Prom 75: Sakari Oramo conducts The Last Night of the Proms, with Jamie Barton, BBC Singers, Symphony Chorus & Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Kidane
Woke [BBC commission: world premiere]
Falla
The Three-Cornered Hat – Suite No.2
Laura Mvula
Sing to the Moon
Maconchy
Proud Thames
Elgar
Sospiri, Op.70
Bizet
Carmen – L’amour est un oiseau rebelle (Habanera)
Saint‐Saëns
Samson et Dalila, Op.47 – Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix
Verdi
Don Carlos – O don fatale
Aida – Triumphal March
Offenbach
Orpheus in the Underworld – Overture
Grainger
Marching Song of Democracy
Arlen
The Wizard of Oz – Over the Rainbow
Gershwin
Girl Crazy – I Got Rhythm
Henry Wood
Fantasia on British Sea-Songs
Arne
Rule, Britannia! [arr. Sargent]
Elgar
Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 in D, Op.39/1
Parry, orch. Elgar
Jerusalem
The National Anthem [arr. Britten]
Auld lang syne [arr. Paul Campbell]
Jamie Barton (mezzo-soprano)
BBC Singers & BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo
Reviewed by: Nick Breckenfield
Reviewed: 14 September, 2019
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
And so to the Last Night of the Proms. From one of the best new commissions as an opener, via a surprising wordless paean to democracy and a vocal soloist who nailed bisexual politics to the mast in her final outfit, this year’s repertoire seemed quietly seditious. But the musical choices were more satisfying than usual, especially in the first half. There was a nod to Sir Henry Wood’s 150th-birthday, music he introduced, here Elgar’s heartfelt Sospiri acting as the fulcrum of the first half, first heard on the eve of the First World War. That had been immediately preceded by two women composers – a thread also expertly knitted through the season – in an a cappella (BBC Singers) version of Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon, beautifully rendered, and the belated (by fifty-six years) Proms premiere of a lovely musical travelogue by Elizabeth Maconchy, Proud Thames.
If the Spanish flavour of the first half seemed a little arbitrary, who could complain when Sakari Oramo and especially his percussion department suffused the Falla with irresistible rhythms, and Jaime Barton proffered her chocolaty, velvety mezzo to the selected arias. The first half ended with additional trumpets for the ‘Triumphal March’ from Verdi’s Aida.
At the opening of the second half there was a late and far too small nod to a bicentenary, that of Jacques Offenbach, his Orpheus in the Underworld Overture. Perhaps even more extraordinarily, it’s only the second performance of this piece in the Proms’ 125-year history, its first outing in 1990 under Rozhdestvensky. I wonder why, when it’s so enjoyable, encompassing some beautiful woodwind solos (Richard Hosford’s clarinet, Tom Bloomfield’s oboe) then one for leader Igor Yuzefovich. The climax – the Can Can – had Oramo occasionally kick (though not high).
The next item must rank as one of the weirdest entries onto the Last Night roster – Percy Grainger’s vocalise Marching Song of Democracy; a seven-minute collision of singers intoning “Ta rar dira dira” and “Dum pum pum pum” against each other, building to a climax that would have deafened even the most robust Parliamentary debate. It was like an encapsulation of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony though with only some dim memory of Goethe’s text.
In a second black dress, Barton returned, this time with head microphone, for a Judy Garland classic, ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ and Gershwin’s ‘I’ve Got Rhythm’. There was no surprise that Barton was equally as successful in musical numbers as operatic ones (not every opera singer can make the switch), and the Gershwin proved that Barton and the BBC Symphony (with its additional saxophones for this one selection) might have rhythm, but most seated audience members who tried to clap along certainly don’t.
That fact was reinforced in the ‘Hornpipe’ of Wood’s (here foreshortened) Fantasia on British Sea Songs and also in the lamentably disrupting horn blasts at the end of ‘The Saucy Arethusa’, ‘Tom Bowling’ and the ‘Home Sweet Home’; the music is much more enjoyable without percussive embellishment. And while I have no objection of filleting-in of songs from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, surely there is now a case for finding an alternative to Danny Boy.
To cap the Fantasia it was Malcolm Sargent’s version of Arne’s Rule Britannia!, Barton now swathed in a dress including bisexual colours (blue and magenta) in a wraparound flap and an enormous half ruff, producing a rainbow Pride flag for the final chorus.
Oramo’s speech was a heartfelt plea for our collective support for live performances, building on Sir Henry’s proselytising zeal. As is traditional the remainder of the concert ran to form. But I end at the beginning, with Daniel Kidane’s Woke, the title reminding us to be constantly aware of racism, but the music is inherently interesting in itself, kick-started by a wood-block (like a woodpecker) and teeming into life with long-held strings and chattering parts underneath, eventually coming to a unanimous halt before more rat-a-tat-tat pulses reigniting the music, before eventually building to a ringing climax, though not before the modern plastic equivalent of the ancient bullroarer made air. Electrifying and energising.
Perhaps one reason why this Last Night seemed a mite less lively – amidst the fewer balloons and flags – was the absence of shouted repartee from the Prommers. There was one such highlight, but that came from the tenors of the BBC Symphony Chorus who followed the charity advice (£115,000 before the collection after the concert), with an endorsement of their own, appealing for “tenners”.
- Broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 (available on BBC iPlayer for thirty days afterwards)
- BBC Proms www.bbc.co.uk/proms
In September 2007 I asked how Proms in the Park fitted the strap-line of “The World’s greatest classical music festival”; twelve years later that connection, tenuous at the time, has been broken. This was nevertheless a fabulous concert packed with stars from the world of popular music and stage-shows that rocked the sun-drenched corner of Hyde Park for about seven hours hosted by Michael Ball, who also took his turn as a performer – most notably, and excellently, singing Stars from Les Misérables accompanied at the piano by the composer, Claude-Michel Schönberg.
As the light started to fade over Hyde Park – many commented on the beautiful sunset – the first of the artists from the world of pop took to the stage. Gabrielle, who recently turned fifty, has a voice still as compelling as it was in 1993. In 2018 she recorded her first album in eleven years – Under my Skin; Shine, from it, joined hits from the 1990s.
Jack Savoretti’s performance of Catapult on Graham Norton’s show in 2015 literally catapulted the record up the charts. Of tonight’s set of six songs, four were taken from his new album. Opening with the hit-single Candlelight this luscious arrangement was well suited to the strings of the BBC Concert Orchestra, which never faltered. By his own admission “filling time” as the stage was reset, Michael Ball took the microphone for We’ll Meet Again and ‘Anthem’ from Chess. Ball played Anatoly Sergievsky in the 2018 ENO production of the musical and a better performance of this song would be difficult to find.
It was commercial necessity that dictated the original Proms mix of classical favourites, contemporary ‘novelties’ and popular ballads. In much the same way the local tradition of composer-themed nights had less to do with aesthetic preference than a desire to maximise royalties. It was only when William Glock was installed as Proms supremo that such old-style composer-themed evenings lost out permanently mixed scheduling. On 3 August 1962, for example, Glock juxtaposed a traditional first half under Basil Cameron (Beethoven – Fidelio Overture, the First Piano Concerto, with Lamar Crowson, and the Fourth Symphony) with John Carewe’s pioneering stab at (parts of) Pierre Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître and Debussy’s Ibéria.
Manze has spoken of Beethoven’s world as becoming much more “untidy”, the composer not rejecting the past but effectively redrafting the rules for the future. Here, the slow movement could scarcely have sounded less like Mozart, the third was full of wit, the transition to the Finale evidently super-refined in rehearsal. It was in this fourth that doubts resurfaced for all the incidental successes (a wonderfully characterful piccolo). It all felt a bit too easy, rhythmic definition (and perhaps an implied call to the barricades) sacrificed in the interests of a gentler musicality at breezy tempos.
For me at least the highlight came earlier with Elgar’s Bach transmogrification, the arranger’s signature gloriously obvious almost from the start. Manze made sure every line was audible, including the tuned percussion only vaguely etched in on those ancient LPs. Likewise the alternation of timpani and bass drum and the subtle presence of harp. The oboist whose eloquent line frames the Fantasia and inevitably recalls the slow movement of the Second Symphony deserves to be named, Kerstin Ingwersen. Her colleagues excelled in spots: especially notable was the crisp delineation of the basses to launch ‘Abscheulicher!’. Elsewhere there was a tendency to default to a lower setting.
When did you last see a symphony orchestra playing from memory and wearing sinister masks? This specially devised and family-friendly presentation vividly brought to life Berlioz’s ground-breaking Symphonie fantastique. Its preliminary ‘Ant & Dec’-style preamble, shared between Nicholas Collon and Mathew Baynton, outlined in the composer’s own words the stimulus behind the work, accompanied by Iain Farrington’s arrangement of Berlioz’s La belle voyageuse. In addition, the musicians demonstrated the transformative progress of the Symphony’s idée fixe across its five movements. During this twenty-minute ‘chat show’ introduction a banner displaying this recurring motif stretched across the rear of the stage which then began to fill with an assortment of light-filled shoeboxes (apartments and windmills) intended to evoke Parisian night-life in the 1820s. From the organ console there hung the French tricolour.
While the razzmatazz made its own conspicuous impact, the performance was riveting throughout, with Collon drawing playing of cinematic intensity. The hallucinations of the first-movement’s ‘Réveries’ were nicely caught with accents and dynamics scrupulously observed; the latter occasionally savagely rendered in ‘Passions’ (timpani erupting from the texture) or disappearing from view but building to a compelling climax.
A bare stage – save for percussion on the top riser (with six covered mystery items), a couple of harps stage-right and risers with chairs obviously for cellos and basses – was the unlikely start to this reprise Prom of the one that had gone immediately before. Nicholas Collon entered alone to set the scene, introducing actor Mathew Baynton and, by reading Hiller’s description of the composer in question, metamorphosed the actor into Berlioz. Baynton then quickly reprised what happened exactly 192 years and a day ago (11 September 1827) when Berlioz first saw Harriet Smithson, to the accompaniment of a small group of strings, harp and clarinet who had silently taken their place for some soirée music (presumably Berlioz, but not immediately recognisable). Silently the rest of the Aurora Orchestra brought on white models of tall apartment buildings and windmills, lit from within to create 1820s Paris, before taking them up to the back of the stage.
With all but cellos and basses standing and – Aurora’s calling card – playing from memory this was a typically invigorating performance with some daring pianissimos (sometimes so quiet they were almost inaudible) and with a nod to period practice. Most notable was the choreography that memorising the music allows. At least one practice was Berlioz’s original intention, bringing harps to the front for the second movement ball scene: not just two, but four, the stage change neatly covered by Baynton reciting Berlioz’s ideas about why harps should be given more prominence. The ball scene (with the cornet part) was topped, just at the end, with the non-playing percussionists unveiling the mystery objects – six glitterballs added to the one suspended high above the Arena – to bathe the whole of the auditorium, briefly and deliriously, in circling lights. The effect was magical.
Visually and aurally, this was an audacious expansion of Aurora’s memory performances. Baynton was likeable as Berlioz and managed to project clearly in the few moments early on when his microphone cut out. The performance had been well run in, having already been to Aldeburgh, Rheingau and – with Baynton – Saffron Walden, with a further performance to close the Bremen Festival on September 14 (without the dramatisation), and was a fitting final commemoration of the composer’s 150th-death anniversary.
I must confess to still enjoying recordings of Bach’s orchestral music recorded decades ago, such as by Boyd Neel (with piano!) and Britten of the Brandenburg Concertos. I was therefore somewhat surprised to read in the Proms programme the following: “The revolution of the past 50 years in the performance of Baroque music means that modern audiences prefer their Bach sleeker and more dynamic played on instruments that approximate those of the first half of the 18th century – a practice in which John Butt and his Dunedin Consort are firmly at the forefront.”
Bach’s Leipzig years, surely some of the richest in music, were the cradle for these Suites. Each is composed for different forces thereby investing great tonal variety when all Four Suites are performed together. The numbering of the Suites has nothing to do with the order in which they were written.
Joining the end-of-Proms beauty parade of visiting orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic and its Chief Conductor of barely one year, Semyon Bychkov, arrived not so much as an international brand as a bottomless well of instantly discernible national character, style, strength and delicacy that breaks boundaries. Shostakovich, for whom irony was a protective veil, would have appreciated the programming – zesty Czech humour and one of the further extremes of intensely Russian emotionalism heading towards one of the darkest stars in the symphonic universe.
Bychkov’s realisation of this will stay with me for a long time, especially the wraiths and shadows that seep through the start of the first movement, strangely placed before the harsh martial music that, as it were, caused them, so that you lose your grip on what is reality and what is memory. Crucially, Bychkov had the insight to move from Shostakovich the objective observer to Shostakovich the obliquely tender sympathiser – just when you thought there was no more colour or expression to lose from the strings’ sound, they could summon up a barely perceptible shift towards grey warmth. Bychkov’s sense of pace was superb for supporting a bleak aimlessness that drifted into brief passages of something more defined.
There has been something of a nostalgic throwback this week to contemporary music concerts of yesteryear, always overrunning with stage-changes and the unpredictability of how long new works are. It was fifteen minutes beyond schedule for PCM8 (a Tribute to Oliver Knussen) and now thirty for this current Prom. In the event only a few of the audience (including a notably packed Arena) felt they could tear themselves away as the clock ticked towards midnight.
Steve Reich’s Pulse belies expectations in its soft use of the bass guitar (Greenwood again); its gentle beat underpinning a folksy movement for an ensemble of twelve, here arrayed symmetrically with the two violins (Pioro and BBCNOW’s leader, Lesley Hatfield) facing each other, each supported by a flute and clarinet and pairs of violins and violas. Reich instructs the bass guitar not to be played with a plectrum and, with the piano, to be almost muted; Pulse should officially be filed in the category of gorgeousness.
The final stop in this year’s Proms Chamber Music 800-year journey brought us right up to date and featured the newest ensemble in the roster: the Knussen Chamber Orchestra, founded by Ryan Wigglesworth who followed the late Oliver Knussen as Sir Richard Rodney Bennett Professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Formed of students, both current and graduate, from the Academy together with the institution’s professors it is dedicated to pursuing Knussen’s eclectic musical interests.
This was the first of three concerts in this the final week of Proms 2019 which hark back to Henry Wood’s inclination to feature programmes devoted to one composer. Wagner was first off (Bach and Beethoven will follow) though with rewarding diversions to one of the originators of German Romantic opera, as then to a composer beyond Germany who was inspired by Wagner’s great advances in musical technique and expression.
Wagner occupied the second half with a digest of Götterdämmerung – and, by extension, of the entire Ring, as the extracts bore reference (in text and musical leitmotifs) to episodes in the previous three parts of the cycle. They were given here as extracts, strung together in sequence so that the very brief pauses between them, without any connecting material, rather drew attention to their status as ‘bleeding chunks’.