Semyon Bychkov Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Prom : Smetana Tchaikovsky Shostakovich

Semyon Bychkov conducts the Czech Philharmonic - credit Marco Borggreve for the Czech Philharmonic

Just as the Second Night of the BBC Proms 2019 was the real First Night of the Proms in terms of musical quality, (Please read my review here),  Semyon Bychkov's Prom with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was probably the real Last Night of the Proms, since the official Last Night of the Prom is party time, when everyone has a good time, enjoying lighter fare, and so it should be !  But Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra reminded us that good music, well performed, represents the vision of Sir Henry Wood. The Last Night we know now only dates from Malcolm Sargent.

Bychkov's appointment as Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic was unexpected, though it was clear that the government and the management wanted someone who would please the public, recording companies, foreign organizations and the Ministry of Culture. (Please read what I wrote at the time).  Given that the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's reputation is based on its unique mastery of Czech repertoire, this signalled a departure.  Not without precedent : In 1991, Gerd Albrecht the then governement imposed on the orchestra, hoping that that would increase its international profile and sell more records. Though Albrecht was a very great conductor, the match was not made in heaven. Controversially, the orchestra was split into two. The Prague Philharmonia (PK) still thrives and is very good.  If the governemnt again wanted a big name and recording contracts, that's what they have with Bychkov. His advantage was that Decca sponsored Bychkov's Tchaikovsky Project, "Beloved Friends", which has been around for years. He conducted the Project with several different orchestras many times (including at the Barbican, a good series with Kiril Gerstein, but which somehow didn't sell despite massive advertising).  Bychkov took the Czech Phil on a highly publicized tour of The United States (with two stops in non-major venues in London and Vienna).  Not really an "international" tour.  Bychkov is good (though his WDR Köln were somewhat uneven) , but he's developed iunto a truly great conductor of repertoire closest to his heart -Tchaikovsky, for example, and Russian repertoire, and outstanding opera.

A wonderful performance, geared around Bychkov's strengths, the Czech Philharmonic playing with animated enthusiasm.  Acknowledging the orchestra's grand traditions, Bychkov started with extracts from Smetana's The Bartered Bride - the Overture and three of the dances : the opera in miniature. Wonderfully vivid,  bursting with energy. Though the plot is folkloristic, there's far more to the opera than pastoral kitsch . It's an explosion of  energy and high spirits  : the burgeoning of Spring and new growth (which is why marriage matters to peasants).  The lovers see off those who willl trade them off : they remain uncowed and independent.  Bychkov's tempi were fast, and he kept pushing, forcing  his players forward.   They are so good that they didn't miss a beat. Just as dancing is a physical workout, so should this music evolve.  The tension between punch and lyricism was suitably tight, emphatic timpani setting a strong pulse, from which the freedom  of the dance figures flew.  At moments the brass had an almost "alpine" atmosphere -  there are mountains in Bohemia, and the peasants are hardy.

With the Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Bychkov was in home territory. In concert performance, the soloist Elena Stikhina was impressive enough, but the orchestra excelled.   Bychkov has conducted Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini, with them in the past.

More core Bychkov repertoire with Shostakovich Symphony no 8 ("Stalingrad") Op  65 (1943) another very good performance, the orchestra playing with great alacrity : sharply defined staccato, drum rolls and brass fanfares, crashing cymbals, a forbidding hum in the strings. The cor anglais rose like a spectre, like smoke from the ruins of battle, ominous strings (celli, basses, later violins and violas) groaning in its aftermath.  The Allegretto and Allegro function as scherzos. In the first, impish figures screamed, and woodwinds rushed into manic dance. In the second, whirring sounds, pipes and pistons, evoking at once an infernal machine, yet also, perhaps a sly reference to the relentless state machinery of the Stalinist era - the worship of technology in Soviet Realism taken to extremes.  Hence the mock gaiety of the brass and percussion, in mimicry of  military parades. A restrained, but moving finale, the "hollow" nature of the brass reflecting the "machinery" that  had gone before.  Perhaps this will be a new direction for the Czech Philhramonic Orchestra. But pray that they don't lose what they do best of all, even if it's not "international-friendly".

Semyon Bychkov Prom : Detlev Glanert, Mahler 4

                                                                                                      Photo: Roger Thomas 

Prom 33 at the Royal Albert Hall, with Semyon Bychkov conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Detlev Glanert and Gustav Mahler Symphony no 4.  Bychkov and the BBC SO are always reliable, so this Mahler 4 should have been safe.  Glanert's been a Proms favourite for years - 9 individual works since 1995. So no surpises there, either. But sometimes safe is not enough. How I longed for something to ignite, to lift the performances from routine to what they could have been!

Detlev Glanert

Detlev Glanert was one of Hans Werner Henze's few students. Like Henze, Glanert's very prolific - 11 operas, including Caligula which has been staged in London, (see more here and my review of a performance in Frankfurt here) and numerous other works, including the fairly recent Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch. Please see my detailed review of that here, which will be useful since that, too is coming to the Barbican on 4th December, with Semyon Bychkov conducting the BBCSO, part of a Total Immersion Day into Glanert's career. (Please see more here). That's the real reason behind this Proms programme - not because Einsamkeit is connected to Mahler.  Not at all - read the poem ! One of Glanert's things has been his adaptations of other composer's works - oodles and oddles of them, not all straightforward orchestrations. Some have been much more original works, like his early Mahler Skizze, a zany"joke" combining different themes from Mahler. He has often reorchestrated Schubert, many of these miniatures featuring in earlier proms over the years. Glanert's Einsamkeit is based on Schubert's Einsamkeit D620 (1818), a long ballad to a poem by Franz Joseph Mayrhofer, with whom Schubert had a curious relationship. Morose and possibly mentally unstable, Mayrhofer had few friends and eventually committed suicide, so the poem is oddly prophetic. Please read the text here on Lieder.net, with translations.  If poems could be bipolar, this might be one, with its repeating first lines, and extreme contrasts betwen verses. The piano part in Schubert's setting swings from vehement to eerily insouciant, with obssessive pedalling throughout.  The text is a prayer to a deranged God, the pentitent doomed to eternal self-torture.  In theory, this could have been adapted to a scena of great dramatic presence. But it's very much a "masculine" poem, so why set it for soprano?  Perhaps some sopranos could make it suitably demonic, but not Christina Gansch, who was under strain, unable to compete with the orchestra.

Rather more convincing, Glanert's Weites Land ('Musik mit Brahms' for orchestra) . "Immediately recognizable points of departure are the first four measures of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony with its characteristic alternation of a descending third and ascending sixth. Both intervals are woven into the texture time and again, until the surprising conclusion" wrote a German critic at its premiere in 2014.  Again we have Glanert's feel for heady contrast, here effective because it's not tied to text but to abstract atmosphere: Perhaps a sense of wide, open horizons, where land meets sea and sky?

Bychkov and the BBC SO have done loads of Mahler over the years, separately and together, so it could be taken as given that this would be a decent Mahler 4. It didn't, of course, reach the heights of Bernard Haitink's Mahler 4 with the BBC SO earlier this year at the Barbican - please read my review here - but perhaps nothing could. Haitink's in an altogther more elevated league. So I wasn't too bothered and enjoyed the performance well enough, though I could not understand why some of the Royal Albert Hall audience needed to clap wildly between each movement - something to do with the hands when the mind's not engaged.  Wisely Bychkov didn't allow even the shortest break between the third and final movements, and held his hands aloft for the longest time at the very end, sending a clear message to the audience : pay attention!  A decent reading, if nothing very memorable. Glanert was the real reason for this Prom, but Mahler sells, especially Mahler 4 which many still think is "sunny" and light.  But, as with Haitink's M4, the performance was let down by the singing. Gansch is very young and not all that experienced, which is not necessarily a bad thing, if you realize that the text describes a child's vision of heaven.  There are many different ways of interpreting and perfoming this part : child-like delicacy, sensual enjoyment, melancholy mixed with joy. But it does need a singer who can put more into it. Many more senior singers would think twice about singing Mahler 4 in the same programme as a demanding new work like Einsamkeit, but Gansch isn't yet well enough established to stand up to management pressure.