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

St Luke’s, Brighton , Friday 20 July 2018

The programme for the evening was itself palindromic as well as concealing a finely crafted palindrome at the core of Peter Copley’s new work.

The evening opened and closed with an extended Piano Trio, with two shorter, single movement works either side of the interval. Moreover, these included works by each of the three soloists. The bar was set very high for the event as they opened with Beethoven’s Piano Trio Op70 No2 in Eflat. This gloriously humane work has a dancelike quality throughout, with extended almost Schubertian passages. If the finale is more strident it never loses its warm. Adam Swayne’s Hawker Hunter is a memorial piece to the Shoreham air crash. The highly aggressive opening draws on a large number of modern techniques in terms of the piano but these are all finely integrated into the score as a whole. As the piece progresses a sense of brooding calm overtakes it and we hear echoes of Purcell’s final pages of Dido and Aeneas. It is as if the music itself becomes the consolation, and is very effective.

After the interval we heard Ellie Blackshaw’s Piano Trio, which was receiving its fourth performance – noteworthy today for any new writing. Based on three, five-note chords which themselves reflect the names of the players, the work allows the individual instruments to develop their own voice and character in extended solo lines. This allows the work to breath and gives it a sense of openness and calm.

Peter Copley’s Piano Trio No2 is potentially his most extended work to date. Where the evening’s programme had been gently palindromic, this new trio is itself very closely structured. The opening Mesto mirrors the final Miserioso. The second movement Prestissimo likewise mirrors the fourth movement Leggiero and at the heart of the work the Adagio is a precisely worked out palindrome which draws to a single chord at its centre before reversing to the opening note. It is totally convincing and I suspect that any who had not had the palindrome pointed out to them would not be aware, so subtle is the writing. Nuances of balance and tempi create different aspects so that there is no obvious mirroring of earlier moments.

The opening movement brings an intense lyricism for all its sadness, though this gives way to a furious Prestissimo – think Flight of the Bumblebees on acid! – before the extended Adagio. The Leggiero is frequently jumpy and excitable, while the Allegro finale becomes almost playful in its communication both between the players and with ourselves.

The programming was quite right. The Beethoven reminded us of what the Piano Trio can be, and then three contemporary composers showed what can be done today, leaving us with the joy of Peter Copley’s work ringing in our ears.