Adams
The Chairman Dances
Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40
Berio
Sinfonia
Yunchan Lim (piano)
BBC Singers
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Kazuki Yamada
Reviewed by: David Gutman
Reviewed: 1 August, 2025
Venue: Royal Albert Hall
No doubt about the main event. Yunchan Lim has been playing this Rachmaninov concerto a good deal lately, in Taiwan and South Korea as well as in Paris where I was lucky enough to nab one of the last remaining seats. Having been partnered in all three locales by Klaus Mäkelä and the Orchestre de Paris, the pianist’s Decca recording cannot be far behind. The music, elegantly de-Russified and rendered crystalline by these consummate artists, seemed a better fit than last year’s Proms ‘Emperor’ Concerto. Meanwhile tonight’s conductor has had his own career highlights to savour, including a Berlin Philharmonic debut last June, including the Saint-Saëns Third Symphony also toured by Mäkelä’s current band. Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto, one of his most perversely underrated ‘American’ scores, partly because it exists in three separate incarnations, was tonight framed by two modern if not exclusively modernist classics.
A Nixon in China ‘out-take’ or prequel, The Chairman Dances did not reach the Proms until 2005 courtesy of Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. The CBSO on the other hand had recorded the piece more than a decade previously during the Simon Rattle era. While the fabled Madame Mao was also a former Shanghai movie actress, her foxtrot demands a certain rigour. Yamada’s brisk basic pulse was, from my seat, less dependable and kinetic than it might have been, the line obscured by the interjections of high wind and tuned percussion. The lyrical elements by contrast were spaciously drawn, the strings aptly sentimental. The final percussive fade was brought off effectively.
At the other end of the evening, another work in Alsop’s repertoire, commissioned as it was for the New York Philharmonic during Leonard Bernstein’s tenure. One of several iconic ‘moderns’ included in this year’s programme (a welcome sign or just an accident of the anniversary calendar?), Berio’s Sinfonia made its Proms debut in 1969 with the composer himself conducting the Swingle Singers and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The Musical Times found the performance ‘sometimes a little frayed’ but commended what its critic described as ‘a gentle, amiable piece, highly imaginative, often stimulating.’ The remainder of the programme – Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550, Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (with John Ogdon) and Beethoven’s Leonore No. 3 Overture – was entrusted to Colin Davis. The Sinfonia is as well known today as any of its composer’s music bar the Folk Songs for Cathy Berberian, but it can still prompt mid-movement walk-outs and intemperate expressions of surprise. The more common contemporary mode of disengagement is at least as distracting, transforming my corner of the venue into an uncomfortable but well-stocked internet café. Hard now to remember an era in which the revolutionary possibilities of politics, popular culture and the arts took precedence over sales of beer. No doubt Sinfonia’s aura of provocation and ‘happening’ has faded with performances acquiring a softer grain. The third movement remains arguably music’s most exhilarating example of collage, famously redeploying the corresponding movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 as an ‘underground river’ which carries forward musical and verbal allusions of all kinds, some updated for the occasion. Eight entertainers drawn from the BBC Singers to recite the words and create more or less subtle vocal effects were balanced more prominently than Berio intended although that Sixties harpsichord was actually audible from my seat. The rendition felt tauter than anything else on the programme. Might we after all ‘keep going’?
Before the interval Yunchan Lim returned to tackle the Rachmaninov, receiving an ovation before playing a note. We seem to be over a passing vogue for the discursive original score and the pianist made a good case for taking the finale at a cracking pace, given the composer’s impulse to tighten it further for his own commercial recording. Elsewhere the narrative logic felt a little less convincing than it had done in Paris, for all the breathtaking beauty of Rachmaninov’s surviving lyrical passages. The very opening was oddly muted, the orchestra less than incisive although the pianist’s eloquent energy was persuasive enough. Half way through the movement disaster struck. At some point the static orange lighting illuminating the rim of the stage area was joined by flashing lights of a similar hue at Circle height. Some kind of siren or fire alarm sounded for minutes on end and proved difficult to switch off. The first movement continued notwithstanding and we resumed, eventually, with the second. Prolonged applause at least was assured. And we were rewarded with an encore, generous in the circumstances though inscrutable. This was a florid transcription of a number from Korngold’s post-War operetta, Die stumme Serenade (The Silent Serenade), music presumably composed in the States but hyper-Viennese and backward-looking in style. As it was recently recorded by the violinist Bomsori Kim (in a violin and piano version) it might just be ‘big’ in South Korea. Or was its place here essentially ironic. The melody was the beguiling ‘Schönste Nacht’, a beautiful night that was sadly not exactly that for the performers.