BBC Proms 2010 post mortem

It's less than a week since the Last Night of the Proms 2010, but already plans are in hand for next year and the next. Organizing a festival on this gargantuan scale takes organization. Now the post-prandial snooze is over, thoughts for the future.

Fabulous programming this year. A spectacular beginning with 3 blockbusters - Mahler 8, Meistersinger and Simon Boccanegra. How will they top that?

An almost equally spectacular ending. Glyndebourne, and  two Rattle Proms with the Berliner-Philharmoniker, arguably the best orchestra in the world .(They also exist in disguise as the Lucerne Festival Orchestra).  I loved their Mahler 1 in Berlin, the Proms version being more relaxed, and loved their second Prom with the Uber-Sinfonie, combining Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. This was a masterstroke, and beautifully, intelligently performed. Rattle gets a lot of flak because he's successful. It's nothing to do with performances, which naturally vary, but the simple fact remains that the Berliners love him and they know a bit more about music than the average troll.

The emphasis this year on Sir Henry Wood and real Proms tradition was good too, because it dispels some holy myths. Wood was an idealist: not for him the redneck bigotry some seem to expect these days. Since when were the British really "British" anyway? "Tradition" means nothing in itself, especially when there's no substance to it.

Where are the Yeomen of England was, in 1910, "new music", premiered only 7 years before. One of the regular readers on this site has done a lot of work on Edward German and the singers of his time, which I'll post about soon.

New music has always been part of the Proms. Unexpected highlight was Ilan Volkov's Prom with Cage, Feldmann and Cornelius Cardew's Bun, whose title had all intrigued though it wasn't  a patch on the wonderful Cage and Feldmann pieces.  Favourites for me were Simon Holt's a table of noises, Hans Abrahamsen's Wald and  Luke Bedford's Outblaze The Sky.  And Ferneyhough, always in a league of his own.

This proves "popular" does not have to mean "populist". If the General Public wants ITV or West End pap, that's where they go. If they come to the Proms they expect it to be different. Fortunately, Roger Wright's stemmed the dumbing down trend somewhat.

Perhaps he's also trying to raise the standard of presenters, Presenting is more difficult than it looks, because a presenter has to talk without thinking,. That's how the job works. The secret is to get a presenter who actually knows what they're doing, so their comments come from mind not mouth.  Last year some of the presenting was outright shameful. This year slightly better. though the BBC is still seduced by "experts".  Last year Tom Service wrote an article declaring that Mahler shouldn't be played in the Royal Albert Hall. Maybe they've taken him at his word because this year fortunately he didn't present Mahler as far as I know (I use mute a lot).

Mahler Year worries me because it's become a pig trough, everyone after a piece of the action whether or not they have anything to contribute. Proms 2010 brought one exceptionally good Mahler 7, Metzmacher,  very intelligently planned. This was  one of the highlights of the whole season, surprisingly overlooked because people either don't appreciate Metzmacher as a Mahlerian (he's good) or expect too much syrup in their Schreker and Korngold.

Bělohlávek's Mahler 8th got more flak than he deserved. perhaps because people were expecting miracles. Fact is, this symphony easily falls apart inn the wrong hands. At the Royal Albert Hall in 2006, Daniele Gatti lost control. Don't even think about Gergiev at St Paul's. Bělohlávek's not a natural Mahler man but at least he can run a team. Pity there wasn't more of the repertoire he does to perfection, like Dvořák, Suk and Janáček.

Robert Schumann's image was reshaped by Proms 2010. Vassily Petrenko's Manfred  and Thomas Dausgaard were exceptional. Even Knussen's oddball Schumann was a treat because it reached levels of Schumann few appreciate. Schumann's misunderstood because he isn't Wagner and isn't Beethoven but, like Mendelssohn and Weber, inhabits territory that hasn't been fashionable or much understood. Until now, I hope,

Impossible any Proms season without Beethoven. Some excellent performances this year, Paul Lewis for example, and Paavo Jarvi, because I like the period instrument approach. A few duds, but that's to be expected.

More European orchestras, please! They are extremely good, do interesting repertoire and have distinctive individuality.  One "tradition" we don't need is the dominance of US orchestras. They're good but should stand on their own merits, not simply because they're famous.

Every year, without fail, someone asks me: "Do you listen to the Proms?" Then they blanch when I say "around 60". But anyone can listen, even more than that. It's free. In fact anyone who cares about music at all should listen because there's so much variety to be heard, so much to discover and to rethink.  No-one jumps from the womb knowing everything, though many think they do. "Experience" someone said to me this season.  Perhaps that's iconoclastic in this age of instant expertise, but with the Proms, there's no excuse for not trying.

Last Night of the Proms 2010

Renée Fleming, Prom Queen! Complete with helmet and flag! The BBC Proms are the biggest block party in the whole world, as well as the Biggest Music Festival, and the Last Night of the Proms is the biggest party of the whole season.

Imagine, 86,000 tickets issued for the various events, Hyde Park and other free open air venues and concert halls in the UK completely packed out. Millions more listening at home or with friends (where you safely quaff champagne). All over the world, online too. By tomorrow the repeat broadcast will be available on the BBC Site, and also more clips on youtube both official and pirated.

La Renée gave us a Rule Britannia with genuine baroque flourish: nice change! She knows how not to take herself too seriously, though, which is a saving grace. In any case, no-one comes to the Last Night for High Art. That's why I loved Sergei Leiferkus singing Edward German's Who were the Yeomen of England? with heavy Russian accent at the 1910 Proms Last Night reconstruction last Sunday. (There is a special clip of this on the BBC listen again site)  This should become a classic!

No English singer could sing German without Heavy Irony. When a Russian sings it, it's hysterically funny. As a historian friend told me apropos this Prom, that London in 1910 was full of exiles, Russians, Polish, Jewish and Indian. Good point! One thing the British should be proud of is that London was a world city, even then, a haven for progressive thinkers. This is one aspect of Britishness that's worth remembering, which right-wing bigots forget.

At the Last Night of the Proms in 1946, my mother was in the arena, a penniless refugee, recently liberated from a camp, in England for the first time. To her, Land of Hope and Glory really meant something. Flag waviing is fine, jingoism isn't. A few years ago showing off got out of hand, and some people were more interested in hogging attention than the musical spirit of the Proms. Thank goodness BBCTV crews don't focus on these types anymore, but linger on ordinary members of the audience. Ban vuvuzuelas, someone! They're intrusive and fascist, the sonic equivalent of a fart.

One of the pleasures of the Proms is the "ordinary people". Wonderful to spot friends in the audience, having fun, not playing up for TV. And watch around 48 minutes into part 2. There's a celebrity in the crowd, but the cameraman doesn't notice, so it's a fuzzy group shot. He's completely unassuming, no airs. The people around him probably didn't realize he's a star. Bet HE sang nicely.

Jiří Bĕlohlávek was lovable, because he. too, is unpretentious. His English is odd ("Gent-lemen") but it's much better to have a conductor who expresses himself through music than through showmanship. The speech is one tradition we could do without. It's unnatural, as it creates unnecessary stress on a conductor who isn't that way inclined. Most of them haven't the guts to say, let me do music not clown. Bĕlohlávek's genial, and you can see his nerves, and the relief on his face when he starts to do what he's much better at.

Post mortem on the 2010 Proms season is now up.  It's been wonderful, extremelty well planned and balanced, spectaular flourishes, many good moments and only a few duds.

Hansel and Gretel Glyndebourne Prom

Glyndebourne normally comes to the Proms at the start of the season, clashing with performances at Lewes. Now it leads the treats nearer the close of the Proms, when we need extra goodies. "Saving for dessert". Not a bad idea with a production of the Humperdinck meringue that reminds us that excess consumerism isn't a good thing.

Concert stagings are an art form. The more rigorous the constraint, the more depends on the wit of the director. No scenery to fall back on. At this Prom, the witch's house was a miniature mock-up of the Royal Albert Hall itself, which does kind of look like a round domed cake.  Haha! Resist the temptation to read deeply into that. They didn't do a giant  pork barrel.  Here is Opera Today's description of Prom 61.

Dum Transissets Ferneyhough

A feast of Dum Transissets at Saturday's Prom Matinee, built around Brian Ferneyhough's Dum Transisset I-IV. A whole Prom built around a short string quartet? But Ferneyhough's one of the most interesting European composers around, anything he does is seriously significant. (Book now for the Ferneyhough Total Immersion.) It's been heard at Salzburg, Huddersfield and Berlin, but this was the London premiere.  Listen to the The Arditti Quartet on the repeat broadcast  (starts at 43.0 minutes).

The reference is Dum transisset Sabbatum, "When the Sabbath hath past", meaning the Sabbath after Jesus's Crucifixion. Jesus has died and been buried. But when his friends go to anoint his body, he appears, alive again. The key mystery in the whole New Testament. As is said in the commentary, the idea is that the Ardittis find their way "like Houdinis" through Ferneyhough's intricate maze. 

Four sections which move from statis to horror through rapture to wild freedom: Reliquary, Totentanz, Shadows and Contrafracta. Barely audible tappings, bowings that shape huge twisting contortions, exquisite pppp that makes you listen intently.  Maybe the excellent blog 5 against 4 will write about it?  He writes about new music in an  informed but communicative way, which is good.  Part of the reason new music doesn't get through to "ordinary" people is because some of the fraternity likes excluding outsiders. It's not technicality that intimidates (anyone can master that)  but the spirit of cliqueyness. That's not fair on the music, much of which is very good indeed. There's no reason mere mortals shouldn't enjoy new music, given encouragement to enjoy and feel.   

Perhaps that's why this Prom encased Ferneyhough with other works on the same Risen from the Dead theme. Those accustomed to contemplating the miracle in the New Testament have already acquired contemplative skills and should be able to adapt them to new means of expression.  That said, I'd rather have listened to the original Dum Transisset by Christopher Tye (1505?-1572?) which inspired Ferneyhough in the first place. It's much more unearthly and primeval than the latter-day versions included in this Prom.

Luckily, we did get Taverner (the original). I did hear the whole concert through, so maybe I did a Houdini too, since only Ferneyhough (and Taverner) were worth more than one listen. Sorry but I'm definitely no fan of Jonathan Harvey or Thea Musgrave. I could hear where Bayan Northcott was going with his Hymn to Cybele but it was a bit too Birtwistle for me.

Rattle Mahler 1 Prom 65 Berliner Beethoven

A week after their concert in Berlin, the Berliner Philharmoniker and Simon Rattle brought Mahler 1 and Beethoven 4 to Prom 65.  Silly to nitpick comparisons between performances, though London was more relaxed. Not a bad thing with Mahler's First Symphony and its youthful exuberance.

A ravishing start - extremely quiet, demanding careful attention, for out of the stillness emerge twitches of sound : the music awakes, as nature awakes. The Ging heut' theme rises tentatively, then strides forth confidently, the whole orchestra surging together, Emmanuel Pahud's flute der lust'ge Fink, urging them ever onwards.

Extreme pianissimo, delicately held. The orchestra is listening, like the protagonist in the song, careful not to disturb the dawn. Quavers become cuckoo calls, heard from different directions, as in nature. Steady tempi evoke footsteps, gradually building in vigour, horns call, trumpets zing, and you hear the finch sing Ei, du? Gelt !....Ei Gelt ! Du?  So accurately observed, Mahler as Messiaen.

Rattle respects the marking Nicht zu schnell, because it emphasizes the angular walking rhythms.  Always the sense of being at one with a wayfarer, alert to the sounds around him.  A single double bass, then bassoons and low strings: pre echoes here of Fischpredigt and even a jaunty theme defined by cymbals and timpani : a germ of the Dionysius march from the Third Symphony?

Clapping between movements here would be barbaric. Mahler's silences shape his music. Sturmisch bewegt here was an explosion, all the more cataclysmic because it emerged from a void.  This felt dangerous, (especially in Berlin) as if Rattle and the Berliners were teetering dangerously on a precipice, shocked by the immensity of what's before them. The madness of Ein glühend Messer, ein Messer in meiner Brust, glimpsed in alarums, sharp attacks, and edgy cross rhythms.

Rattle plays up the dynamic contrasts, for this outburst is central to the explosion of creative ideas Mahler was embarking upon.  On the filmed version in Berlin the camera switches to a close up of the score, lingering on the quiet passage that emerges from the chaos - exceptionally well-informed filming.

Just as the song cycle ends with a vision of warmth, the symphony ends joyfully. Huge, swirling textures from the Berliners, almost too heady to be quite realistic. But that's an insight in itself. This finale is glorious, almost out of proportion to the simple vision of nature with which it begins. Is there a quote, there of Handel ? "He shall reign, he shall reign, he shall reign forever and ever". Village lad as Messiah? The seven horns stand up like a chorus of angels, heard from heaven. But that's what it must have felt like to Mahler, embarking on his journey, conquering his inner demons through his art.

We've all heard dozens of Mahler Firsts but this was exhilarating because it was so well observed and aware. I liked the way Rattle connected Mahler 1 to Beethoven 4, spotlighting the similar beginnings. Since the Friday Berlin broadcast (available on demand) I've come to appreciate Beethoven 4 in connection with Beethoven 6, the "Pastoral", also a vision of nature in the countryside. A storm explodes there, too, but it's cathartic, clearing away rather than merely destructive. Just like Mahler 1

No way could Rattle have programmed Beethoven Fourth after Mahler First, it wouldn't sound right. (Mahler 1 and Beethoven 6 would be too much).  But the comparison is relevant on a much deeper musical level than the nonsense about the symphonies being written after love affairs. For composers like Beethoven and Mahler, the main love affairs of their lives was with their creative spirit. 

Please see my other posts on Mahler, Mahler 1 etc., including oddball  "Mahler and the Tarot" (for Mahler is quite quirky!) . In this anniversary year everyone's carving out their commercial stake in this composer, but I'm just trying to download 40 years of listening experience in the hope it might be useful to others.

F-X Roth, Rameau, Canteloube, Henry Wood Prom 63

François-Xavier Roth is creating waves because he's such a forthright personality, so individualistic. France seems to produce pioneers like this who follow their artistic integrity. Very different from the increasing conformity of the Anglophone world. France and Germany are where it's at. Roth's exciting because he's eclectic, passionate about early music and new, with a special interest in voice. This may be the "next generation" in music, where ancient and modern  fertilize each other. Genre's no barrier to the creative spirit.

Barely 40, Roth  has conducted Ensemble Intercontemporain, worked with John Eliot Gardiner's's Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, and is just about to become chief conductor at SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden, Hans Rosbaud's old orchestra.

Watch the TV broadcast of Prom 63 if you can, though the audio only is just as vivid, because Roth's got presence as well as vision. Conductors have to be communicators, spreading their enthusiasm to inspire the listener. Nonetheless, it's certainly not for show that Roth conducts the suite of  Rameau's Dardanus with an antique drum. That's historically informed. Lully died beating percussion into his foot. The opera Dardanus is a series of tableaux with dance, so rhythmic stability is essential.  Percussion is fundamental to dance and to many forms of music that have grown from folk roots. How vivacious Roth makes the BBC National Orchestra of Wales sound! Totally contemporary, yet connected to ancient traditions, even to non-western form.  Late 19th century style isn't by any means the only way to go.

Perhaps that's why Roth followed Rameau with Joseph Canteloube's Songs from the Auvergne. Canteloube was interested in the Auvergne because it was so different,  less "civilized" than the rest of France, with a singular regional identity. In the mountains, life's harsh. Peasants have to make their own music, so it's timeless. I've long loved Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau in this repertoire, rather than opera singers who turn to it when their voices age. Now, Anna Caterina Antonacci joins the illustrious.  She's excellent because she sounds youthful and vigorous, as befits simple songs about peasant life and the open air. No unnecessary decoration, but pure and direct, and beautiful for that very reason.

Again, genres blur. Canteloube wasn't writing faux medieval. He was writing modern music inspired by the unique Auvergne dialect and character. Not so different, really, from Ravel's Basques or Cezanne's rugged landscapes. Or, for that matter from Ferneyhough's response to early polyphony ( PCM 5) or Luke Bedford's Or voit tout en aventure.

Again, Roth's musical adventure leads to Martin Matalon's Lignes de fuite ("convergence lines").  It  moves like a series of visual images - Pictures at an Exhibition, already! Each turn is vivid and colourful, music that's fun to grasp. Immediately I thought, this guy should be writing for film, and sure enough he does. Matalon's wrote a new score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, commissioned by IRCAM.  Since then the film has been restored with newly-discovered footage. This is being screened (with original score) at the ICA from 10th September. I've already seen it and will be writing about it in more depth. It's seminal.

Just as Roth started with Rameau's tableaux, he ended this very intelligent porogramme with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. But not the familiar Ravel version, but Sir Henry Wood's, created 7 years before Ravel.  This was fascinating,  ornamentation like heavy gilding, edges neatly smoothed over. The sensibilities of a confident British Empire applied to Mussorgsky's untamed Russianness. The Great Gate of Kiev as the Royal Albert Memorial. And why not? Each era remakes in its own forms, and we learn from hearing things in different ways. Roth's logic works. Mix genres and make more of what you hear.

photo credit :  Céline Gaudier

Good for Beyoncé

What's the big deal about Beyoncé being the source of Mark Anthony Turnage's Hammered Out?  Turnage has always mixed genres, like his teacher Gunther Schuler.  In fact lots of composers have mixed genres, borrowed from each other, recycled from wherever. All this righteous indignation ! Why don't we crucify Engelbert Humperdinck for using the pop tunes of his time in Hansel und Gretel.

Hoho. Although I had never heard of Beyoncé til this week, I managed to spot that Hammered Out was "not scary", "entertaining" and would be a popular hit!  And the theme of "exploitation" too!

 People are far too uptight about what is and isn't music.  Most people who listen to pop don't listen to classical and most who listen to classical don't listen to pop.  Thanks to Turnage and Beyoncé the barriers are exposed for what they really are. This one's a bit too close for comfort but what a laugh!  Maybe Turnage should retitle it "Variations on a Theme From Beyoncé", though there's not all that much variation. There's good music and bad, but that's not necessarily dictated by genre.

One thing I did wonder, though was why they followed that sublime Barber concerto with Sibelius ?  Bernstein might have been a better choice, especially Bernstein 2 "The Age of Anxiety" which mixes genres too - jazz, Broadway and mainstream classical.  Robertson conducted this wonderfully a few years ago, really making sense of the piece and restoring respect for Bernstein's strange mindset. Much better fit.

Mathis der Maler GMJO Hindemith Prom 62

Hindemith's Mathis der Maler with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (Prom 62) should have been a wonderful experience. The GMJO redefine the term "youth orchestra". Claudio Abbado's vision was to give young musicians the finest support and coaching possible, to treat them like serious professionals so they'd be inspired to play like fully fledged artists, not just another collection of bright kids. Eyes closed you can't tell how old they are. That's the point. The vision is that youth can  be channeled into art.

Mathis der Maler is inspirational music, and no doubt the orchestra knows the background well, because it informs performance.  As the Weimar republic collapsed and Hitler came to power Hindemith studied Matthias Grünewald's masterpiece, the altar triptych at Isenheim, pictured above. (click to expand for detail).

Grünewald lived during the Reformation, so he knew all about schism in society, and how belief can lead to war.  The paintings depict horrors like crucifixion. Yet they're designed to make the viewer contemplate, and sublimate earthly pain.  Could, or should, modern music give modern people some sense of transcendence when evil reigns? Wilhelm Fürtwängler knew exactly what he was doing when he championed Hindemith and stood up to Goebbels.  When I found Fürtwängler's denazification file, there was a lot on Hindemith. Luckily there was enough evidence in his defence that the authorities didn't need to study the opera.

Nowadays when churches are full of tourists more interested in webcams than art, one forgets that paintings like these were made for intense, personal contemplation. Perhaps music, because it's more abstract, can give us that inexpressible inner dimension.

Certainly this performance was pleasant, because this music isn't "difficult" to take in even though structurally it's as complex as a triptych which can be viewed from many sides, including when it's closed shut. Herbert Blomstedt spent years in Dresden, one of the hot points in the Reformation, but for whatever reason, this didn't add insight to his conducting. Had this performance been directed by passion or insight it would have been truly beautiful in the deepest meaning of the word.

Abbado and most others who've conducted the GMJO have capitalized on their youthful energy, which is why this orchestrra has such unique character. If Blomstedt had let his players take more risks and play with greater freedom, they'd have reached real illumination. Technically correct isn't artistically correct.

Please see my piece on Paul Hindemith's Das Marienleben (also inspired by Grünewald). Picture HERE

Some Fischer-Dieskau fans denounce Christian Gerhaher, but I've always had a soft spot for him. Not though at Prom 62, where his Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was pedestrian, even in the better acoustic on broadcast. Isn't the young journeyman walking, you might ask? No, not really.  This set of songs was Mahler's preparation for greater things, just as Hindemith's symphony was a preparation for a much darker, complex opera.  The fahrenden Gesellen isn't really walking, he's covering huge emotional distances.  Just not in this performance.

Bruckner is spiritual, though I usually can't relate to his vibe (Messiaen works miracles with me) so it was unlikely that I'd benefit from Blomstedt's Bruckner 9.  So here's a treat - Hindemith himself conducting Mathis der Maler (stretched over 4 parts). Get a good recording and hope that the GMJO will play it again.

Gardiner Martinů Dvořák Prom 58

Here's Douglas Cooksey on John Eliot Gardiner's Prom 58. Dvořák, Martinů, Janáček and Grieg, with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Lars Vogt. An interesting experiment hearing JEG's early music sensibilities adapted to the 20th century. Bělohlávek in this repertoire is almost unsurpassable, so idiomatic and original. Why swap conductors?  Nonetheless, I enjoyed this more than Douglas did.

OTOH, maybe I appreciated it more after the disappointment of the 2 Osmo Vänskä Proms. Someone described the Minnesota Orchestra a a well-drilled machine. Worthy and reliable, but machines don't drive themselves. How Beethoven 9 can be earthbound, I don't know. There's a point at which underplayed dynamics merge into blandness. And Alisa Weilerstein impressed me less than when I heard her with Barenboim in May. She's good, but not "that" good yet.

Vänskä  was a near contemporary at the Sibelius Academy with Magnus Lindberg, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho, but unlike them stayed in rural Finland, building up a regional orchestra specializing in Sibelius and mainstream repertoire.  Moving to Minnesota wasn't quite such a leap into the unknown for  Vänskä as there are thousands of Finns in the region (where it's cold and there are forests and lakes). In fact at one stage there were more Finnish newspapers there than in Finland. Maybe what these Proms are saying is, get conductors out of their comfort zones and see how they do. Above is the Sibelius Hall in Lahti. Look, no trees! There is a harbour on the other side. When it's snowing, this glass-clad building must disappear in the mist.

Turnage Hammered Out Shaham Prom 54

At last, after a long artistic drought it's good to hear Mark-Anthony Turnage back on form with Hammered Out, premiered at BBC Prom 54. Nice and punchy, like a prize fighter strutting his stuff. Good omens for Turnage's opera Anna Nicole, next year at the Royal Opera House. Maybe Anna Nicole's desperate post-Diana Dors persona (Marilyn's too classy) fits Turnage's thing for kitsch interpreted vaguely ironic. Hammered Out is nothing scary, and quite entertaining. If the opera's more of the same it will be a hit especially with audiences that don't usually do opera. Much as I had fun because I don't normally listen to pop.

Pity, though, for Anna Nicole Smith was a disaster waiting to happen. Tacky as she was, her life was tragic, She exploited others and was exploited in return, but she's still making money. There's plenty of sociological comment in her story, but it isn't like Turnage to penetrate psychological depths. It isn't always needed, and Anna Nicole was such a character that maybe she'll fill the opera with sheer panache.

Turnage's Hammered Out could not have found a better interpreter in David Robertson, Mr Energetic himself. He stresses the tension in the repeated patterns, punched out rapid fire. In the middle movement, there's some respite, but then the sassiness begins again. Tight, muscular playing from the BBCSO.

David Robertson and Gil Shaham have such rapport that it's always an event when they play together. Robertson's married to Shaham's sister but the relationship goes much deeper. It's practically symbiotic as this performance of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto showed. They've probably done this piece together dozens of times, but it still feels fresh and exciting. If anything, their experience warms the performance, as it flowed confidently and naturally.

Evenly paced Sibelius Symphony No 2, as well. Listening to this old favourite after listening to Shaham made me think about Sibelius as violinist, so I paid special attention to the strings. Every time we listen to something we're always hearing "new". If we're human, we're always developing, as the performers do too, and it's not a bad thing.  I was delighted then to spot that BBCTV 4 is showing Christopher Nupen's wonderful film about Sibelius again tonight. No rebroadcast, get the DVD. It's one of the few music documerntaries that you can play over and over and stll enjoy because it's a work of art in itself.

Latest news is that a long passage of Turnage's Hammered Out is almost identical to a pop hit by Beyoncé. Yow!! Good for her!  There's no reason why pop shouldn't cross into so-called serious music!  Not so sure, though, about Turnage not giving her credit.

See also THIS  Until this week I'd never heard of Beyoncé but managed to guess that Hammered Out was "not scary", "entertaining" and would be a popular hit ! What a laugh !

Schumann flies: Thomas Dausgaard Prom 51

Schumann's Symphonies don't usually pull in the crowds, but Nina Stemme does. Ironically, Schumann emerged the star of Prom 51. (follow link for rebroadcast)

Conventionally, Schumann symphonies have been marinated in the rubato-rich juices of Late Romantic lushness. Thomas Daugaard's approach is to dispense with the veneer of received performance practice, and go back to what the music might have meant to the composer himself. Earlier Romantic, then, lit by the free spirited clarity of Nature. Hearing Schumann in the context of his world is perhaps  the key to understanding his music, rather than hearing him through Wagnerian and big-orchestra filters.

Although the Swedish Chamber Orchestra Örebro (birthplace of Jussi Björling) isn't a period orchestra, there's no reason why they can't play informed by period practice.  Hence the natural horns, evoking the woods around cities in Schumann's times, and the sounds of posthorns in the towns. Tighter. lighter textures. With Dausgaard, Schumann flies, and the true adventure in his music is freed.

Schumann's Second Symphony in C major has been called problematic. As early as 1848, a critic wriote that, despite its grandeur and the elegant delineation of its sections, that there was "much that is peculair and capricious, that one will find astounding  and over which one does not know whether to question  or to be angry". Later, the image of Schumann as a madman clouded popular perception. Only now, perhaps, can we accept Schumann on his merits.

This is not, as sometimes suggested, a symphony about manic depression. The terms didn't exist in those days, and the idea of triumph certainly didn't apply to Schumann. Even at his happiest, in the year of his marriage, he's haunted by doubt, as anyone listening sensitively to Dichterliebe will know. With that myth out of the way, we can hear in this symphony deliberate references to Schumann's heroes, Bach, Mendelssohn and Beethoven.  At this point in his life, Schumann's come through a bad patch, but he's looking ahead.

The chorale theme that flows through this symphony connects explicitly to Bach and to Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Bach, of course, was "new music" in Schumann's times having been brought back into the mainstream by Mendelssohn.  It's significant, for there's a huge connection between Schumann's symphonies and his songs and chamber music. They're all part of a flow, just as in Mahler. Understanding Schumann in terms of scale and intimacy, the way Dausgaard does, makes sense.

Nowadays we can also appreciate music that it isn't smoothed out and homogenized.  Schumann 2 is odd, because he mixes serene passages with oddball quirks, like the sections in the Scherzo. The last movement is sublime, but it's undercut by the moody bassoon from the Adagio, which Schumann told a friend was when he heard his "half sickness". Yet he had a "special fondnesss"  for this strange melancholy. It's not quite as simple as feeling secure in sanity.

All his life, Schumann was fascinated by cryptic codes and portents, so secret codes do exist in his music. this symphony references Beethoven who also had a crisis of the soul, and the An die ferne Geliebter connections may refer to Clara, whose love gave Schumann respite for a while. Song again, in the guise of symphony.

I like Dausgaard's Schumann much in the way I liked Oliver Knussen Schumann Symphony no 3. Dausgaard's more elegant, but neither of them attempt to clean Schumann up or straighten him up. Schumann's interesting because he doesn't fit neatly.

Nina Stemme sings with great majesty, but Berlioz Nuits d’Été needs more vivacity. This is Berlioz nimble, agile and inspired.  The vibrant rhythmic invention of Villanelle didn't get off the ground. I tried singing along mentally, but kept getting stalled. Stemme sounded occluded, without the vigour she's capable of. In a way, though, it reaffirmed the validity of non-Wagner dynamics.

Albert Schnelzer's A Freak in Burbank was an amusing bagatelle. It's a take-off on Haydn's Toy Symphony and refers to Tim Burton's movies, which hybridize cartoon and horror. Hence the juxtaposition with Schumann, maybe. I liked the Tom and Jerry scampering, but the piece is cute rather than deep.

photo credit : Marianne Grondhal

Cage and Feldman Volkov Prom 47

Climbing a mountain made of buns? This photo shows the Cheung Chau Bun Festival for which teams of men train all year so they can scale heights of pastry. It's fun and down to earth. Why expend angst when you can simply enjoy.

Ilan Volkov's Prom 47 was wonderful, defusing the hysterics modern music often attracts from those who hate on principle.The Bogeymen of the Avant Garde are perfectly approachable, if you take them on their own terms. That's perhaps why Cornelius Cardew's Bun No 1 works. It's slight but fun. As Calum McDonald, in his notes puts it "Cardew deploys a whole panoply of techniques – contrary motion, retrogrades, glissandi, harmonics, staggered entries, extreme contrasts of loud and soft, angular motifs, cautious stepwise movement, decisive synchronised attacks, extremes of range from the deepest tuba to the highest piccolo, transparent chamber-music-like part-writing, massive tutti exclamations, and almost constantly changing time signatures."  Cardew gave many reasons for the whimsical title, but for me the piece feels soft, round and yummy - no percussion at all!

Nothing but percussion in John Cage's First Construction (in metal). Varèse’s Ionisation (written only 8 to 10 years before) is obviously an influence, but possibly also Colin McPhee whose explorations in Indonesian music and gamelan in particular have transformed western music. For many, non-western music opened a whole new palette of expressive possibilities. Messiaen, for example, and even Simon Holt's Table of Noises.  First Construction is structurally very sophisticated, mapped with mathematical rigour, so the lines weave and interplay precisely. Medieval polyphony, carefully designed for maximum textural complexity, except that Cage is using percussion instead of voice. You don't have to analyze medieval polyphony to enjoy it. Nor do you have to map out Cage's structure to get a lot from this deeply expressive music, though it enhances the experience. It's like a medieval cathedral constructed of exotic materials, different but spiritually satisfying.

I enjoyed Howard Skempton's Lento (1990)  for much the same reason, though it's nowhere as important a work as Cage's First Construction. The mood is transcendant, defying the large forces used in its creation. It's not all that far removed from mainstream music - think Mahler, or Bruckner - though it's modern.  Ilan Volkov gets the BBCSSO to play it with refinement, so the harmonies blend beautifully.

In 2006, the London Sinfonietta played Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel at the Proms. It was unbelievably powerful:, a spiritual experience.  It was like being in a secular cathedral, light and colour a metaphor for deep feelings.  Similarly, Feldman's Piano and Orchestra (1975) operates on emotions that don't need logical explanation. Volkov gets extreme restraint from the orchestra. This illuminates John Tilbury's playing. This isn't concertante so much as a kind of communion where the orchestra listens to the soloist, their response like an aura around his playing. Calum McDonald describes the piece as a "slow wheeling kaleidoscope" revealing different objects with each turn. Sometimes single notes unadorned, sometimes clusters, lively outbursts. Towards the end, the orchestra wells up, brass ominously assertive. But Tilbury plays on, unshaken and serene, quietly repeating a theme that's run unobtrusively throughout the piece. Modern music is most certainly emotional. You just need a capacity for empathy. And performances as good as this.

Abbado Mahler 7 Lucerne Festival

The equivocal nature of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony makes performers respond in an individual way. It is as if Mahler is setting a challenge that will separate the creative from the conformists. In the same way, it is a challenge for listeners. Can they follow the interpretation? Can they feel what the performer is trying to express? There are no “right” answers : the challenge is in the process. As E M Forster said, “Only connect”. Sometimes when I listen to this symphony I think of Mahler with his uncompromising intellect and originality, looking at us, with a grin, whispering “Only connect”.

This is what I wrote about Claudio Abbado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony no 7 in 2005.  It's also available on download from medici.tv.medici.tv

What then is Abbado expressing? This version has the conductor working with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, an orchestra hand picked from among the finest musicians in Europe. The great names are here - Kolja Blacher, Antonello Manacorda, Albrecht Mayer, Sabine Meyer and her Bläserensemble, members of the Hagen and Alban Berg Quartets, members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Abbado has worked with them individually and collectively many times, and they know each other well. Coming together to play is an exhilarating experience, all the more stimulating because it is a seasonal event, rather than a regular fixture. This gives the performance a wonderful blend of precision and spontaneity: these are musicians at the peak, technically, playing for the sheer enjoyment of being together and sharing their love of the music. This means Abbado can create an unusually acute, chamber-like performance.

It is the refinement and sensitivity of this interpretation that is refreshing. Abbado recorded this in May 2001 with the Berlin Philharmonic, when he was their chief conductor. That performance was assured and expansive, making the most of the Berliners feel for the grand scale. Although many of the Berlin players are on the Lucerne Orchestra too, Abbado has chosen a very different, more sophisticated approach. The famed figure on posthorn that signals the opening asserts itself, but leads naturally into the ensemble, without overly dominating. This chamber approach enhances details like the flurries in the exposition, warning, perhaps, of “night winds” to come. What is even more striking, though, is the expert precision with which these players respond to the conductor. They switch from the march theme to strings as if they were a single organism. Playing of this calibre is exciting, particularly when you appreciate just how many players are involved.

Abbado takes the march theme not as a rigid militarist march but as something crisper, and faster paced. It is less tied to 19th century reality, and becomes more abstract, more timeless. In the first Nachtmusik, the horns are exquisite, expressly like alpine horns ushering in nightfall. The movement has a duality like that between night and day, darkness and light. Yet, as in the first movement, the music moves forward to the scurrying sounds of clarinets and pizzicato strings. The swirling motifs in the Scherzo cut off with breathtaking suddenness. They deliberately unsettle any complacency. This same unsentimentality illuminates the second Nachtmusik. Serenading mandolins and guitars are typical Romantic cliché. Yet again, this orchestra lifts the movement out of the 19th century with its clean, modern sound. Lush, resonantly mysterious playing is a given, but then Abbado puts finger to mouth, indicating gradual silence. The music softens into a strange but convincing combination of understated yet precise playing.

In contrast, the Rondo Finale is even more electric. In his notes to the recording, Donald Mitchell states; “The violent, unprepared contrast is akin to parting the curtains in a dark room and finding oneself dazzled by brilliant sunlight”. It’s an ambiguous, contradictory movement, but what stands out is its powerful sense of energy. This is where a crack orchestra like this proves its worth. The precise, vivid commitment of this playing carries all with it. This is its excitement. There’s no place here for sloppy blurred playing. There is no need for the composer to resolve the ambiguities of the night, which are part of nature.

Mahler throws himself into the light as if in an act of faith. The Lucerne Orchestra explodes with sheer exhilaration. It’s glorious. Abbado shines with happiness and clutches his chest – an unconscious gesture, but one which for me was incredibly poignant. Life is fragile, but Mahler lived it fully and passionately. He wrote the equivocal Nachtmusiks before the rest of the symphony. Perhaps then the Finale is, like Urlicht in the Second Symphony, or the Finale in the Eighth, a statement of faith in life itself? I don’t know. But this performance certainly had me thinking on new lines, the sign of a truly original and thought-provoking interpretation. One day, perhaps, when audiences become more attuned to modern approaches to Mahler, the Lucerne Festival concerts will be appreciated for their role in developing Mahler performance practice.

Please also read about Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at the Proms 2010, That was wonderful, too, because Metzmacher and DSO Berlin make a virtue of the contradictions, a good flow between the contrasting moods, the crazy distortions which made people call this the "Symphony of the NIght". Plrease keep coming back to this site if you like Mahler, he's been the lodestone of my life for many years. I remember Des Knaben Wunderhorn Dietrich Fischer Dieskau/Elisabeth Schwarzkopf when it came out! But I was pretty young then.

Nézet-Séguin Beethoven Wagner Prom 48

The Royal Albert Hall was sold out for Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Prom 48.  He conducts regularly with the London Philharmonic, and was last at the Proms with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.  Unlike many superhunk heroes, he's built a solid reputation.

It's good that nowadays conductors are international.  It gives them a perspective single-city orchestras don't have.  Nézet-Séguin came to London this time with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He's getting good results.  In the Overture from Tannhãuser the balance between pilgrims and profligates was deftly balanced, both themes united in the sheer beauty of the music.

Less successful, for me, was Simon Keenlyside's Mahler Rückert Lieder. I'm fond of Keenlyside more as an opera singer than as a Lieder singer. While this was a perfectly creditable performance it didn't penetrate specially deeply. Perhaps it's fine for the Proms, but catch it in smaller-scale recital, and with a Mahler specialist, for proper effect.

No qualms at all about the Rotterdammers' Beethoven's Symphony No 3. Nézet-Séguin's personal stamp on the old favourite is interesting, an indication that as a conductor he thinks from the score, the sign of  a true musician. The Rotterdammers are mature enough to take new ideas on board, because music never exists in a hermetically sealed vacuum. Philadelphia should be grateful that they can get a conductor of this calibre. Nézet-Séguin may be young, but he's not putty. Hopefully the orchestra will realize that it's a conductor's job to have vision. Today I came across a lovely article on a Philadelphia gay website extolling Nézet-Séguin's virtues, so at least he'll have some enthusiastic support!  Incidentally, maybe there's a hidden message in Tannhãuser. Christoph von Eschenbach gets his name from a descendant of the real-life Eschenbach, who adopted him when he was a war orphan, too traumatized to speak. When his maternal aunt (married to von Eschenbach) put the boy in front of a piano, the boy came out of his shell.

Photo credit : Marco Borggreve

Angels and Demons Salonen Prom 46 Pärt

Esa-Pekka Salonen's daring. It takes guts to follow Mosolov's The Iron Foundry with Arvo Pärt's new Fourth Symphony, but Salonen rises to the challenge. Both pieces are enhanced by being heard together in Prom 46 also broadcast on TV.
 
Mosolov's The Iron Foundry doesn't actually need fine musicianship,  but Salonen and the Philharmonia show why top notch playing makes a difference. Precision engineering! Here the sparks really flew, frantic but agile, with muscular energy. This could be a foundry in Heaven, or Hell.  Read more about the piece HERE. Apparently, Sir Henry Wood conducted it seven times when it was new, eighty years ago. So much for the stupid theory that modern music somehow "can't" be appreciated by ordinary people.

Arvo Pärt's 4th symphony "Los Angeles" (2008) with its clean lines and wide open panoramas could have been written for Salonen, who  brings out the clarity in the work.  Pärt's mysticism can attract muddy, pretentious performance, but Salonen doesn't do slush. Here, Part's seamless harmonics shimmer, changes barely perceptible. Meditation music, perhaps.

Last night's Mahler 9 from Lucerne (Abbado) still resonates in my mind, which is unfair on Pärt, so it's better to think of "Los Angeles" in terms of Einojuhani Rautavaara, who wrote lots of symphonies about angels, light and transcendance. In fact, Stockhausen was into that, too, and John Tavener and Jonathan Harvey and others. This symphony is much more esoteric than Pärt's Prom 43 St John Passion, still available on I-player). Towards the end, there are echoes of glorified almost-ostinato. For me, The Foundry rears its head again. That's not a bad idea, and possibly deliberate on Salonen's part. Pärt dedicated the work to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned in Russia. Alexander Mosolov spent time in a Stalinist gulag, his career never recovered.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet played Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. It was good, but not the most intense (remember Aimard in 2009) but Salonen and the Philharmonia flashed back in glory with Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy, a psychedelic high in music. Here its hyper colours took on a surreal glow, modern and timeless at once, like a good trip on LSD.

The picture is Gustav Doré,  a possibly deliberate rethinking of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings of individuals overwhelmed by vast landscapes and oceans. The Angels circulate, hovering in layers. It's Pärt's tintabulation, in visual form.  COMING UP, Volkov's interesting Prom 47, Wagner from Bayreuth and Prom 48. All happening at once, please keep reading and subscribe.

Mosolov The Iron Foundry Prom 46

Quirky highlight of this week's BBC Proms adventures in Russian repertoire is The Iron Foundry by Alexander Mosolov, in Prom 46.

The Iron Foundry was written in 1926-7, before Stalin's dead hand set in, the Soviet Union still supported Revolution in the arts, so its avant garde modernity fitted right into the Soviet mentality at the time. Workers glorified, not effete upper-class dilettantisme.

Nowadays, The Shock of The New may not be so unsettling, but in 1926-7 the world was agog with the idea of The Brave New World and visions of a future transformed by mechanical processes and technology. Extremely relevant to our world, revolutionized as it is by information and communications technology. What connects Mussolini to Bertolt Brecht, Afredo Casella to George Antheil, Legér to Duchamps to Fritz Lang? In September, Lang's Metropolis will be reissued in a new, clean print. I've seen it already and am going to write lots more. But here is a clip of the original, Watch it while listening to Mosolov's The Iron Foundry tonight. Why do they bother to write ersatz music when authentic 1920's music like this exists? (The picture is by Adolf von Menzel, painted in the 1880's, expand for detail) I will write about this Prom and even more interesting Prom 47 which connects to it later - Lucerne Mahler 9 Abbado is just up, then Wagner from Bayreuth ! Please come back, subscribe, bookmark.

Pärt, Britten, Shostakovich and Huw Watkins

Benjamin Britten, Resistance Leader?  Britten brought Shostakovich and his music to the West, thereby giving Shostakovich, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya a mantle of moral protection against the Soviet regime. No wonder that Arvo Pärt, an Estonian, looked up to Britten as a symbol of what musicians can do to undermine regimes. Pärt, Britten and Shostakovich together, with Edward Gardner, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, couldn't fail to work, so Prom 42 was an enjoyable experience, important enough to be rebroadcast on BBC TV (available on download for a week, audio only internationally)

The tolling bell and wash of strings in Britten's Sea Interludes resurrect in Pärt's Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony under Gardner was energetic, though not extreme. So where dioes Huw Watkins fit in? Perhaps because his new Violin Concerto contrasts chaos and serenity. Shostakovich contradicts conventional wisdom with a contradictory ending. Watkins's resolution is elusively tamtalizing. Shostakovich starts with high pitched string legato, like Britten would do later, Watkins returns to long lines after a raucous start.  Alina Ibragimova gives Watkins's Violin Concerto credibilty, she's firm and assertive. I'll be writing more about Pärt later, but here's David Fanning on Prom 42.

Meetings with Remarkable Men - Langgaard and Foulds

Trust the Proms to throw up some oddities! Rued Langgaard and John Foulds, Proms 35, 23 and 27. Langgaard's Sfaerernes Musik,  Music of The Spheres (1916-18) defies any possible stereotype. Best let him describe it himself: ‘In Music of the Spheres I have completely given up everything one understands by themes, consistency, form and continuity. It is music veiled in black and impenetrable mists of death.’

It pops out of Langgaard's other work like a strange, exotic effloressence, as if a particle from outer space suddenly took root and flourished. It's inspiration in purest form, unadulterated by rational restraint. 

Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra were wise to match Langgaard with Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and his two miniatures Night and Morning.  Not for nothing Ligeti's music was immortalized in 2001: A Space Odyssey: it sounds like music from another dimension.  Famously, Per Nørgård  played a trick on Ligeti into reading Langgaard's score. Like everyone else, Ligeti could hardly believe such music could have existed at such a time and place.  Ferruccio Busoni dreamed of new means of expression, inspiring Edgard Varèse, another man before his time. Langgaard's a visionary too, for Music of The Spheres  exists in an atmosphere of its own. Trying to approach it in conventional music terms is utterly pointless.

Better, maybe to think of it as a fragment descending from a cloud of altogether more esoteric experience. Like so many other Europeans at the time,  Langgaard was into "alien worlds", ideas outside the European mainstream.  That's what connects Langgaard with Picasso, Debussy, Ravel, Loti, Colin McPhee, Szymanowski, Tagore, Blavatsky, Zemlinsky, Gandhi, Gurdijeff and, on a wilder plane, Heinrich Himmler who really did send missions to Tibet. Exoticism really is part of the western mainstream. 

And so to John Foulds, who quite likely would have understood Langgaard right away. Foulds was taken by theosophy, too, and went to India where he lived in an ashram. The Beatles and hippies were doing nothing new. Foulds's A World Requiem was revived at the Royal Albert Hall in 2007. Many admired its scale, but for me the performance seemed leaden and congested, the "orientalism" contrived.

Thus I wasn't looking forward to Foulds's Dynamic Triptych or April- England. Fortunately, Mark Elder and Donald Runnicles see the music in Foulds, rather than the curiosity value, so these two Proms performances restored Foulds's reputation  Although Dynamic Triptych is the greater work, I really enjoyed April-England because Elder and the Halle played it with such joyous grace. Even the "smeary" bits, where the notes are elided, not glissando, but stretched, sounded right, the way April rain "smears" the way things are seen. Distortion, but with a purpose, the way Nature itself distorts what we experience. Hearing this made me realise that there's a lot more to Foulds than just another forgotten Englishman. Like Langgaard, he's interesting because he connects to a greater "aliran", the Javanese term for the way a river grows from different streams, and flows apart into deltas that stretch over distances wider than the river alone. (Meetings with Remarkable Men is the title of a book by Gurdijeff, which became a cult movie in the 70's.)

Insightful Mahler 7 Metzmacher Prom 34

Interpretively, Mahler's Seventh Symphony is intriguing. Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at Prom 34 penetrates depths rarely accessed. If "a symphony contains the world", contradiction is fundamental. Metzmacher goes straight for the contradiction and reveals so much about the innate nature of Mahler's idiom that it bears thoughtful, careful relistening.

Of all Mahler’s symphonies, Symphony no 7 is controversial because there are many scattered clues as to its interpretation, some wildly conflicting. It 's emotionally ambivalent,  hence the variations in performance practice. This is not a symphony where “received wisdom” has any place.

The opening bars were inspired by the sound of oars, on a boat being rowed across a lake. Immediately an idea of duality is established,  bassoons paired with horns, their music echoed by strings and lighter winds. The "oars" gently give way to a slow march which will later develop in full, manic force. If the horns sounded slightly sour, this was no demerit, for distortion pervades this whole symphony, where all is heard under cover of night. Beneath the gentle surface flow disturbing undercurrents.

Metzmacher conducts with real aplomb, rather, I suspect, like Mahler did himself (see picture). He smiles, and rounds his fist in huge, expansive gestures, and the musicians  respond with richer, rounder playing.

Despite the nightmare aspects of this symphony, humour keeps breaking through.  Cowbells in a sophisticated orchestra? Perhaps Mahler is reminding us that life is about other things than being too serious. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin's cowbells are wonderfully resonant, truly Wunderhorn-like, evoking associations, either from some recess in Mahler's memory, or from his earlier works (which is why knowing Mahler's whole output assists appreciation of individual works). Yet this nostalgia is neither cosy, nor comforting. The sharp pizzicatos, dark harp chords and almost jazz-like dissonances are meant to disturb, and the DSO Berlin players do them with whip-like savagery.  This is “night music” after all, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Resolution is not going to come until the blazing end, when the work is complete.

Just as the first and last movements form an infrastructure, the core of the symphony is the scherzo Schattenhaft, literally “shadow-like”.  This is no gemütlich Viennese waltz but one which harks back to a much more ancient, and darker, concept of dance as of demonic possession. It reflects the subversive Dionysian aspects of the 3rd Symphony. The strings, of course, take pride of place. Remember Freund’ Hein, the fiddler of death, though death is by no means the only interpretation in this bipolar symphony.  Metzmacher lulls us with the gentler aspects of this music, so the eerier depths sound all the more unsettling. Just as in the best horror stories, the scariest bits are those you can’t quite identify at first.

The famous horn dialogues of Nachtmusik 1 exemplify the contrasts that run throughout this symphony. Mahler shifts from major to minor, from upfront, blazing fanfares to shadowy cowbells heard from a distance. Strident trombone calls contrast with intricate trills in the strings. In contrast, the mandolin and guitar of Nachtmusik 2 are embedded in the orchestra, so they arise even more mysteriously into the consciousness,  as if from a distance. They function much as the cowbells did before. Metzmacher makes the connection.

Thus the contrast with massed strings. But the simplicity is sympathetically reinforced by a superb solo by the orchestra's Leader (Wei Lu). The humble troubador's music is private, not meant to be heard by the slumbering masses, a "ferne Klang". The first violin, however, makes it clear how important the image is. Then the cellos pick up the concept, their deeper, more sophisticated sounds echoing the mandolin and guitar. The Rondo-finale is magnificent, but Metzmacher and his players understand the crucial human-scale pathos that runs beneath.

And what a finale Metzmacher creates! its fanfares, alarums and crashing percussion drive away the ambiguities of the Nachtmusiks like brilliant sunshine drives away the shadows of the night. Dominant major keys return. The solemn march of the first movement becomes a blitzkrieg stampeding wildly forwards. The deceptive patterns of Rondo repeats seem to contradict the forward flow, until, at the end, the trajectory surges forth again, triumphant.

This final movement is carefully scored with no less than seven ritornellos and several secondary themes. Trumpets, drums and bells normally evoke sounds of triumph, but what is really in this triumph? Not bluster, according to Metzmacher, for his Mahler isn't brutalist. Contradictions again. He keeps control of the intricate architecture even when the music explodes in exuberance. A Messiaen dawn chorus, each bird distinctly clear in the cacophony.

This turbulent, life-enhancing energy is more indicative of Mahler’s personality than conventional wisdom allows. Dionysus, the god Pan, the subversive Lord of Misrule has broken loose again, intoxicated with love of life.

Easily this was the finest Mahler Prom this season, though there hasn't been any real competition. It's probably not a "first Mahler", since it's not superficial and needs a basic understanding of the composer's work as a whole, but there is a lot in it, and it's a genuine contribution to Mahler performance practice.

Metzmacher has long championed "suppressed music", composers banned by the Nazis for various reasons. His approach is important, because he hears the music in its true beauty. My friend and I had come for Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang – Nachtstück. Wonderfully lustrous performance, the strings particularly luminous. This matters, for Der ferne Klang is a much deeper opera than its plot might suggest. "The Distant Sound"  is literally heard from afar as it's played offstage by an invisible musician. It's seductive, ravishing, hypnotic but dangerous, for the composer who hears it sacrifices all.

Although the opera has just been premiered in the US, it's had quite a few performances in recent years in Europe.  Indeed, Metzmacher conducted the whole opera earlier this year, please read a review in Die Welt. There is a lot more to Schreker than ultra-late Romantic, the cliché which he's been saddled with. Please see what else I've written about Schreker for example Die Gezeichneten, and Der Geburtstag der Infantin) him, and come back because I'll be doing more, esp on Christophorus.

The Royal Alberrt Hall went wild for Leonidas Kavakos because he's wonderful. He took three bows and did an encore. But I'd come for Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Kavakos exceeded all expectations. He brings out its European intensity, very rigorous, incisive playing. Because Kavakos treats it stringently as the serious music it really is, you appreciate how interesting Korngold really was, behind the surface glamour of Hollywood.

Hubert Parry out of the ghetto Proms

Sir Charles Hubert H Parry, scion of the aristocracy, Eton toff and Oxford don. Who could be more Establishment? The irony is that the posher people come, often the less bothered they are by what others think. Parry's been in the ghetto for decades because he's identified with a world that disappeared in 1914. Unfortunately some of his champions would like him ring fenced for themselves, stuffed like a specimen in an antique shop.

So it's wonderful to hear so much Hubert Parry this year at the Proms, played by living musicians. A good chance to evaluate him, and hear how well his music works for modern times. Because he's good. Maybe we'll appreciate him all the more after last year's Proms darling, the venal Charles Villiers Stanford (search on this site for more on Stanford, on whom I've spent an inordinate amount of time).

Parry couldn't stand Stanford, though they maintained a working relationship for 40 years. Stanford was vain, self-promoting, financially dodgy, far more interested in furthering his status over everything else. Parry devoted himself to helping others, was a genuinely loved teacher and always learning. Stanford went into fits when Elgar got attention. Parry supported Elgar early on. Elgar even asked Parry's help setting words with "proper" intonation, since Elgar spoke with a rustic regional burr and Parry spoke fancy.


And Parry was European, interested in what was going on in the world.  Listen to Parry's Elegy for Brahms  Prom 31 rebroadcast. Parry liked Brahms's "dignified artistic reserve.....the cultivated comprehensive taste, the imagination fostered and fed by dwelling on noble subjects and keeping far from triviality and conventions." Pointedly not Wagner, though he may be taking a dig at Stanford, too. (Parry's dislike for "neurasthenic" music is similar to Wagner's  dislike of Mendelssohn. Parry describes Stanford as "mendelssohnian....but not Mendelssohn".)

It's interesting that Schoenberg shared Parry's passion for Brahms, whom he regarded as a progressive. What fun it would be to hear Schoenberg's lively Orchestration of Brahms's Piano Quartet no 1 together with Parry and Brahms himself, putting paid to several stereotypes at once.

Parry's Elegy for Brahms, despite its obvious references, is individual, not-quite-Wagner, but pure Parry. Read Jeremy Dibble's indispensable book on Parry for a full description. Andrew Davis conducted the uplifting finale with such conviction that it seemed like the breaking of a new dawn, rather than a farewell.

Parry's Symphonic Fantasia in B Minor "1912" was heard at Prom 9 (Siniasky BBC Phil).  Parry was fascinated by Schumann's Fourth Symphony, subtitled "symphonic fantasie". Read Jeremy Dibble for a detailed analysis. Dibble notes that the sophisticated cyclic techniques Parry uses to develop his themes herald Schoenberg. "It is remarkable", he adds "that the Symphonic Fantasia should take such a forward-looking attitude to modern structural procedures..... it merits a firmer place in the canon of cyclic works and perhaps more important still, deserves to be widely recognized as one of the finest and assured utterances in British symphonic literature".

Symphonic Fantasia evolves in four stages, "Stress", "Love", "Play" and a particularly striking "Now!" its meaning elusive but hinted at in its vibrant expressiveness. Parry marks the various sub themes and developments not with conventional German or Italian terms, but with words like "brooding" and "revolt" which allow interpretive freedom.  Its open-ended, free-spirited nature welcomes new performers, inviting them in, rather than imposing on them.

A bit, I suspect, like Parry the man who embraced life to the full.  His eccentric wife was a suffragette and he had strong doubts about militarism. He died in 1918, aged 70 (old in those days) after an all-day cycling adventure, soon after having undergone surgery. Up and down the Sussex Downs riding a monstrously heavy 2 gear bicycle and solid tweed plus fours, he developed a cyst which poisoned his system.  What a character he must have been!

Tomorrow, 10th August, Parry will be commemorated by the 3 Choirs Festival in a special concert at Highnam Church, near Parry's estate, which he loved dearly .He visited it a last time, shortly before he died. The extensive gardens had gone to ruin, the gardeners drafted to fight in the First World War. Ashley Grote will be conducting the St Cecilia Singers in Parry's Songs of Farewell, (1916-18) It's long sold out, but hopefully may be heard later on BBC Radio 3. Later in The Proms, there'll be yet more Parry, Symphonic Variations (Prom 68) and of course, Jerusalem. Read about Jerusalem HERE . Good video clip and singing. The piece colours up differently when you think what it might have meant to men like Blake, Parry and Elgar.

Respect what Parry told his students: "A man may utter artistic things  with the technique of a superhuman conjuror, but if he has not temperament and character of his own he is....a spinner of superficialities and a tinkling cackler".

Please see my review of the documentary, The Prince and the Composer, HRH Prince Charles on Hubert Parry.