Proms 2017 - Retrospective Reviews - Part 2/4

Prom 17: Simpson - The Immortal I tend to avoid Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony - but as one might have expected Juanjo Mena's reading is exact, plush and insightful of this overplayed but under-examined score.  Now in his last season with the orchestra one hopes Maestro Mena will look back on some great work at the proms - I've enjoyed and recorded so many here.  His Proms premieres have been notable - and the Mark Simpson premiere "The Immortal" in the first half of this prom underlined Mena's ease with both soloists and choirs.  The Immortal is just over thirty minutes in the company of a composer and his librettist who were exploring the Victorian and Edwardian fascination with the supernatural and the sense of unknown but familiar other.  It's a piece which I will need to hear again but the initial impact is both palpable and a shade uneasy- which is presumably just what they were looking for.  Christopher Purves was a lost soul who's first words are "A growing sense of unreality...." after a baffling, mesmeric passage for whispered voices and orchestra.  The choruses held up particularly well to their brush with the paranormal.  Musically it is inventive and richly coloured, and this performance at least was ardent in it's advocacy. I think the piece is lacking in a compelling line through the subject matter though it does draw us into cruel attention to the most terrible of boundaries in our lives. On another hearing I might absorb it's message better perhaps.

Prom 21: Beethoven's Choral Symphony: It's not often that I hear a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that leaves me musically satisfied and peaks my curiosity with new insights.  This finely judged and spontaneous performance from the massed forces of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the combined choirs of the City of Birmingham Symphony and the BBC National Choirs of Wales were lead by Xian Zhang.  Zhang is an accomplished conductor - it was no surprise that she led it well but that she did so in that huge hall with a feeling of spontaneity and complete fluency was special given how many proms performances I've heard have fallen at both this fences.  More to the point Xian revealed in an interview that she approached the work afresh each time she takes it on with a score clean of her previous markings.  I wonder how much that led to an airing of insights which I hadn't heard before and changing patterns across the whole symphonies - from the basic tempi of movements to much more subtle instrumental inflections.  It was a real treat for us all, but given the way Zhang works - it won't be the same next time , so this reading is lost to the ether, which is sad.  The soloists were admirable.

Prom 22: Monteverdi -Vespers of 1610 - Beethoven's Ninth is of course an annual fixture in the Proms calendar but part of me wishes we could skip a year or two and have Monteverdi's Vespers in it's place.  Like the Ninth so fundamental for everything that followed and like the Ninth an epic essay capturing the finest thoughts of the finest and more forward looking mind of it's day.  The complete work has only had 9 complete performances in Proms history the first in 1968 under John Eliot Gardiner (with none other then Andrew Davies at the organ) - this Prom was the first under foreign forces, Ensemble Pygmalion under Raphael Pichon.  I was impressed with their zest and colour especially in the almost slavic basses in the choir.  It was an impressive reading - beautifully captured on radio (I doubt the 1968 performance transmission captured the space as well).  More please.

Prom 24: Philharmonia/Salonen - we were assured in the radio interview to introduce this Prom that this programme was comprised of works that shared nothing but the conductor's joy in conducting them. Stravinsky's reworking of Bach's Chorale Variations on "Von Himmel Hoch" is a deep meeting of minds which I first heard in a Proms broadcast conducted by Oliver Knussen in 2001. There's a sense of joy about Stravinsky's sidesteps - not two composers coming together - but one playing cat and mouse with them workings but leaving a coherent and noble whole intact. Ravel's Sheherazade had been on the programme at a concert Salonen conducted in the Royal Festival Hall I attended a couple of years ago. He was immersing himself in Ravel at the time and the performance was memorable. But it was nowhere as engaging as this one - thanks in huge part I think to the soloist Marianne Crebassa. She and the orchestra in response literally had time standing still in the most moving account of the the piece I've heard on disc or live. It was simply magical. More magic in these second half as Salonen returned to the Adam's score he had commissioned in Los Angeles - Naive and Sentimental Music. I have enjoyed this work - some say it's a symphony - for many years. This was perhaps the most deeply considered reading and well prepared. It was also notable for it's fluidity, accuracy and sense of space.

Prom 29 Mussorgsky (orch. Shostakovich): Khovanschina - this performance deserves an essay but I'm not up to it.  It was a blistering, powerful but tragic experience.  Bychkov is to be congratulated in sending his forces into the chasm and not stinting at any level the sheer horror of the story told and the lives within it.  And yet none of the glorious music was underplayed and none of the matter-of-fact material over-played.  It struck me - first hearing for me - as a very modern opera: with the weight of our times behind it, triply significant.  A vast array of forces and singers - handled with that deep feeling (which grew through the performance), a committed orchestra and a transfixed audience.  What a marvellous introduction for me and many others I suspect.

Southwark Prom - A cathedral all be it on the south side of the Thames was an ideal place to hear the BBC Singers in their last concert under the baton of David Hill as their Chief Conductor. Their well-cultivated sound blossomed in the acoustic.  The new piece by Judith Weir "The Land of Uz" was, I thought one of the most remarkable new works of the season.  A spare recounting of the story of Job and his suffering was a beautiful balance of drama and contemplation on it's lessons.  The piece was brought to life thanks to the inclusion of characterful instrumentation which was both confiding and measured in this large canvas.  Space was filled by narrator, choir, organist and various players from the Nash Ensemble. A tuba and a soprano sax making the most of the grand old building's resonance, but never losing the intimacy and simple narrative.  A memorable performance of a marvellous and moving new work

Prom 39: Debussy, Ravel and Turnage - There's a recurrent difficulty for conductors at the Proms,  balancing out rehearsal time when there is a new large piece on the programme.  In this case the two familiar favourites - Debussy's Prelude and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G suffered somewhat - though beautifully played the ensemble wobbled now and again.  Not that the players and conductor are necessarily to blame.  I suspect the standard of orchestral precision we expect is too high - so over-worked are our orchestras and so attuned are our ears to perfect performances on CD.  The first half jewel was Inon Barnatan's encore - Rondo Capriccioso by Mendelssohn.

The emotional heart in this concert was Mark Antony Turnage's piece Hibiki - receiving it's European premiere under conductor Kazushi Ono.  A seven movement piece which bore many of Turnage's signature raging climaxes and simple reflection flavoured with a myriad musical influences.  It is, to my ear, one of the most moving pieces in recent years to reflect on a deep national and international tragedies - the triple blows of earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear disaster.  Turnage manages to pull off three great coups with this piece: a realisation of a quintessentially Japanese aesthetic (noting his connection with Takemitsu), registering the pain and recovery from the triple blows, and; reiterating a musical space celebrating the Suntory Hall - which was part of the commission. A nation's loss and a nation's strength - that shared history and future - in one piece.