Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand @ The BBC Proms

Shostakovich arr Atovmyan
Suite for Variety Orchestra (formerly known as Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2)
Ravel
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major
Walton
Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor

Nicholas McCarthy (piano)

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Mark Wigglesworth (conductor)

Mark Wigglesworth has been conducting at the Proms since 1991. On that occasion it took nearly 15 minutes to rearrange the platform for the final item in the second half, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Lutosławski having previously directed his own Cello Concerto. In a career not without its larger ups and downs, the latter often attributable to events beyond his control, Wigglesworth has recently opened a new chapter with the artistic leadership of ensembles in Adelaide as well as Bournemouth. The appointments follow successful periods as chief guest conductor with orchestras determined to punch above their weight. On the evidence of tonight’s Walton, Bournemouth could scarcely have found a more appropriate collaborator. The band’s previous chief, Kirill Karabits, also had the Symphony in his repertoire but this was the most compelling realisation of the score to be heard at the Royal Albert Hall in many a year. The notes were accurately rendered, more so than in André Previn’s thrilling if occasionally ramshackle LSO Prom of 1970, while the overly dogged effect of John Wilson’s in  2023 was avoided. Under Wigglesworth the brazen climaxes were by no means underpowered but never exaggerated, the combination of ‘blazing energy and keen intellectual focus’ (to borrow from Stephen Johnson’s programme note) held in perfect balance. 

The post-interval audience was a little smaller and by now largely attentive although desultory applause between the slow movement and finale could have been avoided. In recent years the Proms have been invaded by tourists with little idea of concert etiquette: the noisy consumption of food and drink threatens to change the nature of an event in which one strains to hear unamplified sound from a distant stage. The BBC could certainly do more to dissuade the use of mobile phones during the music. That said it remains one of the endearing features of the season that the best sound quality is reserved for those paying peanuts to stand in the arena.

Most of the publicity for tonight’s Prom had focused on the participation of soloist Nicholas McCarthy, the first person born without a right arm to make a career as a pianist. His story makes good copy and rightly inspires but there is of course an unspoken issue it seems tactless to mention. Ravel was one of Proms founder-conductor Henry Wood’s many enthusiasms and the latter was responsible for introducing UK audiences to several compositions including the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The soloist in that 1932 Prom was Paul Wittgenstein who had commissioned it but was famously reluctant to play the notes as written. He returned to give a repeat performance under John Hollingsworth in 1951 since when it has been played ‘well’ by pianists of all kinds, some perhaps adapting to injury or illness, most merely toying with music written for the left hand alone. So should this late Ravel be cool, orderly and Gallic or shaggy and muscular? McCarthy produced considerable poetry from lyrical passages in part designed to deceive the ear into believing the music is being played by two hands. There was however some lack of heft in Ravel’s angrier outbursts, at least from my seat. One had the impression of the orchestra taking the lead in a darker narrative which may or may not be ‘authentic’. And Wigglesworth’s band provided arguably the most memorable moments, relishing the sepulchral depths of the opening and the jazzier elements later on. The reward for McCarthy’s legion of fans was Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9/2.  

First up was an unexpected, lighthearted treat. Wigglesworth’s most durable achievement as a recording artist has been his Shostakovich series for the BIS label, scrupulously prepared and characterized by high seriousness. Tonight it was if he wanted to disabuse us of any notion that he doesn’t do fun with an eight-movement suite of Shostakovich trivia presenting titbits from film and stage scores in an unlikely transmogrification by another hand for forces including saxophones and accordion. Formerly misidentified as the Jazz Suite No.2 and oft-performed and recorded under that title, it includes the famous Second Waltz used in the sound-track of Stanley Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut. Everything was ultra-stylish yet, in terms of sonority and running order, unavoidably and justifiably inauthentic! The programme booklet confidently ascribed the compilation of the Suite to Levon Atovmyan (1901-73).