John McCabe
Joybox [BBC commission: world premiere]
Beethoven
Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92
Falla
El sombrero de tres picos
Ravel
Boléro
Clara Mouriz (mezzo-soprano)
Antonio Márquez Company
BBC Philharmonic
Juanjo Mena
Reviewed by: Curtis Rogers
Reviewed: 25 July, 2013
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
Dance is one of this year’s Proms themes and this programme featured music with connotations of it or written directly for it, with full choreography in the second half. The world premiere of John McCabe’s Joybox, dedicated to the memory of the recently deceased Steve Martland, was the single exception. The unlikely impetus for its creation came from the composer’s experience at an amusement arcade in Japan with the various overlapping but autonomous musical jingles of the machines creating a jungle of sound. Such a template might suggest a link with another aspect of this year’s Proms – the music of Witold Lutosławski, with its controlled aleatorism – but the 6-minute Joybox is more measured and integrated in texture than comparison with Lutosławski or the arcade would imply. It begins with a quiet, moderately fast percussive rhythm – rather as Ravel’s Boléro generates its structure and momentum – the underlying pulse maintained by brass and woodwinds alternately, but unlike the Ravel Joybox comes to a quiet end with a return to the percussive taps.
Mena (who verbally remembered those lost in the dreadful train crash at Santiago de Compostela) was a more natural conductor in Falla’s ballet (given complete), drawing some lustrous string sonorities and a drowsy rubato at appropriate moments. There was also a musical distinction between the ludicrous character of the Magistrate and the heroic, impassioned tone of the music associated with the Miller and his wife. Clara Mouriz conveyed a mood of some mystery, as though calling from afar in her vocal contributions. But the BBC Philharmonic did not create that darker quality which runs underneath the music, as often in the Spanish temperament, despite its overt vigour and brilliance. In Boléro, Mena did not overcome his problem of securing an accrual of momentum across the appearances of the melody, the music becoming a mechanical, numbing succession of repetitions rather than a musically-coherent build-up to a climax of devastating finality. The trombonist’s entry sounded rather woozy and the prominent position of the drummer and trumpeter gave the iterated bolero rhythm a threatening, militaristic character akin to the second movement of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No.6.
Purporting to act as an encore, some of the full-orchestra strains of Boléro were played again while the dancers rampaged across the stage once more and the audience clapped rhythmically, as though this were entertainment on a low-grade cruise boat or in a circus. For different reasons this Prom may well prove to be one of the most memorable of the 2013 season. Certainly it provided flair and colour, but sadly the experience had precious little to do with thoughtful music-making.