Grumpy Old Man at the Proms

More from Special Correspondent  GOM (Grumpy Old Man)

That was the week that was. It’s over let it go” sang the wonderful Millicent Martin in TWTWTW. Would that we could say something similar about the travesty of a Proms season which has just ended. I first went to the Proms in the 1950’s when Sir Malcolm ruled the waves, so I can look back for most of the last 60 years, but actually I don’t want to go there although I have to say that the dumbed down season just ended hardly compares, in my opinion, to the glories of past Prom seasons. No, GOM wants to have a go at the audiences and the management of the Royal Albert Hall. From this I must most emphatically exclude the seasoned Prommers themselves who endure the toughest conditions, listen with extraordinary attention and are a quite wonderful audience as any orchestra or performer who plays there will tell you.

No, it is the management and ‘seated’ audience who deserve a serious douche for helping to turn a once great institution, something to be cherished, into the equivalent of ‘a bad night at the Odeon’. For a start, is it really necessary, as now happens, actively to encourage people to bring drink into the auditorium? If you order a drink at a bar in the Royal Albert Hall you will probably be asked whether you want it for immediate consumption (in which case you will be offered a glass) or whether you want it to take into the auditorium (in which case you will get it in a plastic beaker, quite possibly with ice cubes to rattle). Add to this, that one can now buy popcorn in a cardboard container ‘to take in with you’ – personally I loathe the smell of popcorn and if I am in the Tube when someone gets on with fast food, I generally go and sit in another carriage – but in the Albert Hall one has no alternative but to sit tight and grit one’s teeth whilst they rattle their popcorn and shake their ice cubes.

Then the attendants themselves. What is the point of them? At the first of the recent Vienna Philharmonic concerts which started half an hour earlier than usual, Brahms 3^rd Symphony was disrupted by hundreds, literally hundreds, of people being admitted and shown to their seats after the first and second movements. Cue extended break in proceedings and goodbye any chance of a normal cumulative concert-going experience.

And finally the ‘seated’ audience itself. Desultory clapping between each movement of a symphony aside, their behaviour frequently has to be seen (and heard) to be believed as they happily chomp through their popcorn, rattle their ice cubes, chat noisily, take photos on their mobiles (despite injunctions that no photography is allowed) and generally behave in a way that would be unacceptable in any public park on the warmest of days. For instance, at recent Proms I had two girls constantly snogging each other throughout one performance and, at another, a middle-aged pair spending the evening, he with one hand up her skirt. Between times the female of the pair asked me “When are we going to get the audience participation?” (I very nearly replied that there seemed to be plenty going on already). Poor David Attenborough seated next to us was meanwhile whacked on his knee by the person in front of him swinging vigorously on his swivel seat and then turned round to glare at someone in the box behind us eating noisily at the breathless close of the Scène aux champs.

To be perfectly frank, going to the Emirates stadium for an Arsenal game, one is now far more likely to encounter acceptable crowd behaviour any day, and actually to enjoy the experience.      

What went wrong ? Last Night of the Proms 2015

What went wrong? The Last Night of the Proms 2015 was a travesty.  Mechanically-processed mush. No one really expects serious music at the LNOP but that there's something interesting, done with style and pizzazz. This LNOP seems to have been curated by drones, applying tick-box principles. It must have looked OK in theory but in execution it was the opposite of pretty much everything the Proms used to stand for. Symptomatic, perhaps,  of the mindless malaise that's descended on the BBC.

Sir Henry Wood believed enough in people that he thought they could rise to the occasion if they were given good music.  Now,what counts above all is inclusiveness, a buzz word implying that people are too stupid  to rise above the lowest possible denominator.The "inclusiveness" mantra which now dominates arts policy is a stranglehold that will stifle the life out of the arts in this country. Far from populist, this mindset is anti-people.

Every Last Night of the Proms includes  a new work, generally anodyne, so in a sense Eleanor Alberga's Arise, Athena runs true to form, so shallow that it could have been written by Sibelius, the software, that is, not Sibelius the composer. At least with Shostakovich's Piano Concerto no 2 and Arvo Pärt's Credo we got some real music, albeit not premier cru.  Jonas Kauffmann might have saved the day but the JK we heard here wasn't the JK we know and love. A blatantly commercial plug for his new CD, which he himself has dissed. (It was this CD he dissed)   Upper levels of management must have forced him into this. He has too much integrity to be doing sham like this by choice. It's OK for JK to croon and for Benjamin Grosvenor to play jazz riffs (without verve) but such things need to be done with genuine wit. This LNOP was so calculated that humour didn't come into it.

Marin Alsop didn't help either. When she became the first female conductor to head the LNOP, that, at least, was news, of a sort, but second time around, the joke falls flat.  If the BBC cared about women conductors, why not find another, and someone more genuinely gifted? , Gender has nothing to do with music. While other LNOP conductors have used the platform to speak of music and ideals, Alsop's speech was about herself and her orchestras.  Time to change the record.  Making a fuss about a middle-class, well-paid professional for her gender is an insult to the millions of women all over the world who suffer far worse obstacles every day of their existence.

Why not Danielle de Niese as host? She has so much personality and doesn't need to sing to prove it.  Part of being a presenter means having to ad lib instead of wisely remaining silent (the curse of radio), but at least de Niese has flair.

Proms seasons are arranged years in advance - you can't book the Vienna Philharmonic on a whim. So much of this year's Prom season would have been conceived when Roger Wright's vision still held sway. We've had some very good Proms this year (two FX Roths, the VPO, Nielsen, Kullervo etc)  But the overall season was top heavy with gimmicks and trivia.   It was more like an advertsisng campaign for the BBC brand than a season about music. And like BBC self-promotion ads , comprised of snippets stuck together.

When David Pickard was announced as new director of the BBC Proms some assumed that he'd change things because he worked so long at Glyndebourne.  Fact is, one man can't stand up to a corporate philosophy of stupidity. Perhaps Pickard was chosen to lend the mindless suits credibility. He has political and management nous but not much background in broadcasting. But then non-experience seems to be the logic -- so much of the BBC top management doesn't have experience either

The BBC is a much loved National Treasure but now it's facing a battle for its very existence.  Where is the hate coming from? Politicians and those who want to grab personal profit from its demise? At a time when the BBC really needs to get its act together, it's falling prey to the very forces that have created the self defeating inclusivist, anti-elitist myth.

Ivan Hewett on the new Proms mentality. Alas, many people, incl many who should care about serious music, actually LIKE dumbing down.

Unique Elgar : Vienna Philharmonic Dream of Gerontius Rattle Prom 75

A singularly unique Elgar Dream of Gerontius  with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, Prom 75 at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Many good orchestras have played Elgar, but rarely has his music been played with such luscious, sumptuous gloss.  In the UK, we're used to hearing  Elgar in an Anglican context. Some of the finest performances have taken place in Anglican cathedrals, such as at the Three Choirs Festival, and in concert halls where the audience is either agnostic or Protestant. Yet Elgar was fundamentally Catholic, brought up in an aestheic of saints, incense, and mystic ecstasy.  The Dream of Gerontius thrives in the golden luxury of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's distinctive sound. Rattle has conducted the piece many times, but with the VPO, he achieved the sublime. This Dream of Gerontius felt like a Cathedral, honouring the splendour and glory of God.

 A Prelude to die for (ouch!).  From hushed darkness, the first string theme emerges. A chill, reminding us of imminent death.. Yet the magnificent strings rise ever upward. Faith isn't rational.  The violin theme was played with a richness that, like faith, defied the constraints of mundane existence. This prepares us for  "Jesu, Maria - I am near to death, and Thou art calling me;"   In the orchestra, we feel "chill at heart, this dampness on my brow". Toby Spence has done The Dream of Gerontius many times, and probably has personal reasons for understanding what it means, If his timbre on this occasion was strained in parts, he found renewed vigour in moments like "Miserere, Judex meu" which he projected with fervour.  Perfectly true to Gerontius's emotional state. The pain has wearied me". Echoes of Catholic hymnal surface, subtly, in the orchestra, setting the context in which the Priest (Roderick Williams) intones absolution. The Priest's lines repeat with the regularity of chant, picked up by the VPO with great subtlety. Perhaps it helps that some of the players, at least, grew up with ceremonial prayer and connect it to a state of grace.  Williams's voice is warm with feeling and compassion,. He illuminated the word "Christ" so it shone, the orchestra underlining the glow.

The orchestral introduction to the second part was magical. Gerontius has awoken into a strange new world. "How still it is", sang Spence, " I hear no more the busy beat of time".The orchestra murmured quietly behind him. Now Spence was refreshed, singing with a sense of excited wonder. Magdalena Kožená gets a lot of nasty stick in the press, which she doesn't deserve. In this performance she gave tender fragility to The Angel, reminding the Soul that its trials are not yet over.  "It is because then, thou didst fear...and so for thee the bitterness of death is passed". The flames of Hell whip wildly  into life - wonderful dramatic playing for an orchestra attuned to Faust . If the "hahas" from the BBC Proms Youth Choir weren't as maniacally demented as they could have been, their singing reminded us that the voices aren't those of mature adults, but Satan's half-formed Demons. 

"The sound is like the rushing of the wind - The summer wind - among the lofty pines", sings the Soul, entering the Hall of Judgement. The VPO deliver again, with magnificently vivid playing , truly "a grand mysterious harmony. It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound of many waters".  Newman's text is getting the grand but un-grandiose treatment it deserves.  Rattle's duty is to galvanize rather than to conduct in the normal way. Thus inspired, the VPO gives its best.  A finale that rang with lustre of an orchestra who have Beethoven embedded in their souls. I felt that I too was in the presence of some kind of God. Listening links HERE and HERE

Please also read my post on the Vienna Philharmonic Brahms Schmidt Prom with Semyon Bychkov, and my numerous posts on Elgar

Bychkov Vienna Philharmonic Brahms Franz Schmidt Prom 73

In Prom 73, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Semyon Bychkov conducted the Vienna Philharonic Orchestra. The  VPO are so good that they don't need a Chief Conductor. Music seems to flow from them, channeled and shaped in partnership with those who have conducted them. Their aura is unique, built upon flawless technique and innate, intuitive musicianship on all levels.  Claudio Abbado, who conducted them regularly, once said "Music is an ongoing process, a constant quest, a quest for new forms of music-making, a permanent state of enrichment."  Listening to the Vienna Philharmonic is proof, if any were needed, that dedication and vision of this calibre refreshes the soul.

In the opening movement of Brahms Symphony no 3 Op 90, 1883, Allegro con brio, the motif at its heart was clearly defined. "Frei aber einsam", Free although alone. the confidence of a protagonist mature enough not to need to prove anything. This symphony is a model of restraint, each movement returning to quiet understatement.  Bychkov and the VPO shaped the long keening lines in the second and third movements so they seemed to express a melancholy longing for something which might never be regained. One hardly needs to know the Schumann connotations when the piece is interpreted with such insight and sensitivity. Thus the intense figures in the final movement were marked forceful, sharp stabbing rhythms suggesting determination. Trombones, horns and bassoons, instruments with big voices, yet played with sensitivity.  Lovely  as it was with the VPO, they understood that this Allegro isn't "light", but carries deep emotional undertones. Listening link HERE.

It was a great pity that the performance was spoiled live in the auditorium because after the first movement the ushers let in large numbers of people who hadn't checked  that the Prom started at 7pm not 7.30, yet were allowed to enter the hall noisily, disturbing others who had come for the music. It didn't help that Bychkov seemed to be under the weather, mopping his brow a lot, but that is his privilege. Audiences who actually care about music listen, and shouldn't burst into mechanical applause at every pause. Serious music isn't TV talent show, it doesn't depend on mindless approval. Ironically, this "audience participation" reinforced the insight  in the Bychkov/VPO  interpretation.

It was a wise choice to pair this Brahms 3 with Franz Schmidt's Symphony no 2  (1913). Comparing a composer to one more familiar is fair enough, but it's far more important to listen to music for its own sake.  The better the composer, the more individual he (or she) will sound.  This symphony is most certainly not a pastiche. Ultimately labels close minds and ears.  Schmidt was very much an individual of his time, cognizant with a wide range of others.  Although this particular symphony isn't as well known as the superior "Book of Seven Seals", Schmidt's Symphony no 4 was a huge success at the Proms  in 2000. Schmidt is not obscure and was very much a part of the period in which he was active. Bychkov clearly loves the piece and conducts it with such enthusiasm that he makes it convincing.  He's been conducting it everywhere in the last few years, even leading the student orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music in it last March. When, not if, he records this, it will become the version to get hold of.

Schmidt's Second Symphony spans three movements. The first movement, marked Lebhaft, was lively, with an interesting interplay between confident brass and  playful strings and winds. The VPO played the expansive lines with a great sense of freedom, and the pastoral passages shone with lyrical grace. In the hands of lesser performers  one might detect an uncertainty in the resolution, but with Bychkov and the VPO, the sound is so gorgeously rich that one can luxuriate without worrying too much.  The second movement,, marked "einfach und zart" (simple and tender) is a series of variations, each quite distinctive. Bychkov and the VPO kept tempi flowing, to accentuate the spirited exuberance. Do we hear the ghosts of the Johann Strausses (Not Richard) ? The final movement begins with an impressive brass and wind chorale, which gradually grows to introduce a variation on the woodwind theme in the first movement.  Listening link HERE.

In the final coda,the fanfare surges again, a blaze of glory,played with such richness that it would be wrong to quibble about emotional depth.  Rather like, I thought, the last gasp of the old world before it was annihilated in 1914-1918. Far too much nonsense has been written about Schoenberg forcing music into modernism.  It was the War What Did  It!  And the Nazis, and the inexorable process of artists responding to the times they live in. The twelve tone system opened up new possibilities, it didn't suppress anyone.   The huge variety of styles which proliferated in the 1920's, 30's and beyond is clear evidence that composers can do their own thing. And thus, we return to the singular depth of Brahms Symphony no 3 as revealed by Bychkov and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.   

Coming up next - The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a brilliant Elgar Gerontius

Charles Ives and Carl Nielsen, the Wild Men of Music Prom 72

Charles Ives and Carl Nielsen, two great outsiders,  together in Prom 72 with  Andrew Litton conducting the BBC SO.. the BBC Singers, the Tiffin Boys and Girls Choirs, The Crouch End Choir and a cast of good soloists

Lovely Carl Nielsen Springtime on Funen, so pretty that one might forget that Spring is brief, even on a paradise island. To make a living, Nielsen had to move to the city, though he never lost his love for his country roots. Henning Kraggerud was the soloist in Nielsen's Violin Concerto.

Charles Ives's music, like his personality, seems to defy convention. Many men write part time while pursuing other careers (like Mahler did) and many are justifiably forgotten but Ives stands out because he built on the sounds around him to create brilliant innovation.  There's nothing quite like Ives's Symphony no 4 until, perhaps, Stockhausen, yet it was written from around 1910.

To get a handle on what made Ives tick, read Stuart Feder's My Father's Song : a psychoanalytiuc biography (1992), still the most perceptive insight on what made Ives tick.  Ives's father was a rich kid, who dreamed (unsuccessfully) on breaking out.  He lived out his fantasies playing in bands commemorating the Civil War, the one time when he'd (sort of) made it big on his own. Thus Ives the son got a kind of revenge on the clan for dissing his Dad, by making more money than they ever did, and honoured his father by incorporating the hymns and brass band marches music he grew up with into music that operates like a kaleidoscope that's hard to pin down in conventional terms. Incidentally, one of the hymns Ives used has  a parody text that dates from way back, "We'll have pie in the sky when we die", an irony probably not lost on the composer.  That's why I've chosen this photo of Ives. He's crouching as if he's about to pounce like a tiger. The photographer was expecting a  normal portrait, but Ives's mischief gets the better of him.

In Ives's Fourth Symphony, different sound worlds operate, more or less independently. The music happens when the sounds are combined in the ear of the listener. Although Ives's roots were in semi-rural Danbury, Connecticut,  he commuted to New York City where  skyscrapers inhabited space in the air, and subways added dimensions underground. People came from all over, each with individual lives and agendas, their interaction - if any - creating what we might call modern city life. It's no accident that Elliott Carter admired Ives and was influenced by his ideas.

Because Ives's Fourth predicates on multiple levels and different pulses, performance predicates on precise attention to detail and accurate timing.  The BBCSO, under Andrew Litton, achieved the feat, creating the swirling textures and quirky ins and outs, weaving a whole fabric from the numerous contrary inner cells.  Nowadays we're perhaps used to multi-dimension music, but once it must have seemed hard to achieve.  All the more reason to honour the vision of Leopold Stokowski, who believed in the piece and was instrumental in bringing it to public attention.  When Stokowski first conducted it with the American Symphony Orchestra,in 1954, he needed dozens of hours of rehearsal.  Stokowski's assistant conductor was José Serebrier.  Two main conductors, together conducting an orchestra operating in two sections, with a third, smaller unit, conducted by a third conductor. Not an easy task! When Serebrier recorded Ives's Fourth  in London a few years later, he wasn't allowed the luxury of unlimited rehearsal, or the company of other conductors.  Luckily, he was conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra and could rely on players who learned fast and well. He divided the orchestra up into different sections, relying on the section leaders to lead their units.  The recording is still a testimony to creative problem-solving in performance practice. .

Below Stokowski and Serebrier conduct Ives Fourth for prime time TV in the early 1960's Imagine new music getting such mass coverage now, when the media has fooled audiences into thinking that anything difficult is wrong. Without pioneers, like Ives, Stokowski and Serebrier  where would be be? ?

Temirkanov St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra Prom 71

Rimsky-Korsakov The Legend of the  Invisble City of Kitezh at BBC Prom 71 should have been a splendid occasion, with Yuri Temirkanov. conducting the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. In the opera, the Princess of Nature and the woods, Fevronia, has come to Kitezh to marry Prince Yuri. But the Tatars are about to attack the city. So Fevronia uses her magical powers to disguise the city and make it invisible. Except on the shore of the lake, where it's reflected in a blaze of glory, its bells ringing elusively. When Gergiev conducted the full piece in London some 20 years ago, it was a sensation. Later I heard the Svetlanov recording. Two very different approaches, but both hugely rewarding, Gergiev getting the edge for bringing out the demonic undertones in the piece. At this Prom, Temirkanov conducted only 13 minutes of the Suite, so we didn't have much to go on, apart from the surface beauty, bird calls, harps, strings, and the lovely wind melody. The rolling drums and muted trumpets suggested dangers to come. Perhaps the City was invisible after all. The photo shows a set design from the original production in 1907. Note the art deco clarity in the design.

More vividly performed, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, in D major Op 35 1878 with Julia Fischer as soloist.  Lyrical playing, nicely contrasted with the dynamic assertiveness in the orchestra. I enjoyed the way Fischer let her lines slide dizzily downward, as if the instrument were flirting with larger forces.

How I wish commentators and the media would get over describing everything in nationalistic clichés!  To some extent it's fair enough to describe things as "Russian" or "English"  As shorthand the terms are fair enough, and sometimes do apply,  but good music is greater than perceived boundaries.  Misplaced nationalism leads to lazy thinking and things far worse.  Beware!

Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations Op 32, 1899, don't define "Englishness" whatever that might mean, except by familiar association.  The variations describe friends and what they meant to the composer. Of course the work sounds "Elgarian". It's Elgar, with his characteristic warm sweep and expansiveness. "Enigmas" are important in Elgar, but they are just that: "enigmas". For example, in the Rondo to his Second Symphony, Elgar wrote "Venice and Tintagel" which clearly meant a lot to him, and are important to interpretation, but they could mean many different things. It's up to the conductor and listener how deeply one can penetrate.  In the Enigma Variations, clues abound, and tantalize. We can't dismiss them but neither should we be trapped by them.  The variations are not fixed portraits as such but, rather, the way different friends might comment on a basic theme.

Temirkanov's Enigma Variations were executed with graceful elegance, suggesting the good-natured aspects of the composer's personality.  Lovely warm strings, played with the equanimity Elgar so valued. No-one "has" to be English, Russian or come from Mars to get that. Temirkanov and the St Petersbug Philharmonic Orcehstra are good, so they sound good.

Why I could not write up Raymond Yiu's Symphony before now

It's taken me two weeks to write up the Prom where Ed Gardner conducted Britten, Nielsen, Yiu and Janácek.  Listen to the repeat broadcast HERE)  I was busy covering FX Roth (Boulez, Ligeti, Bartók)  and Oramo Sibelius Kullervo, but the real reason was that Raymond Yiu's Symphony moved me on a very personal level.  It's not easy to write about things that still hit a raw nerve, even after half a lifetime. But it's absolutely vital that music like this is being written. Many congratulations to whoever in the BBC commissioned this. It takes courage to programme something like this piece which deals with subjects that do matter and continue to resonate.

Yiu's Symphony, though contemporary, springs from the tradition which inspired Britten and Gerald Finzi.  Literary sources are chosen with erudition, and incorporated with other musical references to create a highly individual and original piece which is not song symphony so much as a concerto for countertenor and orchestra.  And why countertenor?  Andrew Watts will "own" the piece for posterity, since the writing follows the unique qualities of his voice. But other countertenors should attempt it too, and soon, because there are few pieces which apply the unusual timbre of the Fach with such thoughtfulness and feeling.  The countertenor voice is unique,and beautiful for the very reason that it sounds as though it were coming from another plane of existence. It's hyper-natural, transcending ordinary reality. It can express, obliquely, things that can't be fully articulated in a mundane world. There has been a lot written for the voice type in recent years, but Yiu's Symphony is unusual in that the countertenor voice is the protagonist - strong, resolute . As in baroque times, the countertenor is hero.

Yet, crucially, a hero who has lived. "I play not marches for accepted victories only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons", Watts sang. The word "music" recurs, in slightly different forms, sometimes with the last "c" stressed forcefully, suggesting the "k" of old spelling, connecting present to past. The second movement has a descriptive title "String with Cadence multiply Song" which is confusing, but there's no question what it means in purely abstract terms. Sharp rushing series unfold in short cadences, interspersed with incident: sudden flashes of brilliant light, quietly plaintive violin and flute. "Come back, often and take hold of me", Watts sang. The quotation is from Constantine Cavafy and refers to the way memories connect to physical sensations "when the lips and the skin remember and the hands feel as if they were touching once more".

The fourth movement, quoting Thom Gunn's poem "In Time of Plague" refers explicitly to AIDS and the way it wiped out a generation - the talented, the talentless, interesting people and homophobes locked in the closet.  Someone at the epicentre,  who survived, described himself now surrounded by ghosts. The non-vocal writing in this part is sensitively sensual and rather beautiful. There are echoes of Scarlatti (for reasons deeply personal to the composer) and to the music so many danced to in the club scenes of the 70's and 80's.  It all seems so innocent now. Yet there was so much bigotry then that people would cross the street to avoid "contamination". That bigotry might yet resurface: we must never forget compassion and human suffering, in any form. The poem in this section isn't much, but the music is good, and evokes a whole lost world.

The final Adagietto con affecto quotes John Donne "The Anniversarie". The words are simple, and the musical setting dignified and austere, yet warmed by human feeling.  The orchestra rises in crescendo, which then dissipates into delicate textures. Watts sang "Only our love hath no decay".tenderly, rising to a poignant cry on the word "Yesterday".  An exquisite extended coda which suggest moonlight, stars and the triumph of caring emotions.  Afterwards, the lady next to me, who didn't normally do classical music, remarked on its beauty. There can be few tributes more sincere than that!

A wonderful Carl Nielsen Flute Concerto (1926) with the effervescent, sensual playing of Emily Beynon, a rather straightforward Britten Sinfonia da Requiem (Op 20, 1940) and a sassy Janácek. Sinfonietta ((1926); altogether a good Prom with Gardner and the BBC SO. We can hear the last two any time, and we ought to hear Nielsen's Flute Concerto more often, but it isn't every day we hear something as singular as Raymond Yiu's Symphony.

Photo: Roger Thomas

O Fortuna Carmina Burana Prom 69

O Fortuna ! As the Wheel of Fortune turns...... The BBC Concert Orchestra is Cinderella in the stable of BBC orchestras, relegated to workhorse gigs, TV dramas and the resolutely anti-intellectual fare the Proms (and the BBC in general) seem to be descending into. Then along comes Carl Orff Carmina Burana (1936) at Prom 69.  Real music, and vividly realized. Carmina Burana is a strange beast, a pseudo-medieval extravaganza mixing vulgarity with piety. Everyone knows Carmina Burana, even if they think it's the sound track to TV ads and satires like THIS. 

Because it's so familiar, responses  are coloured by "TV thinking", superficial, ill informed and kneejerk, like the cliché that Orff didn't oppose the Nazis, except in his dreams. But Orff was a conundrum, a complex person who concealed his inner life even - and perhaps especially - from himself. The joyous barbarism appeals on a primitive  level, connecting to primal emotions. One could draw a direct line between Carmina Burna and what was, arguably, Orff's greatest gift to mankind, his Schulwerk and legacy of expressive music-making in circles way beyond the western classical music mainstream.

Carmina Burana is brutal, because the Middle Ages were brutal. If you were lucky you got high on ergot and died by the age of 40. Dionysian riot probably meant even more to grim lives. The picture left is Breughel, The Battle between Carneval and Lent. Eat, drink and be merry for Lent is coming and with it, hardship. And you might not be around by Easter. Orff was no intellectual, but on an intuitive level he may have made the connection between the dark side of the Middle Ages and the madness of theThird Reich. There was a lot of "medievalism" in music in this era.  Think Frank Martin, Walter Braunfels, W A Hartmann and Arthur Honegger. Perhaps we too are living "at the End of Time", fighting off the Apocalypse with mindless hedonism.

And so, back to Prom 69, the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Keith Lockhart. This performance played to the BBC CO's strengths, bringing out the cinematic qualities in the piece. The "big numbers" could have come straight out of Hollywood, the brass blazing and the big drums booming. I was even more impressed, though, by the faux-lyricism of the quieter sections where the orchestra played quietly, and the choruses twittered the "meadow" songs prettily, like birds in a Rudolf Ising cartoon. A poisoned Spring! This was far more chilling in many ways than simply forcing the rhythms for effect. Delightfully vernal "antique" trumpets, and violins sounding like lutes.
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 Best of all, though, was the singing. Benjamin Appl sang the baritone part  withe brightness and natural colour: a genuinely interesting voice intelligently used. I learned the piece from Fischer-Dieskau, who was wonderful but a bit uncomfortable . Drunken boor wasn't his style. Thomas Walker sang the Olim lacus colueram well. By the end of the Tavern sequence, everyone's pissed, singing parodies of "normal" song.  Just the right touch of inebriation. After that, can we take the Minnelied courtliness at face value? And what are Communion bells doing here? What is being consecreted or sullied, as the case might be?   Orff's pulled another fast one.  "Tempus est jocundum". Lovely singing by Olena Tokar, but the moment doesn't last. Yet again we're thrown back on the "mob", the brusqueness of the music for baritone (not a "boy") and massed male voices. "Venus, Venus, Venus" they called, a testosterenoe fix heralded by the big timpani and the return of O Fortuna. The wheel has turned. with a chill.  The BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir did the honours, assisted by the Southend Boys' and Girls' Choirs.

Before Carmina Burana, Guy Barker's The Lanterne of Light. Everyone writes for Alison Balcom these days because she plays so expressively, but the piece itself is a bit pointless; perhaps if it had stuck to one or two Deadly Sins or done them all with more compression?  Not really enough to sustain for  too long.

Prom 64 Søndergård BBCNOW

At Prom 64, Thomas Søndergård conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Like many organisations, orchestras can go throughout a period in the doldrums. Something interesting has been happening in Cardiff.  The BBC NOW are sounding reinvigorated and refreshed. Their Prom in July under Xian Zhang (read more here) showed them in excellent form. Under Søndergård, their  Chief Conductor, they're even livelier, as shown in their Carl Nielsen's Aladdin Suite, (1919)  incidental music for the play Aladdin. Did the original play include dance?  The music suggests a kind of kinetic energy that demands physical expression. The BBC NOW played with such muscular animation, that the piece seemed to levitate, infinitely more interesting than the rather generic images evoked in the titles.

Thus we were prepared for the explosion that is B Tommy Andersson's  Pan. What a showpiece this is, making full use of the Royal Albert Hall organ and the sense of occasion that is the essence of the Proms.  Grand fortes suddenly transforming into delicate ppp's, from which a solo violin emerges, lit by bell-like sonorities, introducing a lovely flute melody. This is Pan, doing his individualist thing, surrounded by nature. Yet Pan is part man, part goat, and symbolizes animal instincts. So the music rises to riotous crescendo, the organ (David Goode) dancing joyously with the orchestra. Gosh this was good fun, and very well executed too. On a First Night, this would have knocked the audience out, in a good way.. Pan is a welcome change from the corporate mediocrity that curses so much newly written but not new music at the Proms

The BBC NOW's new, punchy liveliness paid off handsomely in Nielsen and Andersson but worked less well for Mahler's Symphony no 4. This symphony isn't, as once described, a "vision of heaven for Catholic omnivores". The text refers to physical,pleasure. food and plenty, but the protagonist is a dead child.  Please read my article "Why greedy kids in Mahler 4" here.

This symphony is so very different in character from Aladdin and Pan that Søndergård  and the BBC NOW took a while to get into their stride. There wasn't much sense of direction in the first movement, though the demonic sforzando quirkiness in the scherzo was  well defined, as were several incidental details. There's no reason why this section shouldn't sound jolly, as it's marked behaglich. The soloist, Clara Ek,  has sung this many times with Bernard Haitink, who also favours the womanly warmth of Christianne Stotijn.  Ek's vibrato enriched her performance but I would have preferred something more elusive..

Triumphant Triumphlied Brahms Prom 62 OAE

Brahms Triumphlied triumphed at the all-Brahms Prom 62 at the Royal Albert Hall,  London, with Marin Alsop, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, the Choir of the Enlightement and soloist Benjamin Appl. Brahms's Triumphlied (Op 55, 1872) was written to mark the first unification of Germany, and the defeat of France, which hitherto had dominated the European balance of power. The British weren't keen either, since the new nation competed with British industry, trade and naval control.  The 1914-1918  War was a direct result of this rivalry. Triumphlied wasn't ever going to be popular in such circumstances. But no nation has a monopoly on nationalism. Now perhaps we have the historical perspective to hear the piece in context and appreciate its merits.

The first unification of Germany marked the fulfilment of the Romantic dream of a nation no longer torn apart by hundreds of warring states. Significantly, Brahms chose his text from The Book of Revelation in the Bible, focusing on Chapter 19, where a vast multitude gather to celebrate a cosmic marriage (unity) . Hence the jubilant Allelujas and the punchy, optimistic rhythms. Brahms is celebrating hope after struggle. The different threads in the chorus and orchestra interweave, like garlands.Beautifully precise part singing.  In Revelation, a white horse appears in the skies,  with eyes of fire, bearing a horsemen who represents the King of Kings. Out of the tumult, the solo baritone's voice rises, clear and forceful. Despite his youth, Benjamin Appl already has a huge following. I've kept missing his appearance, but now I can hear why he has impressed so many. He doesn't have much to sing in Triumphlied, but he makes those moments ring out gloriously. Listen to him next at the Oxford Lieder Festival in October.

Brahms Alto Rhapsody (Op 53, 1869)  made an interesting contrast to the Triumphlied.  Here Brahms chose his text from an excerpt from Goethe Harzreise im Winter. The soloist, this time a mezzo soprano (Jamie Barton), is again surrounded by large orchestra and chorus, yet the mood is desolate. The solo part is much more dominant, moving slowly and purposefully over the forces behind her. Jamie Barton has one of those big voices that impress. She won the BBC Singer of the World in Cardiff and the Richard Tucker Prize more recently. She has a nice, rich voice but needs to work on her diction. The Alto Rhaspsody is one of the finest vehicles for resplendent mezzo and contralto voices. Kathleen Ferrier, Christa Ludwig, Janet Baker,  Brigitte Fassbender, and Alice Coote  (First Night of the Proms 2009) set almost impossibly high standards for any young singer. 

Framing the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody were  the purely orchestral Academic Festival Overture and Brahms Symphony no 1 in C minor.  The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are a n excellent orchestra, and Brahms is a composer Marin Alsop usually does well.  Last year at the Proms, they did Brahms German Requiem together. Like the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody, the German Requiem predicates on the singing. The non vocal [pieces in this prom didn't quite come alive,  but we should be glad for the Choir of the Enlightenment.

Shockingly modern - Sibelius Kullervo Oramo Prom 58

Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op7, 1892) ?  There are many theories why he didn't allow it to be heard after its initial performance, though he referred to it fondly in private. Sakari Oramo considers Kullervo "a masterpiece", and, at Prom 58 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, conducted it with such conviction that there can be little doubt about its unique place in Sibelius's output, and indeed in music history. Kullervo is such a remarkable work, so shockingly original that Paavo Berglund revisited it fifteen years after his original recording,. Neeme Järvi brought yet more new insights. There have been many other  performances since, but Sakari Oramo creates an interpretation  of great depth and perceptiveness. 

From a hushed opening, the Allegro Moderato grew with ever increasing impatience, as if it were an Overture to an opera, for a quasi-opera this is. One cannot underestimate the impact of Wagner and his"forest murmurs", though even at this early stage in his career, Sibelius was iconoclastic, deliberately seeking a new sound world. Unlike Wagner who re-imagined Norse Legend, Sibelius heard living oral tradition at first hand. Kullervo comes alive with the rhythms of the Kalevala, with its strange, primitive pulse and shamanistic repetitions.  Hence the short, sharp intervals in the brass and winds, and the driving pizzicato in the strings, creating a sense of tense, ritualized movement. Even to our ears accustomed to Stravinsky, Bartók and Janáček, Kullervo still sounds raw and primeval. Yet it was written twenty-one years before The Rite of Spring.  

I've often wondered if Sibelius himself realized how daring Kullervo was and, being a worrier, pulled back, as he might have pulled back from the enormity of his conception for the Eighth? Once, Sibelius performance history presented the composer in sub-Tchaikovsky terms, which really doesn't do the composer justice.  Kullervo resets the balance so we can think ahead to the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and their audacity and inventiveness  It is, unequivocally new and individual, the mark of a true genius.

In Kullervo, we can hear the origins of tone poems like Nightride into Sunrise and Lemminkäinen Suite. and reflect that the tone poems are much darker than mere portaits of Nature and myth.  Thus the lucid detail of Oramo's conductng, which emphasizes the sophistication that lies beneath the ostensible savagery in the piece. It's not simply folk tale for grand orchestra but an experimental approach to dynamics and relationships. The contrast between emotional extremes and the tight, staccato-like figures creates abstract narrative tension. Oramo makes the orchestra "sing" as if we're hearing Kullervo's nervous heartbeat, pulsating with frustration.

Kullervo is also a musical act of defiance, written as it was at a time when Finland was  resisting efforts by Russia to curb its freedoms. This adds context to the figure of Kullervo himself, a child born into suffering. One can appreciate Kullervo without knowing the Kalevala, but it does enhance meaning. Runes XXXI to XXXVI give Kullervo's background. He's cruelly mistreated by an uncle who stole his patrimony. He's tortured and sold into slavery. When he meets the maiden, he rapes her because he wants what she represents, yet, raised in cruelty, he doesn't have what we might call "social skills". Dreams of his long-lost mother have kept him going , so when he discovers that the woman he has violated is his sister, he suffers such guilt that he must offer his own life in appeasement.

Johanna Rusanen-Kartano sang Kullervo's sister. She's a very good dramatic soprano, with the intensity to remind us that the girl, too, has had a traumatic past, lost in the woods while hunting for berries. Her story is as tragic as her brother's.  Rusanen-Kartano's lines were  rapid-fire tongue twisters, delivered with absolute precison and bite. Later her lines curve sensuously,but even in these beautiful moments, she retained a mysterious quality as if the girl had been led into the forest by evil spirits, represented perhaps in the clarinets and pumping woodwind around her. Waltteri Torikka sang the baritone part. He didn't have quite the assurance of, say, Jorma Hynninen, but he can express the vulnerability that lurks behind Kullervo's brutishness. If his voice didn't project well, live, in the cavern that is the Royal Albert Hall it sounded better on broadcast.  There's potential in this voice.

In Kullervo, the choir (the Polytech Choir augmented by the men of the BBC Symphony Chorus) operate like a Greek Chorus commenting on proceedings and adding ballast to the orchestra. These choral parts are difficult, for the lines flow with little pause for breath, relentlessly moving the action forward. The Finnish language, too, poses problems. Every vowel sound must be articulated, and there are vowel sounds one after another in succession, cut across with stinging sibillants. "Kullervo, Kalevon poika, sinisukka äijön lapsi,". For the Polytech Choir from Helsinki, the lines flow seamlessly, yet are energized by high testosterone punchiness.  We can hear the fast-moving sleigh, complete with bells as it rushes "noilla Väinön kankahilla, ammoin raatuilla ahoilla". Yet these rhythms also suggest violence, the relentless course of fate, and lets face it a fairly explicit description of sex.  I was fascinated by the way the choir varied their emphases, dropped to whispers and rose to full volume,and the variety of subtle expression. 

We hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra all the time, so we take them for granted, and forget how good they really are. The Alla marcia (Kellervo goes to war) isn't difficult for players with these technical skills, but they played  with energy and vigour. Oramo marked the end of the battle with a long silence, soon the voices of the male choirs returned, ghost-like.  Muted large brass, tuba and trumpets muffled, bassoons sighing, clarinets.rising like smoke on a battlefield. While Kullervo begins characterized by hard, angular sounds, and breaking off painfully into silence, the final movement, Kullervo's Death, is an andante. The timpani were beaten in slow march, placed at a distance from the rest of the percussion, cradling the orchestra, perhaps, in the kind of embrace  Kullervo never knew. Sibelius  didn't set the last lines of Rune XXXV but he and his audiences would have known the moral with which the saga ends. It is a warning that children should not be abused or mistreated.  

Starting with a very good En Saga (Op 9, 1892 rev 1902), this was by far the most-focused and well performed Sibelius this season,  making up for a patchy, disappointing and over-rated symphonic cycle in earlier Proms. . 

This review also appears in Opera Today

Please read my other pieces on Sibelius and Kullervo (including the Ballet in Helsinki this spring).

Prom 55 F X Roth SWR SO Boulez Ligeti Bartók

Photo : Roger Thomas

At Prom 55, François-Xavier Roth  conducted the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg in their first - and regrettably last - appearance at the Royal Albert Hall.  The orchestra is being disbanded, merged into the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. When bureaucrats win over musicianly excellence, even in Germany, it's a blow against art.  Those who stand by watching the BBC being dismantled, from within as well as from without, would do well to ponder. The SWR Symphony Orchestra isn't just another orchestra. It was founded by Hans Rosbaud in 1946, as a statement of faith in the renewal of Europe after the barbarism of the war years. Its demise is thus one of the many symptoms of the anti-intellectual, destructive fundamentalism that's sweeping the world over. .

At the end of this Prom, Roth stood in front of his musicians, declaring his appreciation for them, and for the tradition they represent. It was a gesture of defiance, yet tinged with sadness. Roth is going on to head the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, another of the less famous but distinctive orchestras that make German music great. I'm not sure what will happen to his players, who are individually infinitely better than some heard recently. The Prom was also a tribute to Pierre Boulez, whose conducting career was launched by Rosbaud, who summoned him to Baden-Baden. He's lived there ever since. When Roth conducted Baden-Baden's concert for Boulez this January, the presenters and audience looked visibly moved.

Nothing routine or sloppy in this Proms performance. Pierre Boulez "....explosante-fixe" (1985) scintillated because Roth and his orchestra respect the music enough to create it properly. With his background in baroque, Roth knows the connection between baroque and new music. Please read more here.  One of the hallmarks of the French aesthetic is lucid intelligence. Think Descartes, Moliere, Voltaire. Complex elaborations need clear basic foundations.  Debussy's swathes of subtle  colour sparkle because he understood the importance of clarity. It's no accident that Boulez was perhaps the finest Debussy interpreter of all.  

The original  "Mémoriale ...explosante-fixe" was written to honour Stravinsky, but the larger 1985 version also honours Debussy. The soloist is now surrounded by two other flautists and a small ensemble, so we can hear the purity at the soul of the piece. This is one of the relatively rare pieces where Boulez extends his palette with electronic effects, but these didn't come through as effectively as the "acoustic" playing, perhaps because I was sitting in the wrong place. Impressionist painting shines because colours are carefully defined by light, not muddied.  "....explosante-fixe" is impressionistic in that individual units are clear, the rainbow created by good players for sensitive listeners. Sophie Cherrier combined technical excellence with sophisticated élan. I thought of Pan, surrounded by purity, an image behind the original Mémoriale and in Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

The technical excellence of the SWR Symphony Orchestra made György Ligeti's Lontano shimmer, like "music from another planet".  Like Ligeti's Atmosphères, this reached mass audiences thanks to being "borrowed" for the movies. So nuts to the myth that audiences are hard wired not to cope with new music! I got hooked on Ligeti when I heard 2001: a space odyssey, hypnotized by the music, ignoring the movie. Lontano was premiered by the SWR SO, whose players remembered the importance Ligeti placed on precision. The textures are so complex that they benefit from the careful attention Roth and his orchestra gave to them.  Roth marked the invisible bars, showing how the music doesn't simply end when the players stop. The silence evaporates into the ever more rarified resonances of the imagination. 

It's a mistake, I think, to expect  Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra to sound quaint and folksy. In 1940, the composer was looking back on his past well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and in the  right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler. At this Proms performance the SWR SO played it so well that they brought to the fore the atmosphere that Bartók might well  have intuited: the end of civilized culture.  This isn't a concerto for orchestra for nothing, since the interactions between the different parts of the orchestra suggest the importance of relationships and cross-connections.  Roth and the members of the SWR SO listen to each other: their starting point isn't their own playing but precision and attentiveness . Boulez conducted Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra many times.  Ten years have not dimmed the memory of him  conducting it at the Royal Festival Hall with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.. Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra by Serge Koussevitsky. As the present BSO embarks on a new future, they might do well to listen to Roth and the SWR SO.

Top and bottom photos: Roger Thomas

Prom 53 Shostakovich Orango Salonen Bartók

For Prom 53, Esa-Pekka Salonen brought two works with which he's been closely associated :  Bartók  The Miraculous Mandarin and Shostakovich's "lost" opera Orango 

Since Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra have given many fine performances of The Miraculous Mandarin, (Op 19, Sz 73, 1924)  it was a given that this Proms outing would be good, but it exceeded expectations. Enlivened and emboldened by the manic craziness of the Orango that was to come, Salonen conducted with a wild freedom that lifted the inventiveness of  Bartók to levels that felt almost dangerous. The Miraculous Mandarin is  an audacious work, which horrified its first audiences, and was promptly suppressed, by Konrad Adenauer, then mayor of Cologne, no less. So the impassioned flair with which Salonen and the Philharmonia created this performance, bristling with menace and sexual violence, truly an "Infernal Dance". Sleazy trombones and clarinets, frantic, manic brass and percussion, low brass and winds exhaling strange sighs, suggesting a connection between orgasm and death? 

To bridge the gap between Bartók and Shostakovich, Mozart Piano Concerto no 24 in C minor K491, with David Fray as soloist. Mystery again, with a hint of something sensual, given the dark, rich orchestration, with pairs of  clarinets, oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, in this context vaguely reminding me of the "stalking" clarinet duet - or duel - in the Miraculous Mandarin. A bit of Mozartean poise, preparing us for the grotesque of Orango to come?  

And so, at last, to the eagerly awaited Proms premiere of Shostakovich's Orango, which Salonen premiered in Los Angeles and also conducted at the Royal Festival Hall last year, and in Helsinki (in a  slightly different production).  The manuscript was discovered among the composer's papers in 2004. Only the Overture was completed, the rest of the opera existing only in piano score, now orchestrated in a performing version by Gerard McBurney. The piece was written to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Russian revolution, that grand experiment in social engineering. In the grand new era after the 1914-18 war, people placed their hopes in Science and Progress, however loopy the theories might be. Some believed, for example that injecting monkey glands would enhance human virility. Orango is a half-ape, half-human creature,  not so much the missing link  but a new hybrid. A metaphor for the Brave New World ? Shostakovich would also have been well aware of Mikhail Bulgakov's 1926 novel The Heart of a Dog, where scientists give a man the heart of a dog, but nature asserts itself, and the man reverts to dog.  Please read my review HERE of the brilliant ENO A Dog's Heart, created by Complicité and Simon McBurney (Gerard's brother). 

The Overture is patriotically upbeat, driving brass and mechanical rhythms suggesting triumphal march.  "We will dress the land (of free labourers) in the fabric of the Sun." Soviet realism in all its glory. The bass (Alexander Shagun) sings of the wonders of the new era, with its multi-megawatt power stations and infants who can dance. "No bedbugs in Moscow!"  The part is written as if the character were a ringmaster in a circus: Did Shostakovich know of Lulu, which Berg was still in the process of writing? A long semi-lyrical sequence follows, which would have been set for ballet. Shostakovich uses material from his ballet Bolt!, which I've written about HERE. It's rather worrying how dance fits  authoritarian form: people moving in regimented unison, their individuality suppressed. From dance to military displays and marches. Watch Ratmansky's choreography for Bolt! if you can. 

 "This music has grated in my ears for 15 years" sang Shagun, then, leaning towards the conductor,  asks him to "play something gentler, a lullaby". But no luck, the crowds want Orango, and bombastic noise. The trombones blew grotesque raspberries.. Orango (Ivan Novoselov) appears. "He can blow his nose, and play clapping games!" sang Shagun. But of course, he doesn't sing.  Foreigners come to admire the spectacle - another wry comment on the foreigners who admired Stalin at this period. If the plot is sketchy, that's because the opera wasn't finished. We have to make allowances. the music is crude, but then, the subject is crude, and it's possible that Shostakovich might not have got much further.  Orango is not, and can never be, much more than a fragment, but it's a tantalizing one. The plot, potentially, has more possibilities than Shostakovich's football ballet The Golden Age, though the music for The Golden Age is rather good, especially  in the highly recommended recording conducted by José Serebrier.  Orango isn't great art, but the world would be a gloomier place without it.

Andris Nelsons Mahler 6 BSO Prom 49

For Prom 49, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. It's been eight years since the BSO last came to London, with James Levine. Some of the players may even be the same personnel. But eight years is a long time, during which Levine has been seriously ill. So it was a wise move on the BSO's part to bring in Nelsons as Chief Conductor.  He's  a stellar Wagnerian who's featured at Bayreuth, so closely connected to the Berlin Philharmonic that he was a contender for the top job there. He's the prize racehorse in his field.  Music doesn't stand still. Good orchestras can rise to the challenge.  As in so many cases, change takes time. Fortunately, the BSO has Nelsons contracted until 2022.  Europe's loss might be America's gain.

Earlier this week, Nelsons conducted the opening night of the Lucerne Festival, one of the sacred places of European music, still  hallowed by Claudio Abbado. Lucerne Festival players are the best in the business, individually hand picked, for their personal standards of excellence.  The Lucerne ethos of orchestra as chamber ensemble predicates on these high standards. very different from perfectly normal  orchestral experience.  Enjoy the Lucerne concert HERE. .

At Lucerne, Nelsons conducted Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony and Mahler Symphony no 5, both well suited to the intimacy of Lucerne, and performed with the intensity and spark of an ultra-chamber unit.  In London, at the Royal Albert Hall, Nelsons conducted Mahler Symphony no 6 and Brett Dean Dramatis Personae. Unlike so many Brett Dean pieces which rely on non-musical gimmicks, this piece has better musical foundations. The presence of Håkan Hardenberger certainly helped.  He's not stretched and the piece could probably work fine with lesser players. The ideas are undemanding and Dean's thing for cute visuals gives it appeal.

In Mahler 6 Nelsons and the BSO followed the Allegro moderato with a surprise : Scherzo  first, Andante Second.  The controversy on the order of movements is somewhat pedantic.  If it were easily settled, it wouldn't be an issue. Most of us grew up with Scherzo-Andante and it did us no harm. Three years ago,  Chailly conducted Andante-Scherzo with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and that worked fine, too, because it capitalized on the legendary warm glow the Leipzigers do so well, so the contrast with the Scherzo felt heart rending. Nelsons' order worked better with the BSO because it injected dramatic urgency into the symphony sooner rather than later. The Andante felt like a gentle Ruckblick, a wistful looking back on gentler times. Hence the cowbells, clearly audible on this occasion from where I was sitting. Mahler wanted them heard "as if from a distance" -- easier said than done in practical performance. When Semyon Bychkov conducted Mahler 6 in 2011, with the BBC SO, (more here),  he made the Andante seem haunted, rather than peaceful.  Nelsons' approach is more conventional, but makes more of the BSO's good string sections. Nelsons' Finale was suitably haunted though, the strings and harps creating a chilling, "icy" character from which the violent march returns.  The hammer blows fall, but the trumpets herald a future beyond.  the March here isn't military, but the march of life, itself.  It's not necessarily "tragic"or maudlin. This connects to the ideas of life-affirmation, so closer to the deeper understanding we now have of Mahler's overall idiom. In the last section, Nelsons lets the BSO rip. Good contrasts, suggesting tension, but also inexorable forward movement. In many ways, this symphony suggests hope, and triumph over death. Certainly, this Prom suggested a bright new future for Nelsons and the BSO. 

Photo: Roger Thomas

Prom 47 Leifs bombs. Sakari surprises

How I had looked forward to Jón Leifs' Organ Concerto BBC Prom 47!  Leifs does monumental like few others do.  I'm a fan. (read more on this site)  If  there were ever an occasion for a performance worthy of the piece, it would have been at the Royal Albert Hall with the second-biggest organ in the world. The Nazis hated the concerto? For once, they might have been right. Leifs' Organ Concerto bombed.

It wasn't the performance. The BBCSO and Sakari Oramo are used to pulling off big spectaculars with the verve they deserve. Leifs' Organ Concerto looks big and ambitious, on paper and on the stage, but once the music started, its horrors were revealed. How dated it sounded, as if it were written  for horror movies in the 1930's. Bad horror movies, the kind that rely on cornball rather than real horror. At any moment I half expected a guy in vampire costume to fly across a rope hidden among the microphones. Nice special effects, though. A mallet a foot in diameter! Perhaps the percussionist was secretly laughing inside, thinking of Mahler. In any case, he (the percussionist, not Mahler) was having a sublime J Arthur Rank moment. And he didn't have to take his clothes off.

The organ was beautifully played, but the music felt strangely awry. Was Leifs having a joke, I wondered ? Did he take this seriously or was he making a secret point. Recently someone sent me an unpublished poem written by Edmund Blunden to a high official, who was notoriously full of inflated ballast. The official would have been thrilled - line after line of hyperbolic hype. Blunden's good enough that he write doggerel for a dog.

An exodus of sorts followed. which I eventually followed. No way was this because Liefs is "modern". The very opposite, the piece is so much of its time. One of the good things about BBC Proms broadcasts is that you can listen in the comfort on the radio. As we drove through Hyde Park, four ambulances and police cars shot past, sirens blaring. "More excitement than Jón Leifs" remarked the driver.  But what a surprise we were in for!

We had no expectations for Anders Hillborg's Beast Sampler but it turned out pretty interesting. Huge shapes dancing merrily along, big, brutish beasts created from invisible sound waves. And done with little percussion ! Oliver Knussen would have loved the wit and intelligence in this piece. Sakari Oramo is famous for his quiet, deadpan humour, too. No wonder he chose Hillborg after Liefs. 

Then, Beethoven Symphony no 7, which we've all heard so many times we weren't expecting miracles. But again, Oramo delivered a surprise. Gosh, what a lively, vivacious performance, sparking with athletic élan and energy.  The Prom had started with Sibelius Tapiola, which Oramo can conduct in his sleep and which the BBCSO have done so often they can do it on autopilot. So if it was oddly lifeless, perhaps Oramo was making a point, though it was lost on me. I thought they'd skimped on rehearsal time. Or, more likely, their hearts were in Beethoven.  Gosh it's good to hear an old warhorse return to stallion. Unorthodox, but refreshing. And so much fun. Without fun, what would be the point of good music?

Prom 46 Carl Nielsen Fabio Luisi, Danish National Symphony Orchestra

Carl Nielsen Prom 46 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Fabio Luisi conducting the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.  Nielsen's no stranger to the Proms : Barbirolli conducted Nielsen's  Symphony no 4 "The Inextinguishable " in 1965, but this programme included relative rarities like Hymnus amoris, and culminated in an outstanding Nielsen Symphony no 2 "The Four Temperaments".

This Prom began with a "golden dawn", Nielsen's Helios Overture, ()p 17, 1903). Nielsen said, "My Overture describes the movement of the sun through the heavens from morning to evening".  It's gloriously atmospheric, yet the composer was careful to add that it was merely titled "Helios" (the God of the Sun) and was more than pictorial. "Light, darkness, Sun and Rain are almost the same as Credo, Crucifixus, Gloria and so on".  The horns inn the first section sounded primeval, suggesting ancient instruments. Shimmering strings,  rising upwards, dissolving into rapturously refined textures. Much more sophisticated than straightforward "pictorial" music.

Helios thus heralded Brahms Violin Concert in D Major with Nikolaj Znaider as soloist. This was exqusitely played, Znaider's virtuosic refinement nicely haloed by the richness in the orchestra.  Luisi doesn't officially take over as Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra until 2017, but he's worked with them for five years already.  This performance promises great things to come. In my eagerness to hear more Nielsen, I didn't pay enough attention to Brahms at first, but enjoyed it immensely on repeat broadcast.   This was a very long evening, (nearly 3 hours) determined, I think by the practical logistics of bringing in two choirs, including the Danish National Concert Choir, whose Nielsen Three Motets  (Op 55, 1930)  were beautifully nuanced, but the Brahms is a heavyweight piece that needs to be heard without much else around it.

It was good to hear the Three Motets with Nielsen's Hymnus amoris (Op 12, 1897)  Hymnus amoris is ambitious, scored for large orchestra, choir, a childrens' choir (Winchester Cathedral Choristers ) and  four soloists. The four sections are programmatic, tracing a person's life from childhood to old age, though structurally it's cohesive.  Nielsen was thinking in terms of polyphony and counterpoint, as evidenced in the orchestral and choral writing. However, the soprano part is relatively unadorned..  How good it was to hear Anna Lucia Richter, whom I first heard at the Wigmore Hall three and a half years ago. (more here) She's good.  Hymnus amoris was inspired by a Titian painting The Miracle of a Jealous Husband, the "wife" is more dominant. Richter's voice negotiates the sweeping curlicues in the long lines with finesse.  The Three Motets are more sophisticated and better written, but Hymnus amoris has charm.

Although I've always liked Nielsen's music, I used to wonder why I couldn't access its darkest depths until I realized that Nielsen is Nielsen, not Mahler, or Sibelius, or Janáček or Debussy, all of them his direct contemporaries. No obvious angst, nor grandeur, nor panoramic vision, but instead  deceptively simple good humour. Few composers could have posed for the comic portraits pictured here.  On the surface, Nielsen doesn't take himself seriously, but his well-balanced humanity  is a much underrated virtue. 

Nielsen's Symphony no 2 "The Four Temperaments" (Op 16, 1902)  is programmatic in that its four movements describe four temperaments - Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholic and Sanguine. In "Choleric", the Allegro comodo e flemmatico, for example, lines are drawn out and repeated like a personality who prefers inertia but is nonetheless harried on by the forward thrust of Nielsen's musical logic.  It's interesting how the last movement whips along with great freedom. Perhaps it's Nielsen's own signifier. But it's fun,  psychologically observant, and translated into abstract musical form.  Wonderfully vivacious playing.  The encore was The Dance of the Cockerels from Nielsen's opera Maskarade, about which I've written here).

Prom 36 Boulez Ravel Stravinsky FX Roth

Perhaps the best Prom of the season so far - BBC Prom 36 Boulez, Ravel, Stravinsky with Francois-Xavier Roth and the BBCSO.  Roth, like Boulez himself, understands the fundamentals of the French aesthetic. Please read my article on the connections between French baroque and contemporary music, and the wider cultural context.

The BBCSO played  Boulez's Figures-Doubles-Prismes (1964-8) with Boulez himself in the 1970's. Individual layers may have changed but Boulez conducted the orchestra until fairly recently. They know his idiom. Roth nonetheless drew from them an exceptionally vivid performance which stands up to their recording with the composer himself.  Listen again here on BBC Radio 3 - this is a performance to remember.

Figures-Doubles-Prismes  runs just under 25 minutes but it's formidably hard to conduct, since there are, effectively, three orchestras operating in relation with each other, not easy to programme given its scale and short duration.. Spatial relationships matter, but it's more intense and concise than Stockhausen's Gruppen which Boulez conducted at the Royal Albert Hall in 1967 and 1974. (Read my review of the 2008 Prom Gruppen here) 

The title Figures-Doubles-Prismes refers to the way ideas are set forth, "doubled" and refracted as if through a prism. sparking off intricate patterns and variations.  Far from being a dry composer, Boulez's piece vibrates as if it were organic, like a life form endlessly refreshing and proliferating in new directions.  Listen to those oscillating, shimmering arcs of sound, which seem to reach out into infinity, and the playful twists of percussion, turning round like throws of dice. How it flies! — and then intriguingly, it stops. With a smile, I imagine, as it sparkled  wth wit and whimsy. Appropriately, Roth followed it with a miniature, Boulez's cheery arrangement of Ravel's miniature Frontispice [sic].

Marc-André Hamelin was the soloist in Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, written for Paul Wittgenstein, who'd lost his right arm in the 1914-18 war. This too is witty, celebrating the triumph of creative invention over disaster. A good pianist can do with one hand what some couldn't do with two. 

Abundant life and wit, too, in Roth's account of Stravinsky The Firebird (another Boulez favourite). The Firebird is a magical figure which materializes out of the air, leading the Prince to Kashchey’s secret garden. Unlike the ogre, the Prince is kind and sets the bird free. He’s rewarded with a magic feather. The Princess and other captives are saved by altruistic love. The solo part for horn plays a role in the music like that of a solo dancer. Hushed pizzicato celli and basses, building  to crescendi that shone vividly like fireballs. The joyous tolling of great bells, and trombones and trumpets hailing  the moment of liberation.