Proms 2017 - Retrospective Reviews 4/4
And finally my thoughts on highlights in 2017 Proms season:
Prom 59 La Clemenza di Tito - Mozart's last opera is rarely done and it was good to have it at the Proms under the baton of Robin Ticciati - conductor of this Glyndebourne ensemble with the orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in fine fettle. I can't comment on the subtlties of the performance but it sounded well enough and Alice Coote dominated the sound stage. It's perhaps more notable that with Glyndebourne the Proms were giving the entire opera an outing for the first time in nearly 30 years - it was last given in 1991 (under Sir Andrew Davies and before that 1974 under Sir Colin Davies). The Proms archive shows that Sir Henry Wood was very fond of arias from La Clemanza too. On a wider point I think the Proms nowadays does too little Mozart - a sadness for those getting to know the composer at the Proms but also a reminder that he is slipping from grace in the concert hall more generally. There isn't a dud in his late symphonies, his overtures and his late operas - all we get is the same old piano and violin concerti.
Prom 59 La Clemenza di Tito - Mozart's last opera is rarely done and it was good to have it at the Proms under the baton of Robin Ticciati - conductor of this Glyndebourne ensemble with the orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in fine fettle. I can't comment on the subtlties of the performance but it sounded well enough and Alice Coote dominated the sound stage. It's perhaps more notable that with Glyndebourne the Proms were giving the entire opera an outing for the first time in nearly 30 years - it was last given in 1991 (under Sir Andrew Davies and before that 1974 under Sir Colin Davies). The Proms archive shows that Sir Henry Wood was very fond of arias from La Clemanza too. On a wider point I think the Proms nowadays does too little Mozart - a sadness for those getting to know the composer at the Proms but also a reminder that he is slipping from grace in the concert hall more generally. There isn't a dud in his late symphonies, his overtures and his late operas - all we get is the same old piano and violin concerti.
Prom 60 - Vasily Petrenko: The Oslo Orchestra are periodic visitors to the Proms under Petrenko and it's tempting to compare them with the orchestra Petrenko leads in Liverpool, the RLPO. Even more so since I reported earlier in 2017 on a performance RLPO and Petrenko gave of Shostakovich's Twelfth - the Year 1919 in Leeds. From the off I found that Liverpool were the tighter ensemble and Petrenko's vision of this symphony as more troubling work than I'd felt before was well realised. He really makes the most of the driving mesmeric qualities in the inner voices to the opening and closing movements and something more atmospheric in teh middle movements. The Liverpool players found more mystery in the slow music and more menace in the outer movements. That said, Oslo gave a great account of this underplayed symphony vigorous and detailed but not quite the terrifying. The first half was well enough done but neither work (Firebird Suite & the Fourth Concerto of Rachmaninov) really attracts me and these performances didn't do anything to change that.
Prom 64: Danielle Gatti and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra gave us Rihm's In-Schrift (1995) a violin-less & viola-less award winning score is fearsome. The whole has an edginess on first audition - subsequently we get the inner contrasts and subtle longer term elements coming through. And always with the intensely tense examination of how the instrumental groups both oppose and complement each other in what I hear as a severe sonic environment. Rihm specifies the position of teh groups in teh score and teh BBC caught this well. Credit to Gatti for programming it. He's tended to be a creature of habit at the Proms - repeating works he favours. It's certainly a little less conventional programme choice than his last outing of Bruckner 9 at the Proms in 1999 when he paired it with the Good Friday Music from Parsifal and the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. I'm less at home with Gatti in big symphonies but I was pleasently surprised by his Bruckner 9 - I don't remember the out in 1999. He has an orchestra of heritage in the work and the composer. There wa s no wilful loitering and a wonderful air of spirituality about it. Marvellous playing and conducting.
Prom 70 - DENK I have very few words for the best performance of the 2017 Proms season - I was completely bowled over by Jeremy Dank's performance of the Bartok Second Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Karina Canellakis. Match Denk flourish for flourish the orchestra and conducting contributed to the most exhausting assault on these sense I've encountered in a Prom performance in years. Thankfully it was also recorded on TV. Also in the programme - elegantly delivered were Missy Mezzoli's Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres) and Dvorak's Eighth Symphony. The latter would normally not get house room but when a pairing are on this form it's always interesting to hear what's cooked up. I'm not sure how many (if any) times Canellakis has conducted this orchestra but it was a sensational pairing in all the works.
Prom 71 - LPO Two things straight up out of this Prom - the LPO play better for Jurowski and on the evidence of this Prom they are a better band than the LSO at the moment. The response to Alina Ibragimova's mercurial teasing and testing playing in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto was acute and very Russian in its fearless piquancy. It sounded like a completely different piece to the one I treasured in the old Chung/Previn recording. Her attack was fearless and the orchestral response was rich detailed and never passive. Fundamentally the strength the LPO showed at this Prom (as opposed to numerous concerts I've cited of theirs in the past) was as greater participation - player by player - in the drama. Where they were active in the Prokofiev they became actors in the story of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony 'The Year 1911' - actors both in the spirit of mother Russia, the revolutionaries and their brutal oppressors. It was a gripping detailed reading. A careful step by step account of the hope and the pain. A marvellous prom and reinforcing the competition Sir Simon at the LSO.
Prom 71 - LPO Two things straight up out of this Prom - the LPO play better for Jurowski and on the evidence of this Prom they are a better band than the LSO at the moment. The response to Alina Ibragimova's mercurial teasing and testing playing in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto was acute and very Russian in its fearless piquancy. It sounded like a completely different piece to the one I treasured in the old Chung/Previn recording. Her attack was fearless and the orchestral response was rich detailed and never passive. Fundamentally the strength the LPO showed at this Prom (as opposed to numerous concerts I've cited of theirs in the past) was as greater participation - player by player - in the drama. Where they were active in the Prokofiev they became actors in the story of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony 'The Year 1911' - actors both in the spirit of mother Russia, the revolutionaries and their brutal oppressors. It was a gripping detailed reading. A careful step by step account of the hope and the pain. A marvellous prom and reinforcing the competition Sir Simon at the LSO.
Prom 72 - M6 - there's some unfortunate expectations around the programming of Mahler by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Maybe it's the shadow of that incomparable Mahler 5 Bernstein gave with then at the Proms donkey's years ago, or it's the expectation that this is the Mahler orchestra. But this night at least the VPO were not on spotless form. The conductor Daniel Harding spoke of mixed emotions in the symphony: he is right to try that sort of reading out of course. BUT it doesn't work if the players don't buy into it or haven't got the nuances required to bring it to life. It was a bold reading of sorts, of a beast of a symphony, but didn't hold together for me. It's hard to blame anyone given the fierce touring schedules of these orchestras, but...
Prom 74 - LVB7 the following night under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas in Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven the orchestra were in radiant form. One might argue the programme was easier. Though in some senses harder to bring off. They were helped by the conductor - MTT has a eerie grasp of everything explosive in Beethoven 7 which he keeps hidden and reveals in a series of coup de theater and has done so over years. His is a magnificent and enveloping reading of huge joy and humanity. The Brahms Haydn Variations and Manny Ax's blissful reading of the Piano Concerto No 14 made for an old fashioned programme: both elegantly done - to an orchestra this good panache comes easy. It was something of a relief and a contrast to be back on from ground interpretively and with solid, silky, smooth playing from the Weiner Philharmoniker.
Conclusion
A season which looked intriguing on paper turned out to be first class. Female soloists and conductors excelled. New composers provided a wider variety of works and the new venues did something to mix things up. If I missed some great concerts, then it's encouraging to know many will be repeated over the year. I feel after two or three years of disappointment - the new voices, players and conductors are starting to make their presence felt.
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