Prom 42: Beethoven’s Ninth by Heart from the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon

Various Artists
A musical and dramatic exploration of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, ‘Choral’

A musical and dramatic exploration of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony – a concept written by Jane Mitchell

Rhiannon May
actor

Thomas Simper
actor/BSL interpreter

Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
soprano

Marta Fontanals-Simmons
mezzo-soprano

Brenden Gunnell
tenor

Christopher Purves
baritone

BBC Singers

National Youth Choir

Aurora Orchestra

James Bonas
stage director

Nicholas Collon
conductor

Aurora Orchestra concerts have made a big thing of elaborate explanation and deconstruction of the music they are about to play, but their introduction for this Prom was their biggest yet, a fifty-minute play with actors, lighting, an orchestra, and meticulous direction. In previous Proms they have played Beethoven’s 3, 5, 6 and 7, from memory and mostly standing up. This Prom, their eleventh since 2014, was their most ambitious, the ‘Choral’, with big forces and even weightier cultural baggage.

Beethoven’s deafness and his conversation notebooks were at the core of Aurora’s principal flautist Jane Mitchell’s concept, with the deaf actor Rhiannon May (familiar from the BBC’s Silent Witness tv series) not only speaking Beethoven’s words but also creating a particularly isolated, prickly character with vivid immediacy. She was matched by Thomas Simper, primarily playing Beethoven’s hapless and unhappy nephew Karl with total conviction. Then Nicholas Collon and sections of the orchestra guided us through a swift overview of the ‘Choral’, emphasising the hunt for the big tune that will dominate the Finale, with much audience participation. The scale of the Albert Hall was hardly a barrier, the lighting was good at sign-posting the drama, and most of the words were audible. I wish I’d had this sort of way into the work when I was younger – engaging and not remotely patronising – and, when the totally deaf Beethoven has to be turned round to see the applause after the Ninth’s first performance, devastating.

The drama continued after the interval with a performance marking the bicentenary of its premiere in Vienna. I had become a bit fidgety, wondering how the chorus and soloists would get onto the stage for the finale without disrupting the flow. The solution was simple – Christopher Purves, temporarily invisible but in stupendous voice and kilt, boomed out ‘O Freunde!’ and on trooped 130 such friends with the right ‘Töne’, slickly and silently moving to their places. And as the four soloists made their way on stage, the second violins deferentially moved to one side to let them through, as they did for the ‘Turkish’ march players. Collon’s lead into the Finale had been assured, gathering up momentum and tension, and the arrival of the chorus focussed things further, with the trombone trio folded into the singers for added effect, lots of vocal brilliance and volume, and a marvellously limber fugue, not to mention the chorus’s synchronised signing for the deaf for the opening lines of Schiller’s Ode. In the earlier movements I’d noted things to do with balance, some smudged phrasing and articulation, and puzzlingly arbitrary emphasis, and Collon’s tempi seemed just a bit too fleet for security in the Scherzo. All of this raised questions about whether learning as mighty a score as this is really the last word in orchestral liberation, especially when expressiveness stayed much at the same level, suggesting a certain caution that hasn’t featured in their previous characterful and elemental Beethoven performances. Any passing doubts, though, were blown away by a glowing quartet of soloists, the stupendous chorus, and the galvanised and unleashed Aurora players.