the unassuming, still boyish figure of 32-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor. He told us in the programme note that the piece has some “insane challenges”, but Grosvenor seemed perfectly sane as he threw off those finger-twisting rapid descents and perilous leaps.
Nothing unusual about perilous moments, you might say. Piano concertos by Liszt and other Romantics are full of them. The difference is that in Busoni’s piece the moments go on for minutes. This points to a difficulty for performers, who have to create the right sense of scale—something that was achieved here magnificently, especially at the opening. The strings unfolded a long, wandering hymn, which realized Wagner’s idea of “unending melody” even better than Wagner, over which Grosvenor superimposed heroically imposing fanfares. Like everything else in the piece it was excessive, and only came off because Grosvenor kept the rhythms of those fanfares tight as a drum.
But that was only the beginning. Later came a dance that was sometimes quicksilver sometimes galumphing, then a rapturous slow movement. Then came a wild dance of death with constant tricky changes of tempo and mood, which the performers handled with total assurance. Finally came that rapturous final part.
Vast though it was in sound and length, Busoni’s piece felt even larger because everything—hymn, dance or triumphal march—seemed to be limned with the entire history of that particular genre. If that sometimes blurred the music’s outlines, it was a blurring that added to the majesty, like clouds around a mountain peak. It was altogether wonderful, and threw the preceding, very fluent but somewhat lightweight performance of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances totally in the shade. The evening’s most perfectly treasurable moment was actually in neither piece—it was in Alexander Siloti’s transcription of Bach’s E minor Prelude, which Grosvenor played as an encore with limpid, tender perfection. IH
Listen on BBC Sounds and watch on BBC iPlayer for 12 months. The BBC Proms continues until September 14.
Edinburgh International Festival: La Pasión según San Marcos ★★★★★
“Rituals that unite us” is the theme of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, an apt and necessary one when societal divisions seem so stark and unbridgeable. A musical retelling of the story of Christianity’s sacrificial victim who took on the sins of the world is surely a good way to launch such a theme, and EIF is actually beginning with two: on Sunday comes Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and on Saturday we heard the Pasión Según San Marcos – the Passion according to St Mark – by the Argentinian/Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov.
It would be hard to imagine two more different versions of the story of Christ’s Arrest, Trial and Crucifixion. Where Bach is stately, lofty and mournful, Golijov is rough and earthy – but no less moving. Crammed onto the stage was an astonishing miscellany of performers the like of which I’ve never seen in the Usher Hall. At the back were the combined voices of the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela and the National Youth Choir of Scotland. In front of them was a posse of Latin American musicians playing drums, the berimbau (a stretched cord played with a bow) and the caxixi, a basket full of pebbles – plus guitars of different kinds. In front of them were string and brass players of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The sheer sound made by this menagerie was astonishing, full of foot-tapping, hip-swaying energy – except at solemn moments when the thin, trembling piping of the accordion or the serene psalmody of the strings took over.
In front of them was a constant to-and-fro of soloists who recounted the story. Sometimes it was in tones of piteous sadness, as in Luciana Souza’s deep, flamenco-tinged lament for Christ, sometimes in mocking sarcasm, as when three singers from the Schola Cantorum stepped forward to point the finger at Judas Iscariot. Singer and dancer Reynaldo González Fernández, clad in peasant-like roughness (in contrast to the dazzling whiteness of Souza’s costume) brought a throaty folk-like sound, suggestive of something even more ancient than Christianity. The capoeirista dancer Ponciano Almeida evoked images of the Apostle Peter, caught in the net of Christ’s command to follow him, and of Christ himself on the Cross.
Impressive and moving though all these were, the real emotional centre of the Passion was in the angry or pleading voice of the people, represented by those two wonderful choruses at the back. The young Scottish singers yielded nothing to the Venezuelans in terms of dancing, swaying energy and relish for the Spanish words of the text. The final procession to Golgotha for the Crucifixion, under the assured baton of Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro, felt like a carnival – which was shocking, but revealed something about the events of that day that is normally decorously hidden. As the mournful Kaddish (Jewish Prayer for the Dead) died away, it felt as if the ancient story had become fresh and new, and yet timeless. No wonder the cheers for this astonishing, heart-rending spectacle just went on and on. IH
EIF continues until 25 August: eif.co.uk
