Proms 4

I am still seriously behind with my ‘Review Every Prom’ project, so this Blog will aim to be concise…

Thursday 23 July

A lovely programme from Ryan Bancroft, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the London Philharmonic Choir. Lily Boulanger’s  ‘Vielle priere bouddhique’ was suitably hypnotic in effect with James Way’s solo tenor very effective. Szymanowski’s ‘Stabat Mater’ was powerfully delivered by choirs and soloists (baritone Szymon Mechlinski being particularly impressive). Messiaen’s ‘L’Ascension’ and Strauss’ ‘Death and Transfiguration’ were the second half of a profoundly moving concert.

Saturday 25 July

‘Horrible Science: The Big Bang Proms Experiment’ was in the very safe hands of the ‘Horrible Histories’ team. The cheerful, slap-stick presence of Sir Isaac Newton, Alfred Einstein and Marie Curie blended well with performances of Borodin, Holst, John Williams and others. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Inel Tomlinson ensured that musical standards were maintained at a high level. Meanwhile, in Gateshead, the BBC Singers along with saxophonist Jess Gillam performed a mixed programme of Parry, Stanford, Tavener and other British composers. Those who remember Jan Gabarek’s arresting collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble on the best-selling CD ‘Officium’ will have been disappointed by Gillam’s rather anonymous contribution. When she did make her presence felt, in an ill-advised arrangement of Stanford’s ‘The Bluebird’, it was unwelcome. The Stanford is perfection and should be left alone. Having the final crystalline soprano  ‘Blue’ replaced with a rather raspy sax note was sacrilege. Roderick Williams’ setting of ‘Never weather-beaten sail’ (world premiere) was not remotely appropriate for the text (the Gateshead audience was not of my opinion: the applause was positively frenzied). This concert saw the farewell of BBC Singers’ chief conductor Sofi Jeannin, and they did her proud with consummate performances of John Tavener: Mother of God, here I stand, Caroline Shaw: and the swallow, (what a beautiful piece this is!) Alec Roth: Night Prayer and Hubert Parry: Songs of Farewell – No. 6: Lord, let me know mine end.

Sunday 26 July

The morning concert featured Olivier Latry, ‘Titular Organist of the Grand Organ at Notre-Dame in Paris’, playing Bach. The performances were grand and assured. Latry is famous as an improviser and he closed his recital with an improvisation on the notes B – A – C- H (in the German system of musical notation H is B natural and B is B flat). Prior to the recital there was an amusing exchange between Latry and BBC presenter Petroc Trelawny:

PT: ‘So tell us about the improvisation you are going to play.’

OL: ‘I don’t know yet…’

In the event, the impro was most impressive in its otherworldly, Messiaen-like command.

The evening saw the CBSO, CBSO Chorus, and Sydney Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Kazuki Yamada, in a programme of Poulenc and John Adams. The Poulenc items, the Sinfonietta and Concerto for two pianos, were a total delight, with an outstanding contribution from Dutch pianist brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen. John Adams’ ‘Harmonium’ is far from being a favourite of mine, and its formidable vocal demands taxed the combined Choruses to their limit, but was still a valuable opportunity to hear a major work of Adams not often performed in the UK.

Monday 27 July

This evening, Ed Gardner conducted the LPO in a nature themed programme that epitomised what makes the BBC Proms so special. We began with Norwegian composer Kristine Tjøgersen’s ‘Between Trees’, a hypnotic depiction of the sound world of a large forest. This was followed by a superb performance of a selection of Canteloube’s ‘Songs of the Auvergne’ with soprano Louise Alder in sumptuous voice. The second half was taken up with Richard Strauss’s ‘Alpine Symphony’ which could be described as ‘monumental’ or ‘over-blown’ according to taste. I subscribe to the latter view, but there was no doubting the quality of the performance. Gardner is already a very fine conductor, and seems set fair to become a great one. The interval talk was a fascinating interview with English composer Graham Fitkin talking about his composition ‘Treeline’ which uses sounds made by trees themselves (albeit digitally manipulated by Fitkin). All in all, this was two hours wonderfully well-spent…

Tuesday 28 July

Next up, the backbone of the Proms, the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Principal Conductor Sakari Oramo. The first piece, UK premiere of ‘Festen Suite’ by Mark-Anthony Turnage, based on his opera ‘Festen’, proved surprisingly approachable given the theme of paedophilic incest at the opera’s heart. Having said that, the suite does have an air of decadence and unease, despite a real lyrical inspiration (an inspiration particularly apparent in the movement ‘Grandma’s Song’). I shall certainly be returning to this work, as I hope many others will. Britten’s ‘Cello Symphony’ that followed, was considerably more uncompromising, despite having been written over sixty years earlier. The fragmentary, angst-ridden dialogue between cello and orchestra rarely allows the listener comfort or consolation as a bleak landscape unfolds. Echoes of Britten’s recently completed ‘War Requiem’ add to the sense of disquiet. Despite this, the work made a profound impression, particularly in the stately quasi baroque gestures of the third movement and the opening Passacaglia of the fourth. Guy Johnston was the immaculate soloist, with Oramo and the BBCSO equal partners in brilliance. Johnston’s encore was the Adagio from Britten’s Third Cello Suite which he dedicated to the memory of Britten and the great Russian cellist Rostropovich, the dedicatee of all Britten’s cello music. A sublime moment. Enjoyment of the performance of Sibelius’ Second Symphony which was played after the interval was enhanced by the erudite discussion between BBC presenter Hannah French and Sibelius scholar Daniel Grimley. The work was given a movingly committed performance which comfortably avoided the routine. This was a serious and entirely satisfying evening.

Thursday 30 July

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with conductor Delyana Lazarova and violinist Alena Baeva performed music by Korngold, Prokofiev and contemporary Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The latter’s ‘Orpheus’ Comet’ was a lively reworking of the opening fanfare from Monteverdi’s ‘L’Orfeo’ and received a brilliant performance. Korngold’s Violin Concerto was also wonderfully well played, but despite the best efforts of the soloist and Tom Service in a pre-concert interview to convince us of its exceptional qualities it seemed to me almost entirely facile, despite some attractive moments. Prokofiev’s 5^th Symphony reminded us what really worthwhile music sounds like.

Friday 31 July

The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under their conductor Omer Meir Wellber  gave extremely stylish performances of Haydn’s Symphony 44, the Bruch Violin Concerto (with excellent soloist Daniel Lozakovich) and Schumann’s 4^th Symphony. Wellber, who sounded quite a character in his pre-concert interview, directed the Haydn from the harpsicord, not because this is historically informed performance practice, ( a concept for which he appears to have little time), but because he thought it would sound good – an admirable reason.

Saturday 1 August and Sunday 2 August

‘Mahler’s First by Heart’ was ‘a musical and dramatic exploration of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1’ with the Aurora Orchestra with their conductor Nicholas Collon performing the piece from memory. A ‘dramatised’ first half, providing background to the composition of the Symphony was undistinguished, apart from the rich voiced American mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis singing extracts from ‘Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen’, themes from which found their way into the Symphony.

Much is made of the fact that the Aurora Orchestra perform from memory. The reasons why, normally, orchestras have not performed from memory are quite obvious: it’s difficult, particularly when performing a complex work, such as the symphony under discussion and a typical professional symphony orchestra plays a very wide-ranging repertoire which makes the business of memorising even more vexed. Having said that, opera soloists and choruses memorise similarly wide-ranging rep, as do solo instrumentalists and song recitalists. A vital difference here of course is that neither orchestras, nor their conductors for that matter, face audiences in the way their memorising colleagues do. The question as to why oratorio soloists don’t memorise their work (or at least, perform with score in hand, whether they look at that score or not) will have to wait for another occasion.

The Aurora orchestra is obviously best heard and seen live. I was not at the RAH so don’t know whether communication between orchestra and public was enhanced by the orchestra playing without music. The performance as I heard it on Radio 3 was excellent but not revelatory. The Aurora method is certainly not a gimmick, but I still need convincing it makes a huge amount of difference, if any. The Proms audience clearly did not agree – their reaction approached hysteria. I guess you had to be there…

Sunday 2 August (Evening)

The BBCSO were again on duty, this time conducted by Paavo Jarvi. There is very little to say about universally superb performances other than to shout ‘Bravo’! Dani Howard’s Concerto for Brass ‘SIGNAL’ show-cased the BBCSO Brass section in suitably virtuosic style and Leonidas Kavakos was the exemplary soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Scriabin’s Symphony No. 2 after the interval is rather overblown and unstructured for my taste but it could not have received a better performance.

Monday 3 August

Here was another concert on a level with the highest standards posted by the BBCSO the night before. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Thomas Sondergord played a similar sort of programme with a contemporary opener, Oliver Knussen’s ‘Flourish with Fireworks’ (brilliant in every sense), Rachmaninov’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ (with Kirill Gernstein another bravura soloist) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in a performance of controlled ferocity and power.

Tuesday 4 August

More of the similar and still most welcome. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales with conductor Elena Schwarz played Zimmermann’s ‘Fairy Tale Suite’ (very spooky), the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Alina Ibragimova a sensational soloist, and a hugely enjoyable rendition of Dvorak’s 7^th Symphony

Thursday 6 August

Carl Maria von Weber’s opera ‘Oberon’ is one of the great ‘what ifs?’ of the repertoire. It contains some magnificent music but is fatally stymied by some appalling spoken dialogue by its librettist Planche. Weber was well aware of these deficiencies and planned to write more music, so his opera would be through composed without spoken dialogue. Tragically, Weber died at the age of 39 before he could undertake this work.    This Proms performance, with Sir Mark Elder conducting the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir attempted to solve the spoken dialogue issue by dispensing with it and using a newly commissioned verse commentary by Timothy Knapman, narrated by Tamsin Greig. It is certainly true that the opera’s plot needs some explanation as it progresses – time and space being far from constant – but I feel detailed programme notes would have served the purpose far better. Knapman’s verse narration is, on occasion, mildly amusing, although nothing like as amusing as he seems to think and Tamsin Greig was ill advised to telegraph each laboured rhyming joke with a pregnant pause. Musically things were on an entirely different level. Orchestra and Choir were simply superb and there were commendable performances from John Findon in the horrendously difficult role of Huon (the first Huon the veteran English tenor Braham, rejected the aria ‘From Boyhood Trained’ as being impossible to sing), Jennifer Davis as his beloved Reiza (‘Ocean Thou Mighty Monster’ was heroically sung) and Rachel Wilson as Fatima (her oriental perfumed aria ‘O Araby’, was the highlight of the evening). Nicky Spence as Oberon had surprisingly little to sing but was still able to display his familiar burnished jugendlicher heldentenor tone. Sir Mark Elder’s consummate conducting ensured this flawed masterpiece was given its absolute due. If only Weber had lived longer, then we might have had a work to rival ‘Der Freischütz’