THE news of the death of the Queen on 8 September led to the BBC’s immediate cancellation of the last three concerts of the Henry Wood Proms. So the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, their visit keenly awaited, never had the chance to give their performances of Beethoven’s “Eroica” or Florence Price’s First Symphony; and, of course, the junketings of the Last Night also went by the board.
This meant that the actual last night was devoted to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and it is hard to think of a more suitable piece. In retrospect, the composer’s mighty affirmation of belief, and his vision of peace both minatory and suppliant, seemed wholly appropriate for a nation stunned by the loss of a much-loved sovereign. And what a performance! Sir John Eliot Gardiner, his Monteverdi Choir, and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique have performed the work many times, but there was no hint of routine.
The choir was superb: full-toned, precise in the skittering fast passages, never harsh — a bouquet to the tenors for their bold, unstrangulated entry at “Quoniam tu solus sanctus”. So was the orchestra: among many memorable moments, I recall the woodwind scales, floating upwards to “the world to come” at the end of the Credo. The fine solo quartet was led by the ethereal soprano voice of Lucy Crowe.
Ten days earlier, on 9 August, John Butt conducted another glorious setting of the Mass: not with his usual Dunedin Consort from Edinburgh (heard in the St John Passion at the 2017 Proms), but with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its associated choir (chorus-master Daniel Ludford-Thomas) in Bach’s Mass in B minor. The Kyrie Eleison was curious: a sensitively phrased opening fugue, an over-emphasised third section, and a central Christe Eleison for the two sopranos taken so fast as to be almost gabbled. The stars were the choir, as agile as their successors in the Beethoven, and the orchestra, including radiant playing from the trumpets and thunderous timpani.
Two days later came yet another choral masterpiece, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Seated far away on the opposite side of the Royal Albert Hall (the venue for all the concerts reviewed here), I found Allan Clayton uninvolving. Listening later on BBC Sounds, I realised how wrong I was. He had the full measure of Gerontius’s utterances, whether conversational, lyrical, or heroic — nowhere more so than at his final “Take me away”. James Platt’s rock-steady bass was admirably suited to the Priest and the Angel of the Agony.
Edward Gardner’s approach was perhaps too brisk and no-nonsense at times — “Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus” would have benefited from a little more loving — but no complaints about the choral set pieces “Go, in the name of Angels and Archangels” and “Praise to the Holiest in the height”, when the combined Hallé and London Philharmonic Choirs (chorus-masters Matthew Hamilton and Neville Creed) really let rip. The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave a beautiful account of the Prelude, in which, so to speak, Gerontius meets Parsifal. As with the Beethoven and Bach, there was no interval.
By a coincidence — or perhaps not — we had been at the sickbed of another dying man on 10 August, when the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth played Richard Strauss’s tone-poem Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”). Here, the soul “finds gloriously achieved in eternal space those things which could not be achieved below”. This can sound bombastic, but Wigglesworth restrained the brass; so the sense one often has of kitsch was minimised. The same sureness of touch was evident in Holst’s The Planets, in which the woodwind were delicate, not only in “Venus”, but also in “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”.
On 24 August, the astounding fortnight that included the choral masterpieces of Bach, Elgar, and Beethoven also embraced Mahler’s Second Symphony, “The Resurrection”, one of the many descendants of Beethoven’s Ninth. Here again is a passage of the soul, on a gargantuan scale. It is a favourite of Sir Simon Rattle, which he conducted from memory. (Likewise, the combined London Symphony and CBSO Choruses — chorus-masters Simon Halsey and Julian Wilkins — impressively sang without scores.)
The great funeral march that is the first movement proceeded inexorably, tempered by the exquisite pianissimo of the contrasting tune in the violins. Both here and in the second movement, the strings’ portamento (sliding between the notes) sounded convincingly natural, not added on. The mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly sang “Urlicht” with moving tenderness; the unaccompanied chorus that began “Auferstehen” was hushed beyond belief; the soprano Louise Alder emerged imperceptibly from the texture: all was supreme. Needless to say, the peroration — bells chiming, the organ supporting but not dominating — brought the house down.
I was sorry to miss Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers, brought from Glyndebourne on 27 July. But I did hear her Mass in D, performed at the Proms for the first time on 20 August. This hour-long work, when performed in concert, ends with the Gloria. It actually starts in D minor, the lower-strings texture suggesting that Dame Ethel had been listening to Brahms’s German Requiem. There were some striking moments, such as the gentle Sanctus, in which the mezzo-soprano (Bethan Langford) is accompanied by horns and tuba. The BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus-master Neil Ferris) gave a sterling performance, but the piece was not overwhelming. More immediately enjoyable was Debussy’s Nocturnes: a lovely solo for cor anglais in Nuages (Helen Vigurs) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo — plus the women’s voices — giving an atmospheric account of Sirènes.
Of the purely orchestral concerts, the Berlin Philharmonic’s advertised programme on 7 September was affected by an injury sustained by their chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko. Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto was retained — a virtuoso performance by Tabea Zimmermann — but Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was dropped. In its place, Daniel Harding conducted Bruckner’s Fourth: stunning playing from the start, with its exposed horn solo, and a lovely Schubertian lilt to the Trio of the Scherzo.
On 15 August, the BBCSO under Oramo gave the first performance of Time Flies, a piece by Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960), commissioned jointly by the BBC and orchestras in Hamburg and Tokyo, the movements representing one of the cities in turn. “London Time” was a scherzo, though not so called, while “Hamburg Time” was slow, with a beautiful soft ending. After a nod towards the sesquicentenary of the birth of Vaughan Williams with his 1954 Tuba Concerto — Constantin Hartwig the virtuoso soloist — came a terrific performance of Elgar’s First Symphony, notable for its delicacy as much as for its Edwardian splendour.
Utterly beguiling were two Mozart concerts given by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Leif Ove Andsnes on 7 August. If the phrasing at the entry of the piano in the D-minor Concerto K466 was slightly mannered, Andsnes more than made up for it in the brightness and bounce of the E-flat Concerto, K482. He clearly intended the Masonic Funeral Music, played without a conductor, to move seamlessly into the C-minor Concerto, K491. Sadly, audience applause intervened; but the feeling of chamber music, of friends performing together, continued.
Some concerts earlier in the season I heard on BBC Sounds. The Verdi Requiem on the first night, 15 July, came across well, though the entry of the basses at “Te decet hymnus” (the Crouch End Festival and BBC Symphony Choruses) sounded distinctly beery. What a pleasure it was to hear a mezzo-soprano (Jennifer Johnston) who didn’t make two words out of “quidquid”.
The programme of British music next day (the Sinfonia of London under John Wilson) began with a speedy but still intense account of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and ended with Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, “Nimrod” moving forward, quite free of any Remembrance Sunday associations. In between came, inter alia, an attractive Flute Concerto by Huw Watkins (b. 1976), a three-movement work lasting 22 minutes; the second movement sounded like a nocturne, with a cuckoo-like phrase turning from major to minor. Adam Walker, for whom the piece was composed, was the eloquent soloist.
On 27 July, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with its Chorus combined with the BBC Symphony Chorus, was stirring in Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony under Andrew Manze, the baritone Jacques Imbrailo particularly telling in the mysterious opening and ending of “On the Beach at Night, Alone”. In “The Explorers” we are back with the journey of a soul. The young Vaughan Williams — it was his First Symphony — is in his element; but some might find the poetry of Walt Whitman an acquired taste.
It was followed next day by the fresh young voices of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain in Brahms’s German Requiem. Ilan Volkov got some good “hairpin” dynamics in the second movement from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and the basses’ entry at “Die Erlösten des Herrn” (“And the ransomed of the Lord”) was impressively precise.
Lastly, also caught on Radio 3, a strangely uninvolving performance of Handel’s oratorio Solomon on 19 August. In the circumstances, some otherwise regrettable cuts — including the Queen of Sheba’s wonder at the marvels of Solomon’s court — could be excused. There was suitable vigour from the BBC Singers and the English Concert — in “From the censer curling rise”, for example — and the counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Benjamin Hulett sang nobly as Solomon and Zadok. But, under the direction of Sofi Jeannin’s direction, the evening never really took wing.
In a season lasting two months, this review can only cover a fraction of the delights on offer. The BBC, always with a desperate eye on the renewal of its charter, came up with a programme that was as inclusive/diverse/woke as you could wish (or might fear). Whatever your standpoint, the Proms remains the greatest festival of classical music in the world; and out of 50 scheduled concerts involving a symphony orchestra, 26 were assigned to one of the BBC orchestras. How much thought is given to their future? How much, indeed, to the future of the Proms? Those who agitate for the abolition of the licence fee should be careful of what they wish for.
All the Proms can be heard on BBC Sounds, and some can be watched on BBC iPlayer, until 10 October.