Royal Albert Hall, Monday 6^th August 2018

An all American evening, this concert was an interesting reminder of just how intangibly distinct American music is. In its way it’s as recognisable as, say, almost anything Russian or French.

The highlight of the evening was Charles Ives’s second symphony. Written in 1902 and then substantially revised forty years later, it wasn’t premiered until 1951 when Leonard Bernstein took it up. It still doesn’t get as many outings as I now think it deserves.  It has been played only once at the Proms before (Leonard Slatkin with Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra in 2006) and was completely new to me.

Osmo Vanska achieved an impressive balance of sound (cellos next to first violins with seconds to his right) in the fugal minor key opening and nice lightness in the first chirpy theme. The adagio cantabile was delicately played and I loved the focus on all the melodies – some of them borrowed from elsewhere in the American tradition in the last movement. In many ways this symphony’s melodious and witty fervour reminded me of Dvorak and this orchestra and conductor has clearly made the work very much its own with lots of enjoyable panache from brass and percussion.

The concert was loosely themed on Bernstein, whose centenary is being celebrated this year. So we began with the Candide overture, which, of course, never fails. Osmo Vanska and his band cheerfully gave us all those syncopated tunes and ideas and played them with terrific polish.

In the middle was a workman-like performance by Inon Barnatan of the Gershwin F major piano concerto. His percussive broken rhythms in the opening movement were competent if a bit lacklustre but the adagio – with its elegant string quartet section and excellent trumpet solo – was enjoyable. Once Barnatan got into the third movement, however, there was plenty of very apt agitato and some impressive virtuoso playing. His encore was fun too – a set of deliciously showy variations on I’ve Got Rhythm.

The encore at the end of the concert was also fun – and moving. The Minnesota Orchestra is about to embark on a tour of South Africa to commemorate what would have been Nelson Mandela’s hundredth birthday. They played a short piece based on a traditional African tune with bold drum work followed by the whole orchestra singing rhythmically before they picked up the melody on their instruments. It made a rather joyful end to the evening.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, Friday 3^rd August 2018

You needed to read the small print for this concert. What looked at first glance like a collection of some of our finest folk musicians was in reality a BBC Concert Orchestra concert under Stephen Bell , for they played in almost every number and at times the orchestral arrangements came close to drowning out the soloists.

Prom 27 Folk Prom
Photo by Mark Allan

As a cross-over experiment there were many splendid moments. Jarlath Henderson’s Uilleann pipes were captivating every time he appeared and the rendition of Dawns Soig with ALAW was the instrumental highlight of the evening. Julie Fowlis’ Puirt-a-Beul is captivating and was particularly moving when singing Lovely Molly with Sam Lee. His earlier singing of My Ausheen – a gentle strathspey – was effectively accompanied by the subtle underpinning of the orchestra.

At other times the orchestral arrangements simply seemed too invasive. The Unthanks gave us Gan to the Kye and Mount the Air in the first half and both seemed over commercialised in the romanticism of the orchestration to say nothing of its volume. Their singing of Magpie in the second half was far more successful in its wistful intensity, and they brought the evening to a rousing climax with some brief but exultant Northumbrian clog dancing.

Surprisingly, one of the most moving vocal items was Julie Fowlis’ singing of Camarinas in Galician and Scots Gaelic – genuinely romantic and superbly lyrical.

The orchestra gave us three brief pieces based on folk tunes of which Hoddinott’s Welsh Dances were the most appealing – the others drifting too easily into the realm of generic film music.

Prom 27 Folk Prom
Photo by Mark Allan

A welcome experiment with many memorable moments, but maybe there is room at the Proms for a more serious take on folk music in the same way as we have for Indian Classical music in the past. And for a long-standing resident of East Sussex it was note-worthy that there was no folk-music south of the Wash!

Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival

McCaldin Arts

Holy Cross Church, Cromer Street, London

He who tires of London tires of life. Well it’s certainly never short of surprises. This is “my” city and yet hardly a week goes by without my discovering a venue, space or place I didn’t even know was there. The rather beautiful Holy Cross Church in Cromer Street, King’s Cross, for example, was completely new to me. Built in the 1880s by Reginald Peacock it provided a surprisingly apt backdrop for a short operatic piece about Mary Tudor – aisle, pulpit, chancel steps and a handy prie-dieu all had a part to play.

Mary’s Hand, with words by Di Sherlock and music by Martin Bussey, is a musical monologue about Mary Tudor – a sort of autobiography in words (mostly sung but occasionally spoken) and music. It seeks to make us think about very familiar mid 16^th century events from the point of view of someone who has been, generally, demonised by history. Yes, Mary ordered the execution of the “protestant martyrs” (not what she called them) but as talented mezzo Claire McCaldin sings with angry passion. “Archbishop Cranmer? He made me a bastard.”

The piece is predicated on Mary’s passion for card games and McCaldin occasionally invites an audience member to draw a card which she then attaches to a display screen and moves on the next section of her story. This device determines the order in which the sections run but the 80 minute opera would have worked perfectly well without it.

It’s quite a performance from McCaldin who wears a fabulous brown and cream dress with fur sleeves, modelled on the 1553 portrait by Hans Eworth and paid for by crowd funding. The dress then gradually comes apart to symbolise what’s happening to its wearer. At the end she walks back down the aisle in a simple white undergarment (shroud?) carrying a candle like Lady Macbeth.

McCaldin is variously eye flashingly sexy, imperious, wistful, resigned and angry. And she maintains a remarkable level of energy given that this is effectively an 80 minute solo. Her voice includes some ruby red impassioned low notes and some fierce, sometimes hysterical, high ones.  She manages the emotional contrasts with verve.

She is accompanied by an all female  trio – hidden behind a pillar and therefore invisible from my seat, unfortunately – consisting of trumpet, cello and oboe/cor anglais. Martin Bussey’s evocative music uses some interesting effects including col legno cello, rapid pizzicato, lots of off beat blasts and a strange purring tongued effect on the trumpet. Words and music complement each other seamlessly. Don’t go to this if you want melody and “numbers” but it’s worth catching if you’re looking for passion and convincing acting within eloquent music.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, Tuesday 31^st July 2018

Two London symphonies make a neat thematic pairing although they don’t really have much in common. Haydn’s last symphony was composed in London for London audiences but it isn’t in any sense descriptive of the city. Vaughan Williams’s second, in contrast, is effectively symphonic programme music complete with those haunting, evocative Westminster chimes. Had I been programming I might have started the concert with Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture for another take on London but perhaps there was a length issue.

It’s interesting to watch baton-wielding, time-beating Andrew Manze, unshowy and looking like a city banker in dark suit and tie, at work three days after seeing the flamboyant Teodor Currentizis on the same rostrum. Classical music is a far broader church than people who don’t engage with it usually realise.

Manze gave us a thoughtfully punctuated slow D minor opening to the Haydn symphony reminding us that Haydn was already in Creation mode. Then came a lot of cleanly picked out Haydnesque inter-instrumental dialogue. The mellow bassoon work against the delicate string rhythms in the andante was delighful and Manze allowed all the wit – including those all important general pauses – to sing out in the scherzo with imaginative flexibility of tempi in the nocturne. I liked the decisive resonance he found for the fourth movement too.

I’m reminded of a remark made recently by the professional who conducts one of the amateur orchestras I play in. “If I could choose to have dinner with a composer” he said, while we were working on symphony 103, “It would have to be Haydn. You’d never be bored!” This performance helped to prove his point.

And so, after the interval, on to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s London symphony and the enlarged orchestra it calls for, including six percussionists kept busy, two harps and lots of additional brass. You need a lush string sound to bring off this symphony of many moods. Manze coaxed plenty of richness out of the Scottish Symphony orchestra with memorable solos from the leader, Laura Samuel and principal viola, Scott Dickinson. Violas were, unusually, to the right of the podium where cellos traditionally sit which added to the tonal balance rather effectively. I liked the very evocative dying away to nothing at the end of the third movement nocturne and the grandiloquence Manze found in the fourth before the peaceful beauty of the epilogue.

There’s been a lot of quite polarised discussion lately – on Radio 3, in newspapers and elsewhere – about applause between movements. I’m firmly in the “fuddy-duddy” camp and want all appreciation saved for the end of the work – which rarely happens these days especially at the Proms. For some reason, at this concert, there was no inter-movement clapping. Sudden corporate enlightenment? Well it was certainly a very welcome change anyway.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, Saturday 28 July

When Richard Morrison interviewed the Greek/Russian Teodor Currentzis for The Times, ahead of the latter’s Proms debut Morrison told us to expect “Beethoven as you’ve never heard it before.” And he was right.

This concert which featured the second and fifth symphonies gave us highly charismatic playing and two very individualistic, exaggerated performances. Anyone who can – upper strings, woodwind, some brass – stands to play in Currentzis’s original instruments band from Perm in Siberia. There are few chairs on stage. The result is a lot of passion and free movement so that the rhythm becomes visual as well as aural. Sometimes it’s almost balletic.

Tall slender Currentzis himself is pretty dramatic too. Clad in a short shirt, leggings and silver shoes he has a strange habit of starting the music very abruptly almost before he’s reached the podium. He uses a lot of baton-free impassioned gesture, including much expressive face work and sometimes, when he wants a piano so soft that it almost disappears, he stands virtually still. And of course he rarely does anything as pedestrian as beating time.

The quality of the sound is often magical. The sombre gentleness of wooden flutes, oboes and bassoons combined with gut (or some appropriate substitute?) strings ensures a warmth and intensity you don’t often hear in orchestras using modern instruments. And, as you’d expect, Currentzis takes every allegro at the sort of breathtaking speed  adherence to Beethoven’s metronome markings requires – although it’s not, even today, what we’re used to. I remember Klemperer’s Beethoven, for example, and most of us own recordings which take much of these works at a pretty leisurely pace, despite the efforts in recent year of conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington to change our perceptions.

High spots included the final Allegro molto in the second symphony which never lost a scrap of precision despite the dizzying speed. I also appreciated the well judged quiet wittiness in the larghetto. These people can make a simple scale sound like the pinnacle of musical inventiveness.

After the interval, the opening of the fifth symphony sounded joyous rather than portentous – just lots and lots of brio. The andante was very memorable too with a strong sense of duet between first and second violins, split across the space either side of Currentzis. There was also some lovely work from the wooden piccolo and some flamboyantly pointed dynamics in the final allegro. I was puzzled though, by a persistent vibratory buzzing in the fortissimo passages which I found distracting.

All in all it was a most interesting evening – and certainly one which will stand in the memory. I’m not sure, however, I’d want my Beethoven served up like this all the time. There is a faint whiff of arrogance about Currentzis. It came through in Morrison’s interview and I felt it from the podium – a sort of messianic self belief as if he thinks he has all the answers. There is room for as many interpretations and approaches as there are conductors and orchestras. Currentzsis’s take is an intriguing exploration of possibilities. It isn’t the last word on Beethoven.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, London

When you’re old enough to remember seeing Sir Adrian Boult and Otto Klemperer live it’s really quite exciting to see a conductor as young as Ben Gernon, 28, doing a fine job and reassuring us all that classical music is in safe hands for decades to come.

A crisp and intelligent performance of that glorious old warhorse, Beethoven’s Emperor concerto was the high spot of this concert – noteworthy for sensitive dynamics and a certain freshness, especially in the adagio.  Paul Lewis played it with warm maturity and precision.  And I always judge any performance of the E flat concerto by the handling of that beautiful link passage between the adagio and the rondo – maybe one of the most exquisitely lyrical few bars Beethoven ever wrote. Here the lingering rubato was nicely balanced before it danced triumphantly away.

The evening had begun with the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s What Did We See? – an orchestral suite from Between Worlds. A four movement suite extrapolated by the composer from her 9/11 opera, it is moving (once you’ve read the programme notes and understood what it’s about) and musically interesting. It uses, for example, a battery of unusual percussion and requires six percussionists to play gong, horizontal bass drum, cymbals sounded by passing a rod vertically through the centre hole, xylophone, glockenspiel, various rattles and shakers and a strange bowed bell – among many other things. There are evocative, chittering percussive sounds in the strings too – produced by specialist bowing and tapping as well as atmospheric glissandi. All this is, I suspect, pretty difficult to play but the BBC Philharmonic rose ably enough to the challenge.

After the interval came an uplifting performance of Brahms Second Symphony conducted without baton – as also for the Davies and the Beethoven. For the Brahms he didn’t use a score either. As always that creates a strong line of very direct communication between conductor and players. They gave us an articulately melodious first movement, a gently sombre contrasting adagio and an allegretto at cracking pace with emphasis on the busy strings, every note clear. Then came a resounding allegro with lots of energy, bounce and passion. The roar of applause at the end was well earned.

Susan Elkin

Royal Albert Hall, Sunday 22 July 2018

Regardless of the quality of your hi-fi equipment, there are some works which need a live performance to do them justice. Mahler’s Eighth – the Symphony of a Thousand – is certainly one of them. No recording I have comes anywhere near the experience within the hall as the vast massed choirs explode into Veni, veni creator spiritus. The combined forces of the BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Chorus, together with the Southend Boys’ and Girls’ Choirs, were mightily impressive not only in their enthusiasm but their accuracy and ability, in the second part, to take their dynamics down to a whisper.

The extended forces of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales were joined by Jane Watts at the RAH Organ, giving it more flair than I recall the last time the work was performed here, and an assortment of more unusual instruments, including the sudden influx of mandolin and harmonium.

Of the soloists, Marianne Beate Kielland was a late replacement for an indisposed Christine Rice, but soared effortlessly and richly over the assembled forced behind her. Of the men, Simon O’Neill started somewhat tentatively but by the time he came to the extended tessitura of Doctor Marianus was in full helden-tenor form.

Thomas Sondergard managed not only to keep the vast forces together but created notable nuances of dynamic and tempi throughout, particularly in the extended descriptive passages in the second half.

The hall was packed, but thanks to the air-conditioning, was not as hot as it was outside.

I had taken a year off last year after over half-a –century of Prom going but I have to admit it was good to be back in the flesh.

Royal Albert Hall, 21 July 2018

As soon as the 2018 Proms Youth Choir sang the first vibrant note of Eriks Esenvalds’s unaccompanied setting of Longfellow’s sonnet “A Shadow”, you knew that this was going to be quite an evening. Two hundred and fifty singers seated in one stage-right huge bank created a very warm strong sound which burst joyfully through the grandiloquent Royal Albert Hall acoustic. And if some of the exposed top soprano notes felt a bit strained, well I can live with that. It will be a long time before I forget this piece – a first performance – which ends with the choir whistling and the sound slowly dying away to the tinkling of bells and small glockenspiels in the hands of some of the choir members. The choir consists of University of Birmingham Voices, University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir, North East Choir and BBC Proms Youth Choir Academy. Each group had trained separately and then come together for a four day intensive rehearsal residency led by Chorus Director, Simon Halsey who conducted this fine performance.

Next, in a concert entitled War and Peace, came Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem played by Georg Solti’s World Orchestra for Peace which draws players from orchestras based in several continents. They’d sat quietly waiting in position during the opener. And if I may be allowed a “girly” observation it’s good to see a band in which the women dress in different colours. Visually very jolly. Coloured shirts for the chaps next, please.

Donald Runnicles splits his first and second violins across the stage which, as always, makes the lower strings sound more integrated – especially in the pizzicato section in the third movement’s lush (hopeful?) conclusion. The second movement was memorable too. With its col legno tattoo rhythm, snare drum and trumpet tune it really was Dies Irae and – in a piece which ensures that all four percussionists work hard for their fee – the decelerando ending with all those offset notes from different sections is not for the faint hearted. This lot brought it off with all the passion and panache it needs.

But the jewel in the crown was the magnificent account of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony which formed the second half – the choir now re-grouped evenly behind the orchestra. I have actually sung this piece in the Royal Albert Hall and so understand well the problems of the conductor being a very long way away – not an issue at this performance, partly because the impeccably trained choir sang without copies so that their responses were impeccably precise.

Runnicles gave us lots of sensitivity and colour in the first three movement with effectively exaggerated piano passages in the first and close attention to the detail with some very crisp string runs in the second – as well as making the very best of one of my favourite moments when the timpani take over from the bassoon lead and we’re into anticipation and excitement.  The lilting lyricism of the third movement was tenderly clear too with emphasis on delicate pairings of instruments which sometimes get lost in the texture.

Introducing the Ode to Joy theme at a brisk tempo and very softly left Runnicles with plenty of colourful, dramatics places to go and he certainly did – inspired perhaps by the fabulous quality of the choral singing (four good soloists too but somehow – seated between the orchestra and choir they seemed almost secondary in this performance). Verbal precision and very accurate pitching drove the piece along to its triumphant conclusion – any nervousness now forgotten as the sopranos sailed through those sublime, long high notes. Bravo to all concerned.

Susan Elkin