{"id":4514,"date":"2018-07-26T17:23:08","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T16:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=4514"},"modified":"2018-07-26T17:23:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T16:23:08","slug":"prom-15-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=4514","title":{"rendered":"Prom 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

Royal Albert Hall, London<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When you\u2019re old enough to remember seeing Sir Adrian Boult and Otto Klemperer live it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

A crisp and intelligent performance of that glorious old warhorse, Beethoven\u2019s Emperor <\/em>concerto was the high spot of this concert – noteworthy for sensitive dynamics and a certain freshness, especially in the adagio<\/em>.\u00a0 Paul Lewis played it with warm maturity and precision. \u00a0And I always judge any performance of the E flat concerto by the handling of that beautiful link passage between the adagio and the rondo \u2013 maybe one of the most exquisitely lyrical few bars Beethoven ever wrote. Here the lingering rubato was nicely balanced before it danced triumphantly away.<\/p>\n

The evening had begun with the world premiere of Tansy Davies\u2019s What Did We See? <\/em>\u2013 an orchestral suite from Between Worlds<\/em>. A four movement suite extrapolated by the composer from her 9\/11 opera, it is moving (once you\u2019ve read the programme notes and understood what it\u2019s 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 \u2013 among many other things. There are evocative, chittering percussive sounds in the strings too \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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<\/em> and an allegretto<\/em> at cracking pace with emphasis on the busy strings, every note clear. Then came a resounding allegro<\/em> with lots of energy, bounce and passion. The roar of applause at the end was well earned.<\/p>\n

Susan Elkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Royal Albert Hall, London When you\u2019re old enough to remember seeing Sir Adrian Boult and Otto Klemperer live it\u2019s really quite exciting to see a conductor as young as Ben Gernon, 28, doing a fine job and reassuring us all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4515,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4514\/revisions\/4515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}