The Last Night 2010
Dove
A Song of Joys [BBC commission: world premiere]
Tchaikovsky
Capriccio italien, Op.45
Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op.33 [arr. Rysanov]
Parry
Blest Pair of Sirens
Strauss
Verführung, Op.33/1; Freundliche Vision, Op.48/1; Ständchen, Op.17/2 [orch. Felix Mottl]; Winterweihe, Op.48/4; Zueignung, Op.10/1 [orch. Robert Heger]
Chabrier
Joyeuse marche
Smetana
Dalibor – Dobrá! Já mu je dám! … Jak je mi?
Dvořák
Rusalka – Song to the Moon
Vaughan Williams
Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra – Prelude; Galop
Wagner
Lohengrin – Bridal Chorus [arr. Rutter]
Rodgers & Hammerstein
Carousel – You’ll never walk alone
Fisher’s Hornpipe [Trad., orch. Nic Raine]
Arne
Alfred – Rule, Britannia! [arr. Sargent]
Parry
Jerusalem [orch. Elgar]
Elgar
Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 in D
The National Anthem [arr. Britten]
Maxim Rysanov (viola)
Renée Fleming (soprano)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Jiří Bělohlávek
Reviewed by: Chris Caspell
Reviewed: 11 September, 2010
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
Over the years that The Classical Source has been reviewing the BBC Proms the Last Night has undergone a transformation. It used to be said that the real last-night of the season was the penultimate one, with, historically, Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony; now that has all changed as the famous and frivolous tunes have been ousted by music borne of better thought-out programming.
Jonathan Dove’s “A Song of Joys” is an exercise in word-painting and none the worse for it as the “jubilant song” of the opening led to animal imitations and a crash of lightning, all vividly portrayed. This showpiece for chorus and orchestra colourfully sets the opening nine lines of Walt Whitman’s poem and although in places the rhythms in the orchestra could have been tighter, this premiere set the Last Night’s proceedings off to an agreeable start.
Two works by Tchaikovsky settled the BBC Symphony Orchestra into more familiar territory. Capriccio italien used to be heard far more often in Prom concerts but its popularity has waned (it was last performed in 1997). Despite a noisy audience, this was a sterling performance, Jiří Bělohlávek skilfully handling the many tempo changes to bring out the dance elements. The arrangement by Maxim Rysanov of Rococo Variations (using the revision by Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, the work’s original cellist) worked well. The higher pitch of the viola slotted it nicely into the middle of the orchestral soundscape, itself thinned by reduced numbers in the string section. The faster-moving passages convince on the viola, even better in the hands of nimble-fingered Rysanov. Save the cadenza in the sixth variation, which lacked the gravitas that a cello can provide, this arrangement is a fine addition to the viola’s repertoire.
Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens has a surfeit of ‘s’ sounds in the first two lines – a real headache for any choir. The combined choruses’ detailed training under the watchful Stephen Jackson paid dividends, as it did in the careful observation of the score’s many dynamic markings. ‘Victorian schmaltz’ easily lends itself to this work and is a sentiment that choir and orchestra alike managed to avoid.
This selection of Richard Strauss songs were composed between 1885 and 1900. Strauss’s love of the soprano voice largely stemmed from his marriage to his temperamental wife Pauline (née de Ahna), for whom many settings were written. All but the first (Verführung) of this Last Night selection originated with piano accompaniment and were later orchestrated either by the composer or conductors of the time. Renée Fleming made everyone sit up and listen. Her lyric soprano voice is ideally suited to the full-bodied sound that is demanded by Strauss’s female roles and despite a slight disagreement in tempo at the start, Bělohlávek and the BBCSO demonstrated themselves as expert accompanists. “Ständchen”, possibly the best-known of these five songs, showed off the wind section at its best – tripping lithely about the soloist who clearly enjoyed the experience.
After the interval another excellent piece of programming – Chabrier’s brilliant Joyeuse marche – set the standard for the remainder of the concert. Like Capriccio italien, this piece has fallen into sad neglect in recent years, last heard at a prom as an encore in 1997. The BBCSO performed with swagger and a little tongue-in-cheek in readiness for the fun soon to be had. The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 was remembered as Fleming returned for music by Smetana and Dvořák. She reflected upon how, last year, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution, she and Bělohlávek had performed these two pieces. Clearly both conductor and soloist have an affinity with this music which was performed with a full spectrum of Puccini-like emotion.
Vaughan Williams’s viola Suite was a peculiar choice for a second half, even more so as only the first and last movements were played. While these were a welcome curio, Rysanov’s performance was introverted and lacked the rhythmic certainty needed in the stilted changes between duple and compound time in the ‘Galop’. John Rutter’s adaptation of the ‘Bridal Chorus’ from “Lohengrin” made a welcome, lighter change to Wagner’s version (!), though clearly there were members of the audience who were surprised to discover where this most famous of wedding-marches originated.
‘You’ll never walk’ alone from “Carousel”, and sung by the massed choirs and audiences all around the country, made, Bělohlávek hoped, the largest choir ever. I didn’t see anyone from the Guinness Book of Records, but that didn’t matter as this was the beginning of the end of the 2010 Prom season, which continued with a new orchestration of ‘Fisher’s Hornpipe’ by Nic Raine (the expectation that the audience would clap along didn’t quite work), which led to Malcolm Sargent’s arrangement of Thomas Arne’s “Rule, Britannia!”, Fleming making hard work of the coloratura embellishments.
The usual suspects of “Jerusalem” and the First of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Marches (aka “Land of Hope and Glory”) followed a brief speech by Bělohlávek who clearly enjoys the experience but has some trouble with the language. Saving the best to last, a touching performance of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the UK National Anthem left everyone speechless. The Queen, on first hearing Britten’s handiwork at a Snape Maltings concert in 1967 said that she had never been so affected by the Anthem, adding “and I have heard it once or twice before”. Leonard Slatkin performed this arrangement at the last night in 2002 in what was his first proper Last Night (after the ‘9/11’ atrocities in 2001; this 2010 Last Night was nine years to the date) and the effect that it has on this listener has not diminished.
Bělohlávek’s thoughtful conducting combined with excellent programming and first-class performers made this Last Night one of the best for many years. Last year we saw changes to the format with the removal of Henry Wood’s Sea-Songs (together with uproar from the masses!); this year we returned to 1910 to hear the sequence. The 2011 season of BBC Promenade Concerts starts on 15 July.
There was the Last Night still to come, but the Proms could not have bowed out in finer style than with this majestic performance of the “Vespro della Beata Vergine”. Monteverdi’s fusion of ceremonial, drama and intensely expressive spirituality fits John Eliot Gardiner’s extrovertly patrician conducting like a glove. And, while this may not be a view strictly palatable to early-music fundamentalists, he does present this long, renaissance/early baroque sequence of motets, psalms and hymns as a work of great cohesiveness, a progression via anticipatory hints of Marian virtues and attributes in the psalms and some acutely subjective apostrophising of Mary in the motets and hymns to the fullest realisation of her, in her own words, in the concluding ‘Magnificat’ – it really isn’t over until the Mother of God sings.
Neither performance of the popular symphonies quite hit the mark, their span undermined by vacuous applause between movements (although the delayed burst after Mozart’s Minuet was almost shamefacedly apologetic). Under Gianandrea Noseda, the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony flowed too easily and was agitated and edgy in the wrong way, too febrile, not willing to deal with dark undercurrents and ethereal asides, the second (last) movement as determined as its predecessor to get somewhere fast and to not get too emotionally involved with the possibilities of Schubert’s troubled testimony to ‘being alive’. Similarly the tragedy of Mozart’s (second) G minor Symphony tended to lose out to swift speeds, smoothness, and choppy accents. There were though lovely woodwind descants in the slow movement, played with feeling, and Noseda’s way with the Minuet and Trio was an object-lesson in unbroken tempo-relationship.
In his orchestration of the five settings that constitute Robert Schumann’s “Songs of Mary Stuart”, Robin Holloway suggests the soundworlds of Korngold or early Berg, a prudent use of a classical orchestra, with harp, celesta, bass clarinet and a little percussion (essentially two different types of military drum and a gong). Maybe these are not Schumann’s greatest Lieder, but Holloway has brought them to new life and added a Prologue, an Epilogue, and Entr’actes that belong stylistically (which may account for the work’s success and, to a certain extent, some doubts) and extend the reach of Schumann’s originals, a tactful update that retains the gloom and hopelessness that was mutual to Schumann and the royal’s final days; the execution-signalling drums said it all. Dorothea Röschmann was a dignified and compassionate interpreter, Noseda and the BBC Phil sensitive partners with Steven Burnard an eloquent violist in the final song, ‘Gebet’ (Prayer).
Penguin Cafe was never going to fill the Royal Albert Hall in the way that such as Cream and King Crimson have done with a vengeance. The set-list focussed on more upbeat numbers and what one wit was heard to describe as “Penguin pleasers”, though the new and varied were by no means neglected. After “Scherzo and Trio” had set things in motion with its jazzy take on a distinctly British Minimalism, “From the Colonies” upped the ante with its lively combination of counterpoint and calypso, before the spiralling jig of “Swing the Cat” brought along Kathryn Tickell – a sometime collaborator with the original PCO and herself an artist of broad sympathies – in her guise as fiddle-player; remaining for the off-the-wall Bachian syncopation of “Music for a Found Harmonium”, one of Jeffes’s most enduring numbers. The eddying wistfulness of “Steady State” was a reminder that PCO can ‘do’ chamber music of real poise, and as readily as the shifting repetitions of “Perpetuum Mobile” brought out a collective virtuosity. The aching lyricism of “Oscar Tango” still seemed to be at odds with its title, while the genial foursome of “Paul’s Dance” still provided a test of unanimity from which the players emerged unfazed.
An enchanted recorder-like flute opened Debussy’s Prélude, and a fruity (finely accomplished) bassoon solo introduced The Rite of Spring. Debussy’s enchantment continued to a rapturous climax, Daniele Gatti keeping the elusive Faune on the move, if sometimes a little breathless and with some unconvincing retards – fluctuations that failed to gel the work across its whole – but delicately shaded and detail-conscious nonetheless. There were though some intonation worries from the winds, although their distinctive timbres were welcome. The strings were more uniform, however, and betrayed unanimous confidential pianissimos and warm-toned intensity with equal persuasion, yet the occasional lack of poise in the orchestra’s ensemble suggested that Faune might have been preferable after the interval as a companion to The Rite, and that the concert would have begun better in a blaze of bonhomie, Chabrier’s Joyeuse marche, say, to scintillate and settle both musicians and audience. (Okay, Joyeuse marche is in this year’s Last Night. Therefore, the Overture to Chabrier’s “Gwendoline” would have been a rare treat!)
It was followed by the final instalment of Paul Lewis’s Beethoven Piano Concertos given this season. Lewis was more at home than in those previous performances. The first movement got off to a splendid start, Denève setting a brisk, and totally satisfying, tempo for the first movement, Lewis responding with thrilling, and very energetic, playing. In some ways one felt that it was Denève’s performance rather than Lewis’s, so in control was he. In the Adagio Lewis distanced himself somewhat from the music, giving a rather bland, and square, reading and the finale lacked the heft required to bring about the big finish Beethoven intended. Lewis has the technique, to be sure, and the heart of a Beethovenian, but he hasn’t yet quite got to grips with these concertos as complete entities.
James MacMillan’s opera “The Sacrifice” was written for Welsh National Opera and is based on a take from the Mabinogion. As with Britten and Tippett, a concert-piece has been extracted from the score, but I wonder if MacMillan has done himself any favours, for there is a lot of Britten in the second and third interludes, much to MacMillan’s detriment. Indeed, there were times when I fully expected the ‘Storm Interlude’ from “Peter Grimes” to burst forth! Also, with an over-abundance of percussion, much orchestral detail was obscured; but there is too little music of real substance, and a lack of personality overall.
First up was countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, launching the concert in dervish-like fashion with Caesar’s ‘Empio, dirò, tu sei’ from Handel’s opera. Bristling with rage, Jaroussky exhibited power (never at the expense of tone) and impeccable coloratura, and the furious energy of the string-playing was great, but marred by some ragged ensemble and scrawny sound. This was evidently just initial jitters, however: Ensemble Matheus provided sympathetic and stylish accompaniment for the rest of the night: not as pungent or visceral as some European early-music groups, its dynamism and vibrancy were on near-ideal levels.
Vivaldi’s tender love-song ‘Sol da te, mio dolce amore’ featured a gently rippling, though fiendishly virtuosic, flute obbligato, played with great aplomb by Jean-Marc Goujon. As soloist in Telemann’s Concerto for flute and recorder, Goujon was ideally matched for technical brilliance and theatrical flair by Alexis Kossenko – who pulled off the incredible feat of making the small-voiced recorder carry in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall without ever over-blowing. Swaying and bobbing in perfect synchronisation, the duo made the most of Telemann’s inventive score, rounded off with a rustic Gypsy finale rendered with foot-stomping exuberance.
Otherwise, the audience was left to make what it could of Le Poème Harmonique’s programme, called “Venice: from the streets to the palaces”, from the style of the music and from what seemed to be authentic gestures that enhanced the drift of the words that we couldn’t follow in the dark. Here was this carefully researched recital consigned to diminished appreciation by the demands of atmosphere. Much of the music was in that early-baroque, high-mannerist style of supercharged declamation, closely tied to texts that deal with the anguished coils of love, but with not much in the way of melody, like a lot of popular music trapped in limited harmony and making its impact through insistent rhythm and repetition.
The idea of presenting the Last Night of the Proms as played in 1910 as a tribute to (Sir) Henry Wood was an interesting one, the first of two such Wood-dedicated concerts on this day. If some of the modern attributes of the concert inevitably shared some of the characteristics of the modern-day event it also showed that times, tastes and behaviour have changed. It would have been nice, just for once, to hear Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs without the klaxon interruptions. Now, that is dated. I am sure the audience of 1910 did not disrupt the music in such a childish manner. As Paul Daniel informed us – the gentlemen of the time were even asked not to strike their matches during the music…
The programme had some historic value in that it presented some real curiosities of the time. Tastes change of course, and one can see why some of these works have not stood the test of time – but there were glimpses of music that could well do with some re-appraisal too! The real curio of the collection was surely Henry Wood’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “The Peep Show” – sung here with characteristic relish in a persuasive performance by Sergei Leiferkus. This verbal and musical lampooning of the cult following of soprano Adelina Patti and the Russian critics and musical commentators who admired her or denigrated the composer’s music is hardly a subtle piece of writing. Leiferkus gamely entered into the spirit of the piece highlighting its moments of pastiche (a lilting swaying section with vocal embellishments on the word “Patti” completed by a mock-cadenza) as well as presenting the absurd text with genial humour. But, not a piece one needs to hear often!
There was some whimsy in the programme too. The Paganini/Pitt Moto perpetuo was a very engaging lollipop, one putting the violins through their paces, which deserves more regular outings as a witty encore. The BBC Concert Orchestra strings certainly seemed to enjoy it – and Daniel’s ostensibly laid-back and knowing conducting made a case for it. One often thinks of the Edwardian period as a time where ballads and parlour-songs were popular. Leiferkus lent some heavily-accented English to the excerpt from “Merrie England”, and Jennifer Larmore bought out the melancholy of Dorothy Forster’s “Mifanwy”. She was less successful in persuading us that the aria from Ambroise Thomas’s “Mignon” was such a popular concert extract in its time, for she sounded tentative and the long lines lacked poise.