WITH its customary attention to (some might say, obsession with) composers’ anniversaries, the BBC featured two very different composers at this year’s Henry Wood Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
I doubt whether Anton Bruckner (b. 1824) was aware of the existence of Charles Villiers Stanford (d. 1924); and, although Stanford studied in Germany, the country that where his first two operas had their premières, it seems unlikely that he heard any compositions by the Austrian Bruckner. The latter was a disciple of Wagner; the former a follower of Brahms; but to hear motets by the two men, given a week apart, was to realise that they did have something in common.
On 1 September the BBC Singers under Owain Park performed three motets by Bruckner, with expertly judged dynamic variation; and, on 7 September, The Sixteen gave an equally splendid account of the younger man’s roughly contemporary Three Motets, Op. 38. The flowing lines of “Beati quorum via” differed from the stillness of Bruckner’s “Locus iste”, and yet both conveyed a sense of the numinous.
There was more Stanford at The Sixteen’s concert: three of the Eight Partsongs, Op. 127. The rest of the programme consisted of golden oldies, which attracted a surprisingly large audience for a Saturday morning. Parry’s “I was glad”, Balfour Gardiner’s Evening Hymn and Ireland’s “Greater love hath no man” found The Sixteen (some 25 strong) overwhelmed in places by the organ. The Stanford, and Harris’s “Faire is the heaven”, both a cappella, were exemplary. Parry’s “My soul, there is a country” made a perfect encore.
Andy ParadiseHarry Christophers conducts The Sixteen at the Proms
Other choral concerts were on a considerably larger scale. The main work in Mark Elder’s last concert as music director of the Hallé (21 July, BBC4) was Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. It was preceded by James MacMillan’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, three verses from an ode by John Dryden, which, despite sterling work by the orchestra and three Hallé choirs, failed at the first fence. “Timotheus” is pronounced like “Prometheus”, preferably with a long “i”. The composer turned it into four syllables: did he not look at the scansion, or listen to Alexander’s Feast, Handel’s setting of the same words?
THE season included three large-scale settings of the Requiem. First up was the Verdi (23 July), in a magnificent performance by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its associated chorus plus the Crouch End Festival Chorus (chorus-masters Adrian Partington and David Temple). Ryan Bancroft conducted with a keen ear for detail: he brought out the woodwind’s insistent “Salva me” phrase in the “Recordare”; and the chromatic brass at the end of the Sanctus sounded as though the angels were laughing with joy. The bass muffed the end of “Confutatis maledictis”; the best of the soloists was the tenor Seok Jong Baek, an impressive Samson in the Saint-Saëns opera (Arts, 10 June 2022), who alone took “Kyrie eleison” in one breath.
Next came Britten’s War Requiem (17 August), in which the Latin text is juxtaposed with cleverly selected poems by Wilfred Owen. Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra were on fine form, as were the LSO Chorus and BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus-masters Mariana Rosas and Neil Ferris). The quiet precision of the final “Quam olim Abrahae” was wondrous, the climactic “Libera me” overwhelming. Out of sight in the gallery, the Tiffin Boys Choir (choirmaster James Day) sang with a purity of tone that was never fluty. Allan Clayton floated a delicate “Dona nobis pacem” but was barely audible in “Strange meeting”.
The Requiem by Fauré came, unusually, before the interval of an all-French concert on 4 September, conducted by Stéphane Denève. The lower strings of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) sounded particularly vibrant at “Hostias et preces tibi”. The BBC Symphony Chorus soared majestically at the Amen; and the sopranos, especially, lifted the spirits with their crescendo before the brass entry at “Hosanna in excelsis”. Golda Schultz shaped Pie Jesu very nicely, and Jacques Imbrailo (a late replacement) was suitably dark-toned in Libera Me, Domine. The concert included two short choral pieces by Lili Boulanger and ended with the Suite No. 2 from Ravel’s ballet Daphnis and Chloë.
THE raw sound of Baroque oboes, clashing a semitone apart, was the introduction to a fine performance of Bach’s St John Passion on 19 August, brought by Bach Collegium Japan under its founder, Masaaki Suzuki. The orchestral detail was particularly beguiling, from the woody flute in “Ich folge dir gleichfalls” to the eloquent viola da gamba in “Es ist vollbracht!” and the throaty sounds of the tallest contrabassoon you ever saw. The excellent team of soloists included Benjamin Bruns as the Evangelist, and Christian Immler doubling Jesus and the bass arias. Carolyn Sampson was sweet-toned as ever, and Alexander Chance was thrilling in the semiquaver runs of “Der Held aus Juda”.
The trumpet fanfares that opened the Glagolitic Mass by Janácek immediately evoked his contemporary Sinfonietta. They set the scene for “Gospodi Pomiluj” (Kyrie Eleison), which is much more of a demand than a prayer. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Choir under Jakob Hruša gave an exuberant, heart-warming account of this eccentric, outdoorsy piece on 28 August, with splendid contributions from the soloists, including Corinne Winters and David Butt Philip, and Christian Schmitt playing the all-important organ part.
The Albert Hall’s mighty instrument was put through its paces on 10 August, when Jonathan Scott played a mixed programme of original and arranged pieces, separated by his informative spoken commentary. The best music, it’s fair to say, was Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor; but Scott’s performance of the Tannhäuser Overture and the 1812, the latter in his own arrangement, was stupendous.
TO DESCRIBE the presentation on 6 August of Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy Queen as “semi-staged” is to give no hint of what awaited the audience. The orchestra was Les Arts Florissants, the singers were from Le Jardin des Voix, Les Art Flo’s academy, and the conductor was Paul Agnew; but all eyes, I’m sure, were on the hip-hop dancers from Compagnie Käfig, the group founded by the evening’s director/choreographer Mourad Merzouki. Singers, players, and dancers did Purcell proud; I think he would have been thrilled.
Chris ChristdodoulouIlja Aksionov (tenor, on the chair) and Compagnie Käfig dancers in the semi-staged performance by Les Arts Florissants of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen
If all the chorus singers listed in the programme were present — I gave up trying to count heads — there were 338 assembled from six choirs for Messiah on 7 September. John Butt, familiar as the conductor of the small-scale Dunedin Consort, presided over the revision by Mozart of Handel’s masterpiece, which involved reorchestrating and expanding the original. Butt’s marcato phrasing in “And with his stripes” and “All we like sheep” was rather overdone, but the choirs were remarkably light on their feet in the runs of “And he shall purify” and “For unto us”. The heav’nly host was clearly composed of Georgian citizens, full of roast beef and porter. The woodwind and brass of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields gloried in Mozart’s delightful additions. Come the “Hallelujah Chorus”, the lights went up, the audience was invited to join in, and the organ was heard for the first time: absolutely thrilling.
IT WAS a matter of (mild) regret that Ryan Wigglesworth, conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, didn’t include the optional organ pedal part in the last movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony in a concert on 26 July which also featured works by Britten and Cheryl Frances-Hoad. In another all-English concert, Martyn Brabbins conducted the BBCSO on 13 August in a variant, longer version of another Second Symphony, Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony, particularly atmospheric in the slow movement.
At the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s concert on 11 August, it was touching to see Anne-Sophie Mutter leading a frail Daniel Barenboim by the hand. Without a list of players in the programme — no doubt for security reasons — it was impossible to tell how many were from Israel, how many from other Middle Eastern countries. But how wonderful that this orchestra, founded by Barenboim and the late Edward Said, not only exists, but flourishes.
Mutter played the Brahms Violin Concerto beautifully, seemingly unfazed by the conductor’s — let’s say leisurely — tempo at the start. Barenboim, seated, never raised his hands above waist level. In Schubert’s “Great” Symphony, No. 9, I was struck by the way he brought out the detail: the trumpet triplets in the development section of the first movement, for example.
On, now, to two sets of Fourth and Fifth symphonies. The ones by Shostakovich were heard in reverse order at the Proms in 2018. No. 4, completed in 1936, withdrawn by the composer and not performed till 1961, was given by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on 31 July. It’s a bleak piece: the strings coped brilliantly with the furious fugato of the first movement, and the dying away on the celesta at the end was chilling. On 9 September, the BBCSO — how hard that excellent body is worked at the Proms! — gave a stunning performance of No. 5. Tarmo Peltokoski, conducting without a score, secured pianissimos from the strings which were the merest thread of sound, while he miraculously made the fortissimo ending neither triumphalist nor insincere.
Bruckner’s No. 4 was performed on 5 September by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under its new chief conductor, Simon Rattle. There was an appealing skittishness in the first movement, eloquent playing from the violas in the second, and spine-tingling playing from the horns throughout.
Even more magnificent was Bruckner’s Fifth from the Berlin Philharmonic, which followed the motets at the concert mentioned above. Kirill Petrenko handled the stop-go of the first movement as well as anybody; what gripped the attention was the inexorable progress to the splendour of the chorale at the end.
Finally, Beethoven. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Antonello Manacorda concluded their concert on 13 September, the penultimate night, with Symphony No. 3, the Eroica.
It was preceded by Mozart’s First Symphony, composed at the age of eight, and the Symphony No. 3 in G minor by Louise Farrenc. Dating from 1847, this was a work of both passion and grace. The first movement of the Eroica was on the brisk side, but still powerful; in fact, the whole performance had a truly magnificent energy. The woodwind and brass were well to the fore, and the timpanist had a field day.
LAST year, I praised the Aurora Orchestra’s “dramatic exploration” of The Rite of Spring, adding that “in a better world, the show would be seen by every schoolchild in the country.” On 21 August, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was given the same treatment, and it was shown on BBC4 on 30 August.
The first half consisted of two actors quoting from extracts from the deaf Beethoven’s conversation books, and the conductor Nicholas Collon adding commentary on the music (with illustrations from the orchestra) to trace the background. Then came a performance by the BBC Singers, National Youth Choir (chorus-master Nicholas Chalmers), and, of course, the Aurora Orchestra, for which I cannot find enough superlatives. Everybody performed by heart, which enabled players and soloists to group and regroup, unencumbered by music stands. I’m not going to review it: just make sure you watch it on catch-up (see below).
After reflecting on such an uplifting occasion, I feel disinclined to ride my hobby-horse on audience behaviour (though I expect to remount it next year). As always, the above is but a selection of delights: all praise and gratitude to the BBC.
All the Proms can be heard on BBC Sounds till 14 October; those that were televised can be watched on BBC iPlayer for a year.