This Year, No Fat Lady Sang . . .

In fact, all the soloists looked pretty trim and slim. Not least Janine Jansen, who polished off the Proms Season in great style with two superbly played pieces: Chausson's Poeme, and Ravel's Tzigane, the latter being one of the truly great performances of this season.

I don't usually comment on the Last Night, and don't always listen to (or watch) it, but Jansen playing the Ravel was—or is, if you didn't listen on Saturday—a performance of a calibre you don't always get when the Proms season winds down.

And a special mention for the very funny unexpected 'La Cucuracha' violin duet between her and Sakari Oramo; who, it might be suspected, was overdoing the shy bashful Finn just a bit?

 He had nothing, last night, to be bashful about, as far as his culminative concert went, though Sir Tim Rice, were he there, should have been feeling not just bashful but downright ashamed for his 'new words' to Malcolm Arnold's Peterloo.

I have never (well, hardly ever, even  in Huntingdon or in Hampshire) heard such nonsense. It's damn well insulting to anyone brought up in the north (like me!)  for the Peterloo Massacre to be transformed into such an utterly crass piece of pseudo-Brookean 'poetry', such a pathetic piece of pale third-hand patriotic pap that, I suppose, was supposed somehow to invoke Blake and 'Jerusalem'. and actually came out worse even than Alfred Noyes.

From one massacre, however, to another. As a prom-going friend (who's French)  remarked, it was pretty magnanimous of the English to put on such an outrageous celebration of their defeat by the Normans as Strauss's Taillefer. Neither of us knew it at all; she didn't care for it, for all she's on the winning side. Maybe you had to be there . . .Admittedly, though, it's a great deal more Beowulf than Bearn or Teutonic Knight than Troubadour.

It was played with considerable vigour and style, Oramao very far from bashful; bombastic, even. which suited it perfectly, if you treat it (as he did) as a glorious battle piece and (perhaps, listeninmg to the German words—vastly superior, anyway, to Tim Rice's, not difficult that—and be a little less distracted by the English subtitles) something of a spectacular. And, it would seem, unusually rare, according to Wikipedia, at any rate, which neatly updated its Taillefer page to commend another 'rare' performance at the 2014 Proms before it had actually happened . . .

And I do like Britten's arrangement of 'God Save the Queen' that ends it all. A genuine anthem, not a piece of patriotic bombast at all; Mr Rice, please note, if commissioned—and I really hope not—again.

I almost forgot, in this night of really near-superlative performances (with the obvious exception) the BBC Singers in Tavener's 'Song for Athene'; haunting, contemplative, and. while deceptively simply—innocently?—sung, of immense power thanks to them. a deserved compliment (and complement) to their work throughout a Proms Season that tends to be forgotten on last nights when they often only get to sing the choruses in Britannia . . .

Oramo. in his speech, brought up music education again, as many of his predecessors have. A waste of time, both with the pedestrian and culturally primitive government we've got at the moment and whichever one we're likely to have a couple of months before the next Proms season in 2015.

This 'Last Night' really was a memorable one; as much, for once. a concert (leaving aside the 'trad' bits) that could have been a Prom of any number, not just a celebratory race finish.

All Aboard for the Magical Mystery Play! Prom 66 Bach St Matthew Passion

We all occasionally think of some of the instruments of the orchestra as characters, but in an adult it’s no more than a momentary fancy (or a memory of a Hoffnung cartoon, perhaps for the most musically minded and less naturally quixotic) or perhaps some flash of nostalgia from a children’s story. Tubby the Tuba, perhaps, but why never Violet the Viola or Oswald the oboe?

In Peter Sellar’s ‘ritually staged’ St Matthew Passion, soloists from the Berlin Phil became part of the musical theatricality of it, playing solo characters in opposition to, or in sympathy with, the singers to whom them might normally be only orchestral accompanists. So Jesus places his hand gently on the shoulder of the double-bass player; a violinist stares at the Evangelist. Woodwind players become a strange chorus trio of instrumentalists: an enormously tall oboeist standing startlingly head and shoulders above his two colleagues on either side.

These are visual vignettes, and easy to dismiss as frothy posing too outre for a concert, perhaps outrageous for the least secular when they are applied to a religious or devotional work. I suspect (since I saw eight or nine people leave from ‘my’ door as I zoomed my wheelchair down the ramp for my interval cigarette after the first part) some of the audience did.

Apart from possibly failing to recall that the Passion is written in what is pretty much vernacular German for a mass audience—though not quite as earthy as the English Mystery Cycles—many of whom would probably not have been able to read, or at least not effortlessly, they missed one of the most important revelatory performances of this Proms season.

It was played by a ‘Reduced Philharmoniker’; about a third its number, and all of them playing like virtuoso soloists, even if they were not all given starring soloist roles. Not only was it a ‘reduced’ orchestra, it was divided: into what were, effectively, two chamber orchestras; as was the choir.

It was, at first, somewhat odd to see a peripatetic Simon Rattle walking briskly from one to the other rather reminiscent of television rolling news presenters stalking back and forth along a huge screen; but one got used to it. In fact, since the quality of the soloists’ singing was so high, and the choir so operatically expressive, both vocally and in physical expression and mobility, it rapidly became somehow perfectly natural.

Bringing solo instruments out of the orchestra to interact with the soloists gave this performance a diamond clarity of tone and colour and emphasis of instrumental parts that is normally the province of small authentic instrument ensembles. Whether the sound engineers translated this as effectively for the radio relay I don’t yet know, not yet having listened to my recording, but in the Albert Hall it was revelatory.

And even that was somehow drafted in to add to the theatrical effect of what is, in any case, a potentially gripping drama for instruments and voices. Pilate and Jesus were each found a spot up in the gallery still with an echo for suitable hollow doomy sound effects, with no technical sonic trickery required.

Of the soloists, special mentions, I think, for Mark Padmore (Evangelist) especially, who sustained a long night with amazing applomb and strength, while at the same time turning into an accomplished mime artist, and Magdalena Kozena.

There’s much more to be written on this; especially in the effect treating the St Matthew Passion as part Noh play, part Miracle or Mystery Play, part Nixon in China, has on the purely musical experience. That, hopefully, somewhat later.

Rattle and Sellars, with the BBC’s lighting director as co-conspirator, succeeded in almost breaking the record for the longest holding-off of audience applause. Admittedly, that was partly due to a little uncertainty as the lights faded down to almost black and left both hall and stage as though they were lit by a handful of candles. The lights were brought up again, and the majority—I looked around and did see less enthusiastic dissenters—of the audience erupted after what had really been an enormously respectful, even awed, silence, with total enthusiasm and demanded several ‘curtain calls’.

What a shame the BBC didn’t film it so everybody could have joined in for this truly magical musical mystery tour.

If you want to read the kind of stuffy curmudgeonly review that would have put me off ever going to any classical music concert before I was seventy (and is surely partly to blame at least for few Prom concerts having even a substantial minority of 25's and unders around) it has to be Rupert Christiansen's in the Telegraph. In another season, I'd be saying 'Bah! Humbug!'

The Introspector Calls: Proms 53, 62 and 64; in brief

The BPO's instrument transporter outside the Albert Hall; does it have a gym inside?


One of the joys of a Proms season is listening to a carefully composed programme that offers new insights into music which the audience might have heard many times before. Concerts that are narratives; that tell a story, illuminate a history, that are conceived as a whole.

We've recently had three. First, Ivan fischer's Brahms 3 and 4 with the Budapest, which was not simply the Third Symphony followed by the Fourth; it was "Brahms' symphonic imagination, parts two and three." then there was the vibrato-free Norrington and the Stuttgart, with Beethoven's Eighth, Berlioz's 'Romeo Alone' and Dvorak's Ninth.

Finally, last night, with Rattle and the Berlin in Prom 64, Rachmaninov's 'Symphonic Dances' followed by Stravinsky's 'Firebird'.

Let's go back, for a moment, to Norrington and Prom 62. In Prom 54, Gardiner had very elegantly produced a Missa Solemnis to win over those of us (like me, I 'm afraid) who really don't get the thing at all. Perhaps we should try to imagine it as a long kind of highly ceremonial coronation anthem for the mitredom (or installment, enthronement or whatever it is) of an Archbishop, as I found myself trying to do.

Otherwise, it does seem to be difficult to grasp, and for all Gardiner cleverly played up the occasional resemblances to the Ninth to encourage us, for me it still does.

If Beethoven's Seventh really is 'the apotheosis of the dance', Norrington and his Stuttgart orchestra made both the Eighth, the Berlioz, and Dvorak's Ninth a combinative illustration of the zenith of spiritual dance. The Beethoven was the epitome of clarity—vibrato-less playing assisting no end—and conducted as a decisive link between the Seventh and Ninth. And, being Norrington, vigorous and fast-paced too.

Norrington, too, placed the double basses up beyond the brass at the 'top' of the orchestra, which was extremely effective this time for both the Eighth and the Dvorak. The Dvorak was decidedly novel, and the Largo clearly discomfited much of the audience; it was not so much a 'spiritual' of the slave south, but spiritual; you could almost see the ectoplasm.

Clearly, judging by the coughing during this quiet passage, this disomfited some of the audience (as it appears to have at least one critic), since all too many were concentrating on their coughing rather than on any new insight to the Ninth this might have given them. Had they allowed themselves more introspection, perhaps it night have dawned that Norrington was telling us there was rather more Beethoven in Dvorak—or Dvorak in Beethoven?—than we might have thought.

Before we get to Rattle and the Berlin ("Let's rattle and roll" I think some of the Arena shouted) I'd like to demand that Pronms-goers who buy seats should be either given score-reading lessons, or at least presented with a time-sheet that tells them when the orchestra will be playing pianissimo and when fff, so they will know to orchestrate their hacking coughs with the loudest bits.

Not for the first time, Rattle and the Berlin strained (or should have done) the audience's ears in another record-breaking attempt for the quietest ppp from a large orchestra ever heard (or barely heard) in the Albert Hall in the Firebird. Rattle knows the Albert Hall well, of course, but this was pushing the boundaries even for him and the amazing control of the Berlin players.  He packed off three trumpeters to the gallery too—sonething that doesn't always come off!— for the Firebird, to great effect.

This was a Firebird that was elegant ballet and wistful and delciately coloured in every feather; and crashingly vivid and violent, tail feathers flying and wings beating furiously, the dissonances grabbed by the scruff of the neck and forced into your ears in wild and panicky contrast.

A superb and memorable performance that could not have been achieved without a good deal of introspection. the initial piece was similarly, I suspect, a surprise to much of the audience. There were, for once, quite a few youngsters about, which is something of a relief after seeing all too many grey heads at some Proms.

Whether they found either the Symphonic Dances or the Firebird quite as accessible as they may have thought I'm uncertain. The Rachmaninov was played, fascinatingly, not as a brassy shpoowpiece, but also, in parts unusually introspectively as though it was Rachmaninov's 'Previously Unknown' Symphony. Both performances were grandly symphonic; and fascinating to hear.

The Berlin played gloriously. The strings, particularly used up a lot of elbow grease;  I wondered if the Berlin's transport parked outside had brought a gym along for them. Rattle—as Norrington had—conducted without a score. The double basses, however, were in their usual place . . .Bit of a surprise seeing a 'normal' orchestral disposition again.

The lighting effects were the usual blue; what this year seems to be the favoured colour; but for that particular reversion to the traditional (the only one of the night) I thought they might have tried sepia. The lighting producer is playing around a bit this year: Prommers at a late Prom are greeted with a 'stretched' photo of the Albert Hall  at night spread over the LCD screens at the back of the orchestra . . .It's daylight for the earlier ones, I noticed. Subtle, eh?

At the end, after lengthy applause, Rattle—who was very nice about the Proms-goers, despite the damnable coughers!—had the band turn around with him and salute Henry Wood. This was one of the nights—I may sometimes moan we don't always get enough of them in a season—you really do have to pay homage and pour libations to the Muses and the spirit of the man.

Elektrafying?

I'm now feeling thoroughly foolish, not having gone to Prom 59 and Strauss's Elektra. From the excellent review in Boulezian it looks increasingly like poor judgement.

I shall just rather mournfully reflect that two hours without an interval would have probably resulted in me strangling myself trying not to cough or sneeze, and they'd have had to have an ambulance waiting at Door 8 for me well before it was half over anyway.

I shall have to wait for the Radio 3 repeat. (Hoping there will be one: one is never too sure about R3 repeating Proms operas, especially as it gets later in the season.) All the same, I'm still unsure I really could have taken another Elektra.

At Covent Garden, as I and (I hope) many of the audience were still a bit shaky from the impact, three young 'fashionistas' alongside me blabbered about where they were going to eat and knock back the champers. (Having, of course, turned on their iPhones for a look at a restaurant guide before the cast had finished taking their bows.)  One looked, I now recall, disturbingly like that guy in a yoghourt TV commercial I keep seeing who patronisingly pats a sofa, sits a girl down and assures her that a spoonful of a dairy product is the only thing that will enhance her existence to the point of ecstasy.

I cannot understand how some people could be so emotionally distanced and uninvolved. Shallow, even. But then, if you can believe for two minutes that a path strewn with spilled yoghourt is the one to Nirvana, it may be easier than I thought. Opera, surely, however artificial it can be dramatically—at least often in terms of plot and characterisation compared to theatre—is not that unengaging on either count. Or that artificial in relation to real emotional life. Especially not if it's Strauss.

Would they, I wondered, have casually left a performance of Lear chattering about how they knew a pretty girl like Cordelia who'd been left an orphan and what kind of vintage might her husband grow in France that would cheer her up? And maybe how Gloucester should have gone to SpecSavers? Probably.

I did, however, get to the Chamber Prom on Monday (I see why the BBC calls them 'Proms Chamber Music', though it's still hard to stifle a little schoolboy snigger) though I was not altogether enamoured of Benjamin Grosvenor and don't think I'll write it up; people will begin to think I have some kind of aversion to young prizewinners.

Judith Weir's 'Day Break Shadows Flee' was fascinating, though I thought I detected many more strands of complexity, especially of tonal colour, and left-hand/right-hand interplay than Grosvenor achieved. A lot of breakages, and not quite enough shadows. I wondered if Weir thought so, too: I could see her just a couple of rows in front of me shaking her head, though, being behind her, whether that was out of some kind of nervousness I couldn't tell.

That's one of this year's commissions we really ought to hear in the future in other painists' repertoire.

I listened at home, under the influence of paracetamol and hot lemon again, to Dutoit and the RPO's very lively Prom 60. Very cheering-upping, and more on that later. And, perhaps, more on the rather odd pre-Prom chat that didn't seem entirely certain whether it was supposed to prove Respighi was a Mussolini Fascist, whether Italian Fascism in the Twenties was relatively benign, or whether Respighi was just an enthusiastic post Garibaldi d'Annunzio-reading Italian Nationalist. . .

Hopefully the cold will have been banished for Wednesday's Norrington, Friday's Berlin, and Saturday's Bach. . .

Meanwhile, do read Mark Berry's review of Elektra.

I whiled away a little of my time the other night trying to distract myself from my cold and woolly head with a thriller by William Boyd, Waiting for Sunrise. It begins in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th century: the years of Dr Freud and the spread of psychoanalyst's—'alienists'—couches. I won't bother you with the plot or the story, but Boyd explores a little of the psychology of 'selbstmord' (more than simply 'suicide') as it might relate to sexuality and stylised—maybe corrupted—concepts of 'honour' and 'morality'. 

And Vienna, about then, he writes quite convincingly of as a hothouse of sexuality, as much as Isherwood's Berlin. It's had me thinking; that, of course, is the era of Elektra and Salome. And, as the Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier production disturbingly suggested (despite Ticciati's, I thought, rather naive suggestion in a radio interview that it was fifty per cent  comedy fifty per cent bedroom farce and move along, nothing else to see here) sexually-induced psychological—and emotional— 'selbstmord' isn't perhaps that absent from that opera either. 

This, I think, is something I might mull over, spending rather more time with Strauss than I have for a while, perhaps coming back to it  on my 'audiobritain' website. Looking back, it was probably a mistake to have been thinking too much of Nietsche at school when I was discovering Strauss—the orchestral music, anyway, I was a latecomer to opera apart from Britten—and not enough of Freud who I'd also begun to read then. 

Heads Up! Prom 59, Strauss's Salome

Increasingly, we've come to see a kind of hybrid with opera performances at the Proms. Something part way between the static concert performance, everyone static behind a single microphone each, and what is pretty well a full stage performance just with minimalised scenery and props.

The Runnicles/Deutsche Oper Salome for Prom 59 was that kind of hybrid; characters making their exits and entrances; popping up above the bust of Henry Wood in front of the organ console; Herod and his wife gazing on with obvious loathing expressed in their stances at the end from the top of the stairs that run alongside the stalls.

It was in the singers' expressions (if you could see them, of course) that gripped as much as the singing and the playing; the Jews' chorus in animated argument that looked as though it would break into a riot that might go crashing through the Arena at any moment; Nina Stemme,  particularly, showing signs of an erotic obsession any teenager might have for a pop idol. . .until you realised it was for a severed head.

I came, in fact (I admit to something of a fancy for Grand Guignol moments, alas) to half-expect that a severed head on a silver platter might actually appear from somewhere, so intense that was; but fortunately no-one was tempted. the intensity and tension by then needing no bathetic stimulus to the imagination.

There is something about Strauss's extraordinary ability to turn eroticism into obsessive, even pathological, sexuality that is really disturbing; and the more so when a conductor and orchestra grasp the nuances of how it is expressed in the music as well as Runnicles and The Deutsche Oper orchestra. Neither sheered away either from risking the aspects of clashing atonalism that I've not really heard so clearly in the texture of the score before.

Runnicles—who conducted like an athlete—created a tension and intensity throughout with great skill, not once lapsing into melodrama, nor once falling into luxuriousness, tempting as it can be to turn Herod's Palace, musically anyway, into a kind of plush and velvet Viennese brothel In fact, despite the large orchestral forces, the score seldom sounded oppressed by them; it was, in many ways, almost sparse.

Especially in Salome's dance; one, for once, not merely of overt profligate sexuality suited to a pole dancer in a 'gentleman's club', but of contradictory erotic insight, experimental sexuality, and the fear of its perversion. The veils —and this is one virtue of a concert performance rather than a stage production—were so much more psychological coverings being stripped away than physical ones.

It was something of a surprise to find that, apparently, Salome is not actually in the Deutsche Oper's recent repertoire. No-one would have guessed it from the orchestra's playing; though one might from some of the singers, either from the scores before them, or their signs of slight weakness in projecting to a full Albert Hall.

I was rather surprised that that applied even to Nina Stemme, from whom I had expected a stronger voice; but then the Albert Hall is difficult at the best of times, more so when you have an orchestra that size just behind you instead of below you in a pit. Samuel Youn—Jokanaan—had some momentary difficulties, but that may have been partly due to misjudging the distance he'd had to run from stage to organ loft: it's a longish way round the back through the corridors . . .

The organ, since it had a spot or two already on it for that purpose, was pressed into service for a pedal note or two, which, quite unexaggerated (quite unlike its use in the War Requiem!) one felt as a sense of unease creeping around the Albert Hall more than a note. . .

It was a little difficult to follow the lyrics (not sure that's quite the right word for this kind of story) from up in the Circle, though that of course, might have been partly due to the cold I somehow acquired at the weekend still muffling my eardrums a little. Not enough, however, not to be able to appreciate this was a stunning, utterly absorbing, performance.

It was a superb reminder that Strauss's musical insight into sexuality is extraordinary. And, even including Rosenkavalier along with Elektra, rather unnerving. Freud—who seems to have been notoriously tone deaf*—with an orchestra instead of a couch, no doubt about it.

*In psycho-analysis, it's termed 'melophobia' (a rather unimaginative and pedestrian coinage, surely; couldn't we have had 'polyhymnophobia'?) and, of course, people have delved into Freud's own neuroses and background in search of reasons. But 'tone-deaf' probably serves as as good an explanation as any.

This is one of the recordings of this season's Proms I shall have to keep. I skipped Elektra. I still haven't quite got over the RoH production (even though it must now be nearly a year back!) and I wasn't sure I could take that kind of searing emotional shock again just yet. Nor, I fear, did I listen to it, having taken to my bed again with hot lemon juice, aspirin and the cough I'd managed to suppress—and as for once, almost everyone else in the RAH did too, which tells you something about the concentration attracted by Prom 59!—during Salome. . .

IPlayer

(Radio 3 repeat not yet scheduled)

In the Cold Light of Day . . .

I have, as readers will have gathered by now, become increasingly disillusioned—sometime disturbed—over the years by some of the classical music criticism in the national press. It is becoming harder and harder sometimes to understand what point of view some critics are writing from.

As readers will also have gathered, I've temporarily had to suspend my Proms listening, thanks to a rotten cold, and therefore did not hear the Mahler 2 where at least one critic's response appears so utterly out of sync with others it's difficult to interpret or assign the reasons for it.

The same seems to be true of Prom 53, the Budapest's and Ivan Fischer's Brahms, which I did attend, though stressfully sucking throat lozenges by the handful; with some mildly dizzying side-effects by the time the Missa Solemnis ended and I was waiting for the bus at midnight that night.

I had intended to write up both until my cold intervened, but with several live attendances to go, I may have to save reflections on them for the audiobritain site later rather than this more chronological blog.

However, Fischer's Brahms was beautifully played. Understated, perhaps, if you want Brahms very Viennese with plenty of whipped cream and Torte; this was Brahms from the other bank of the river. Cooler, gentler, reflective. And, which I think goes to what I feel is a total misunderstanding of that night on the part of some reviewers, a concert designed as a whole.

Both symphonies were played not as stand-alone pieces, especially not as virtuoso pieces,but as reflections, even continuations, of each other. This was not so much a concert of Brahms' Third followed after a relaxing Stein or two by the Fourth in which the drinkers had time to forget or tuck away, indexed at the back of their minds along with 'great performances Nos 1-11, what they'd just heard. This was 'Symphonic Brahms, Parts Three and Four'; a concert entire, to be considered and reflected upon.

That should not, by now, be an unfamilar situation at a Prom. It's been, over the years, what so many performances have been about: evolving interpretations, sidelong glances, slightly unexpected variations and insights. It is an ephemeral thing, a concert; not a monument. That is what Fischer and the Budapest were giving us in Prom 53. Not 'Great Performance No 43 to be Compared Forever with No 14'.

I was a bit taken aback, when I sneaked out of Door 8 down the ramp for my interval ciggie—yes, I know, I shouldn't still be smoking with a cold, should I?—to find an emergency ambulance outside, doors open, ramp down and blue lights flashing. We hadn't noticed any disturbance from anyone being taken ill in the hall.

Apparently, it was Fischer himself who had become ill at the interval—did the evil cold gremlin lurking somewhere in the Albert Hall  that got me have anything to do with it?—and the second half was delayed (without explanation apart from 'unexpected circumstances') for ten or fifteen minutes. That probably explains the slightly shaky beginning of the Fourth. He had obviously recovered by the end of the concert, for we had a very unusual encore, Brahms' Abendständchen. Unusual, because it was sung, to everyone's surprise, by the entire orchestra.

This is the first time, to my recollection, I've ever seen a whole symphony orchestra transform itself into an instant choral society. They might not be the Monteverdi Choir we heard later that night, or the BBC chorus in terms of technique or volume, but they sang beautifully.

And I'd thought it a neat trick when the percussion section of the Budapest left their drum kits behind and turned themselves into human percussion at their last late-night Prom. What on earth are they going to surprise us with next time? A short ballet, perhaps?

Fischer, I think, is, deservedly, a Prommers' favourite; and so, for me anyway, is his band. They made up for a Czech Phil that I'd earlier been anticipating and found unexpectedly disappointing.

I am hoping my erstwhile colleague can be persuaded to write up Prom 53, while I concentrate on my lemon-squeezing and cough-suppression self-hypnosis techniques to be ready for at least Proms 62 and 64.

Prom 50: Inspiration versus Application

I was wondering whether to write anything about Prom 50. Firstly, because I live in the middle of Carnival where the sound stages get so loud it's near-impossible to concentrate on anything but strategems and devices to stop the windows rattling and the doors vibrating.

But secondly, having been to the RAH listening to the Dvorak Cello Concerto last night, for fear I would be accused of being curmudgeonly and not liking anything this season.

Especially of being too sceptical of the true value of young 'stars'. In an interview (one of the current series where the BBC seems to be furiously plugging 'new stars—in the absence of real ones?) Alisa Weilerstein said:

"It's arguably the best-written major work for cello, it's completely epic and symphonic in scope. It has every range of emotion you could ask for," she says. "It's like reading a really great novel and having every character incredibly developed."

And she says, from the point of view of the performer, it's a piece that sits well on the instrument. "It slides beautifully in the hands, even though it's quite challenging and very virtuosic. But most importantly I think it's just an incredibly touching, moving work."

All that is certainly true. But knowing that is one thing, transmitting it to an audience is another, and it 'read' more like one of those sc-fi novels where you get several pages of brief bios of the characters in alphabetical order so you can get some idea of them that you couldn't while you were actually reading it.

Technically (I do seem to say this a lot) Weilerstein's playing was extremely capable; but I still only got a list of characters and not much depth of characterisation; nor did I get much sense of emotion. I want more from a musical performance (especially of this Dvorak of all things) than to admire from afar technical and deliberated aspects of bowing and fingering that would have delighted a TV director had the cameras been there.

I weary rather of being increasingly asked to admire an 'interpretation' for its own sake, regardless of its musical propriety, absolute validity, or otherwise. This did nothing much to increase (or diminish!) my appreciation of the Concerto; and I fear—actually, I know—by the end of tomorrow I will have entirely forgotten it.

Soloist and orchestra did not really seem to gel, which is odd, since they collaborated in a recording. I wondered whether there had been sufficient rehearsal or discussion before Prom 50, or had Weilerstein been relying on repeating a studio performance live? That's something that doesn't—can't—work in a venue like the Royal Albert Hall.

Her encore (a Bach Sarabande) too, lacked emotional colour and variety of tone; it was, frankly, somewhat drawn out and uninspiring. I spent most of it playing alternatives in my head, imagining how some other cellist would have played it.

The Janacek House of the Dead overture was nice and lively, though also in some respects a bit ruahed and untidy. The Beethoven Seventh was played—relatively—'safe' but with an interesting variation. Belohlavek had placed the double basses at the back just below where the choir sits, high above the rest of the orchestra. It made their parts in the Beethoven Seventh stand out in a way you don't normally hear except in early-instrument performances, which is presumably why he did it.

Behlolavek had a bit of an unhappy history with the Czech Phil. A couple of years ago, he said in an interview:

"In purely professional terms, the orchestra has always delivered high-quality performances, yet many a time it did not radiate a real and ardent enthusiasm for artistic creation. Ardour, the spark in performance and forcibility of expression are qualities that cannot be feigned, they must appear as an additional product, as a result of an intellectual and emotional unification and consonance within the ensemble. Only then do they really impress the audience."

He seemed a little anxious about his future relations with the orchestra; and I wondered last night whether there are signs of strain. The potentiality for that "intellectual and emotional unification and consonance" was there, but given his history with BBCSO I had expected it to be stronger last night.

Prom 48: Diamond Geysers

It's one of the Proms programmers' old tricks: offer the audience a good ol' classic they can all air-conduct to, but sneak in a couple of new pieces that would otherwise leave the Albert Hall as empty as . . .Iceland outside Reykyavik?

The attraction for Prom 48 was Beethoven's Fifth; the deterrents were Haukur Tomasson's Magma and Leifs' Geysir. Somewhere in between, which could have been either challenging or lollipop=-flavoured was Schumann's A minor piano concerto.

Probably, the less said about Magma the better. A series of eruptions it was Ligeti-in-a-china-shop, scalded a bit on the soles of the feet and hopping around smashing into the crockery. For a good ten minutes more than its invention could really sustain.

The other new piece was very different. I had been persuaded to go to this Prom by my friend and sometime colleague here, who had heard some of Leifs' work on Radio 3 and said it sounded very interesting. And so it was: energetic, vivid, colourful and coherent. And, possibly, leaving some of the gallery-goers possibly unable to hear the quieter beginning of the Beethoven 5 that followed, unless the BBC offered them free earplugs.

The gallery in the RAH has become, over the years something of an extension of the stage down below. And sonically a very effective one that seems to have become increasingly exploited as its possibilities (an unforeseen side-effect of the acoustic re-arrangement of the 'flying saucers' some years back, I suspect) have dawned.

On my way back up to the Circle after  my interval cigarette, I was in the lift with two sound technicians clutching battery packs, one of whom appeared to be explaining something to the other about miking the 'timps on the left'. Seated again, noting two sets of timps in the orchestra, I scanned the left-hand set curious to see some novel microphone set up., but spotted nothing unusual. It was only when two sets of timps burst into glorious thundering action at each end of the gallery I realised just why they had been going up in the lift instead of down. Incredibly dramatic; and very, very loud.

I'm not immune, of course, and nor are a lot of prommers, to the slightly embarrassing syndrome Beecham once took us all to task for when he said the English don't really like music, they just like the noise it makes. But there is 'good' noise' and just 'noise', and that particular noise was very good, musically speaking. I had not come across Leifs before, but for all that Geysir was fairly obviously programmatic and descriptive he is a composer to be searched out.

I have, over the years, whether rightly or wrongly, become increasingly impatient with young (or 'new') pianists. Biss showed, as these relative newcomers so often do, considerable technical expertise and spirit; but a concerto of any kind is not really a two-sided display of virtuosity between opposing forces, the soloist on the one side and the orchestra on the other as this was. There's an illuminating paragraph in Biss's own biographical page:

"Mr. Biss’ enthusiasm manifested itself from the very beginning of his studies, far exceeding his six year-old physical and intellectual capacities. This enthusiasm (or, if you take the word of Mr. Biss’s friends and associates, “obsessiveness” and “neurosis”) remains today. . ."

Indeed it does, or at least did on Friday night. But I do not really want to hear obsessive neuroticism in Schuman's piano concerto Op 54.

Volkov played a pretty straight Beethoven's Fifth, which wasn't going to strain the audience's concentration or test their patience, yet was full of discreet instrumental textures—albeit occasionally a little cloudy or maybe under-emphatic, that made me almost wish the Icelanders had been playing 'authentic' instruments. They played this not quite small-scale, but avoided very neatly any symptom of the bombastic.

The Iceland Symphony Orchestra is very good indeed, with lovely woodwind textures. Oh, yes: and timpanists who moonlight as Icelandic strongmen who could no doubt smother a geyser with their bare hands?

Prom 47 Britten's War Requiem: More Jaw-Jaw than War War?

Can one be a 'traditionalist' about performances of Britten's War Requiem? There are, in my head, two performances: one, obviously, the Britten-conducted Decca recording; the other a stunning and outstanding performance at the Proms conducted by Kurt Masur*, which, like last night's, also ended with a long silence before the audience could bring itself to applaud.

There was a serious difference between then and now. The last baritone solo was sung then from the gallery, a distant, haunting, melancholic, gentle, emotional piece that brought unbidden tears to many eyes. Followed by several seconds of silence from the audience as they absorbed the implications of the whole before they applauded. Masur, I remember, with a diffidence no-one expected, held up the score to the audience: it was not, he was saying, their performance that had created that reaction, but the work. though it could hardly have happened without them, of course.

Last night, Andris Nelsons beat Gergiev's record for holding off the audience's applause. But it was contrived. His intention, obviously, was to impose a one-minute silence upon the whole of the Albert Hall; the audience respected it; but whether for the whole sixty seconds I can't be sure.  I'm not entirely sure that it should have been done.

What exactly were we supposed to be observing a minute's silence for? To remind us of November 11th? To reflect upon the dead of the first world war? to reflect on the horrors of war? If any of that comes out of the music, then that is something that should, can, only be spontaneous. At least no-one offered any of the soloists a bouquet of poppies.

This was an unusual performance of the War Requiem. And, with its other contrivances. It began with unusually retrained tempi; and some of the great climaxes, like the blaring brass of 'Rex tremendae' relatively constricted. The real great thundering orchestral climax was left to the Albert Hall organ; rather like a giant trampling over what had gone before.

Nelsons treated this primarily as a choral requiem mass for the dead, deploying enormous choral forces. But  that is to give both the bitter pathos of involvement in war that are in the words of the poems and the scoring that represents such a harsh contrast between the mass in memory of the dead, which celebrates in a sense the inevitability of a death in the past and the words of the dead and dying which present to all our consciences the fear of the inevitability of death in wars in the future.

That, it seems to me, is the essence of Brittten's War Requiem, and why he gave it that title. It is not, as Nelsons seemed to think, a requiem like one of Verdi or Barlioz. It is also musically intensely dramatic: it is not hard to hear, even subconsciously, the rattle of machine guns, the boom of artillery, in the percussion: and the contradictory moments of peace, quiet and that sometimes did (and do) intersperse the greater noises and violence of armed conflicts.

There is great drama there. Not only in the physicality of the noise, but the psychology of the poetry and the poets the soloists represent. The War Requiem, in some ways, is as operatically fierce and baits the emotions just as much as Billy Budd or Peter Grimes.

That, though, in the over-emphasis on the choral requiem, was missing last night. There is great pathos in the poetry—and therefore a necessity on the part of the audience to be able to reflect on it as it is sung—which it overwhelmed. It was—not wanting to be tarred with some kind of rebarbative traditionalist brush where only the composer's vision is the only one—certainly a different interpretation; I'll accept that. But, despite the glorious singing (the children's choir up in the gallerywas particularly remarkable) as I began to reflect afterwards, and do again now, it was too contrived to stand up in the end as anything other than a curious experiment.

*Rather oddly, this seems to have been more or less forgotten as far as the internet is concerned (perhaps partly because of the way the Beeb has managed to pretty well monopolise Google with this season) but it was, according to last night's programme, in the 1990 season with the RPO. (We had thought it was '89, the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War.) We both thought after that—and to me, the events of this year again reinforce the feeling—perhaps the War Requiem ought to be as regular a part of the Proms season as Beethoven's ninth.

iPlayer

If you want to read a review which starts from an entirely opposite position, I recommend Classical Iconoclast's.  I can't say I disagree about, for want of a better term, the 'musicality' of the performance. In fact, it did absorb me in that respect very effectively at the RAH. I cannot deny it was cleverly musically involving. But reflection still tells me that however enterprising it was I still cannot really feel it respected the intentions or the real purpose, or the raw emotions of Britten's score.

(I shall be at the 'volcano' Prom tonight; and others over the Bank Holiday. Whether I shal be abler to post anything will be entorely dependent on Notting Hill Carnival. I live in the middle of it, and the noise level tends to make it near impossible to concentrate on anything else . . .That said, I'm looking forward to being woken on Sunday and Monday mornings by traditional Blues as I am every year. . .)

Apologies; temporarily laid low again after trip to Glyndebourne for Mozart's 'Dodgy Gardener'—who actually looked as though she'd never been near so much as a daisy—which proved something of a strain on the wrecked Prommer spine.

Great fun, btw, and some beautiful singing, for all several reviews were decidedly grudging. And although the story is pretty silly, if you like Handel operas (or if you've ever read Richardson's Pamela) it wasn't that incomprehensibly ridiculous. . .

(Was complimented on the way my 'biker gloves' went with my evening dress. Not intended as a a fashion statement: they're the fingerless black leather gloves I wear to protect my hands pushing my wheelchair about. I just forgot to take them off when I got to my seat. Thinking now though  of starting a Hell's Wheelchair Opera Chapter. Will see if the local tattoo parlour will do me a tattoo of Danielle de Niese.)

Prom 29: Size Matters . . .

It's big.  Very big. It's hard not to feel awe looking at it, even when you know you shouldn't. you wish you had one like it. And it's sometimes subject to abuse. Most notably—and on a Sunday, too1— two years ago by the Mohican haired Cameron Carpenter, playing Bach as though it was Meatloaf's lead instrument.

But it produces amazing climaxes, now no-one's frightened to handle it as they used to be. And there's nothing quite like an opportunity to show off its full throbbing grandeur than St Saens' 'Organ' Symphony.

Thus it was in Prom 29. A pity, then, that there is more to Saint-Saens Symphony No 3 than the organ. It is, after all, called a 'symphony', not a sonata for  organ with orchestral accompaniment. A pity, too, that Noseda couldn;t—as so often happens with recordings of the piece—match the power of the organ with something approaching equal power from the orchestra.

Or give us anything like enough of the textural and tonal fancifulness that Saint-Saens scored that makes Symphony No 3 in the right hands (and they're few) more than a bit of trivia with a single theme to be lifted for cartoons. It wasn't as it should, or could, have been,

What it can be, is admirably expressed in a advocatory piece by Tom Service in the Guardian, which says pretty much what I would have liked to, so I shall happily leave it to him. He writes, at the end:

"I have the image, at the end of the symphony, of the concert hall being miraculously lifted off the ground and held aloft by the combined efforts of all those pipes and all that air; all that counterpoint and all that time-stretching speeding up and slowing down; all that scraping and blowing, and all those keyboards. The whole work is a magnificent and fantastical symphonic machine that's an apotheosis of the orchestral technology of the late 19th century. In other words: the Organ Symphony is the definitive steampunk symphony"

Of all the places the Saint-Saens should have flown high into the roof to burst into the evening sky, it should have been the Albert Hall. It cries out for it. But it didn't happen; Nosada's conducting was too often leaden, note-bound, as though the score was a library edition only worth dusting off for the sake of the organ.

Perhaps its sheer size loomed over Nosada; perhaps it intimidated him instead of exciting him, for all its (relatively) new-found fun lighting which every Prom now shows it off as a piece of Victorian steampunk engineering.

Oh, but that organ! Apparently, at rehearsal, at every entry, the orchestra cheered. I'm not sure they should have been cheering it on like a rugby crowd; more like rugby forwards gearing themselves up for a scrum. But perhaps they were intimidated by its size, too. It was wonderful.

It's come into its glory days again, after all those dismal years when either  no-one dared play it or dared not risk more than a few dozen bars on it; or, sometimes, played it as though it was a mouse-chewed old church harmonium. And you wondered if it was just boasting.

Yes, size does matter . . .

Late Night Prom Lights Out: Prom 25

Photo: Gas lamp style street light in London at dusk.
© the author

Last night's 'late night Prom' (which wasn't that late, not ending at bedtime even for a ten year old) was strange. Not in the music, for Taverner's Ikon of Light was haunting and numinous in just the way candles gradually and slowly change a Greek Orthodox service from beginning in shadowy darkness to culminating in blazing light.

The greater light, in Prom 25, being cast by Taverner's Requiem Fragments, bursting over the Albert Hall like star shells. But more of both in another post.

The Prom sems to have been another episode in the BBC's (or Cameron's, or Britain's) celebration (sorry, 'commemoration') of World War 1. Like Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, the way this is developing is making me anxious too. As they say, "Other wars may also be available." Especially during this Proms Season.

Prom 25 ended, apparently as part of something called a 'Lights Out' memorialisation of the day the First World War started at midnight that same August day a hundred years ago. We were, I gather, supposed to switch off all our lights at home, bar one, to commemorate the Foreign Secrteary's "the lamps are going out all over Europe" remark. "They will not be lit again in our lifetime," he added,   though he was wrong. at least literally speaking, since they did come back on in many people's lifetimes, only to be put out again during them.

As it happens, between ten and eleven pm, I did only have one light on, but that was merely coincidental. I hadn't heard of the idea; and, pretty obviously, nor had most of my neighbours, whose living rooms and bedrooms seemed to be blazing away as brightly as a Greek Orthodox church full of candles.

At the Albert Hall, it seems the audience was given a candle to light each. One might have wondered if that idea meant the London Fire Brigade was standing by outside, but then, the candles might well have been no more likely to set the Albert Hall on fire than the BBC's LCD screens spread underneath the bust of Sir Henry Wood, which one season nearly did.

Lighting candles—it used to be cigarette lighters at festivals I remember, but I suppose, judging by the relative paucity of members of the Proms audience who join me for a quick interval cigarette during intervals, I suppose that wouldn't work any more—was to symbolise just what? An in memoriam of the dead, who at this point hadn't yet died? By an audience whose personal connection with the beginning of the war must be at least three generations away?

It seemed, to be honest, a bit of a stunt. And why read the 'obvious' poem by Wilfred Owen, which is really more about the end than the beginning, and could, surely, in a music festival, since it's in Britten's War Requiem, have been sung rather than spoken?

It jarred, somehow. It seemed too contrived. I didn't care for it; and I'm relieved now I couldn't (still being a bit too fragile) go to the RAH as I'd intended.

Though the music itself did not sound at all contrived, and more about that later as I catch up.

I only met Taverner briefly once, but I was told, after he joined the Orthodox Church, that after a while he was a little upset about it. He gave, I understood, the copyright of his music to the Church. But they didn't promote recordings of it, as he had, I think, expected. The Patriarch, or so I was told, met his queries about the dissemination of his compositions with "The Church has been existence for two thousand years; all in good time."

Whether that had a bearing on why he left, I don't know.

Apologies for my absence from blogging—and from the Proms, though I've recorded some I couldn't go to or listen to properly for later—for a few days. 

[Radio 3 relay]
iPlayer

Wait for it!

"Circumstances beyond our control", as they say, mean that there's likely to be a delay in posting new reviews until this weekend. Sorry about that, but keep looking in.

Unfortunately, my colleague who wold normally fill in on these occasions is out of the country until later this month.

Oh What a Lovely War: Prom 16, Gabriel Prokoviev Violin Concerto '1914'

It was supposed to be 'the war to end all wars'. As we know all too well, that was a forlorn hope. Indeed, when historians come to write the history of the last decade of the nineteenth century, the twentieth and very probably much of this one, some time perhaps in 2114, it will not be in chapters headed 'The Great War', or 'The Second World War' or the 'Great Patriotic War, or 'The Iraq war' or 'Operation Enduring Freedom' or Operation Cast Lead'. 

It will be 'The Hundred and Fifty Years' War. Or, if one is a pacifist of growingly pessimistic bent, perhaps 'The Two Hundred Years' War.' After all, war has hardly ever ceased, and it is all around us.

Most of us, I dare say, think of war as mass killing. In imagining the 'softening up' bombardments of the First War, the 'Thousand Bomber' raids of the Second, the 'WMD's' more recently, especially in the West, war has become almost impersonal.  But the artillery shell, the drone-fired missile, the bullet that kills you is a very individual, in that last split second, or, if you are unlucky, longer, a very personal thing.

In Gabriel Prokofiev's  Violin Concerto it is the violin that is that precise, fragile aspect of individuality of war; sometimes strained, sometimes weary, mostly fearing. It is the orchestra that is the instrumentality of war: the twang of bullets hitting barbed wire or ricocheting; the percussion of shells and bombardment, the rattle of machine guns or an AK47. The sounds, as you perceive them as an individual, somehow distant from you, not yet murderously personal.

It was the tension of the wider, general, destructive threat as played in the orchestral parts, counterpoised against the slightly lost, sometimes anguished, almost always not-quite-comprehending that made Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto so striking.

Yes, it was programmatic in a sense that perhaps we want to eschew now; but it was a programme that was also musical narrative, part soundtrack to memories of scratchy film and more recent blurred cockpit video. It was a landscape of trenches and ruins; of memories of August relaxation and dances; of better times gone, sometimes fleetingly present, and the constant awareness of probably worse to come.

War has not changed much, for all the drones and distant hands on joysticks and Playstation falsity of the video stories. It hasn't changed at all for the people who die. Singly, individually, for who war ends still as a personal surprise and affront. 

It was a tremendously evocative and cleverly, hauntingly, constructed piece; the violin played with great insight by Daniel Hope, and accompanied superbly by the Istanbul orchestra. All of whom, after the seconds of silence at its end as the audience let it all sink in, were justly rewarded with a long spell of applause.

It was, perhaps, appropriate that a Turkish orchestra should perform this world premier. Some three million people in the Ottoman Empire died as a consequence of that war, too.

Above left: a silk 'in Memoriam' bookmark with the photograph of a WW1 soldier.

My grandfather (or more accurately, my grandmother's first husband, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at the beginning of the war; he was killed just ten days before the Armistice, in some small battle in Flanders hardly anyone has heard of. Private Ainsworth was a relative.

Photo: the ruins of Ypres; the market square, 1917. (Unattributed.)

Photo: the ruins of Gaza, 2014. (Unattributed)

Radio 3 live relay; repeated Wednesday 30th July, R3 1400; iPlayer

Passion's Flowers: Prom 12 Bach St John Passion, Norrington

Photo: Eric Hossinger

What would a Prom season be without a little controversy? Classical concert-goers have become tame since the good old days when they'd trash a hall over the Rite of Spring.  Norrington, said the presenter of this Prom, "practically caused a riot here at the Proms six years ago conducting Elgar with no vibrato. . ."

I was around that week, but I don't recall any remnants of torn-up seats thrown from the Circle littering the Arena, or the burnt shells of overturned BBC outside broadcast vans round the side of the Albert Hall, or that lingering sting of tear-gas wafting across Kensington Gardens.

As far as classical music goes, all passion's spent. I mean, audiences these days hardly say 'boo' even to that ridiculous misbegotten charade of a Russalka at Covent Garden, and if anything ever deserved, if not the Floral Hall scattered in shards of glass and the Piazza burning, at least a few handfuls of rotten tomatoes thrown at the director, that did.

It was a shame, I thought at the time, that the vegetable market ever took its ammunition so inaccessibly far across the river to collect during the interval. Otherwise I could have done my imitation of the Portobello stall holder who, when trade was a bit slack, used to yell "Come alive, pawt-o-bellah!" "Come alive, Covent Garden! Get yer rotten tomaters 'ere!"

Photo: Norrington et. al. in rehearsal (Ben Palmer)

Apparently, it's fifteen years since Norrington last visited the St John, which is quite a while to digest an approach. But it exhibited what one might call a trademark, the knack of separating instrumental and vocal textures, examining the essence of them, and re-constituting the whole so that you can follow the process, and the rationale for it, as it were at the back of your mind without it distracting from the whole performance.

And so it was here; pared-down Bach, almost sparse Bach, but with the apple of the music peeled so carefully you could rewind the whole and hardly know the apple had been pared down to the core at all.

I like 'spare Bach', and both Zurich orchestra and chorus were perfect for that purpose and style, suiting what I take to be Norrington's intent perfectly. It is an approach that also—and I think rightly, this being the music of the early 18th century, to which might have had its own angst and uncertainties, but was metaphysical about them, not romantic; half a century before Rousseau made confession public —cool and considered without being in the least cold or unsympathetic. Instrumentally, in particular, this was a very metaphysical reading.

A little less purely so, perhaps, with the soloists, though it would be wrong to attribute too much gratuitous emotion to what was, with all of the soloists, but especially James Gilchrist, splendid articulation and phrasing. Though the countertenor, Clint van der Linde perghaps, early on, betrayed a certain lack of confidence and surety. Then again, the Albert Hall is not a sympathetic venue for counter-tenors.

As to the faster tempi that the audience might have found 'controverisal'? Not as far as I could tell; Norrington seemed to me to be taking it a a perfect pace, exactly suited to the forces playing it in the Albert Hall.

As I wrote briefly, I am not a great fan of the Bach Passions; nor, to be honest, of religious choral works generally. (I can't get on at all with Parsifal, either.)  But, should I ever feel an urgent need to hear a St John Passion, my recording of this is probably one I would come back.

What is with this season though? Both tenor and baritone were replacements; at this rate by mid-September, the Proms will have fielded more substitutes than all the penalty shoot-outs in the World Cup.

I listened to the Radio 3 relay at home on R3, and congratulations to the sound engineers for an excellent sound balance. Listening to small ensembles (not to mention a counter-tenor) in the Albert Hall can be tricky depending on where you sit, or stand. For this Prom, it might be that the broadcast listeners had the best of it.

Although, with my windows wide open on Saturday night, I heard the usual complement of sirens dopplering away into the night (perhaps one or two more than usual, but no doubt heading for the Israeli embassy or its environs up the road from the Albert Hall, which has been attracting greater numbers than most Prom concerts recently)  as far as I know, there was no riot at the Albert Hall. So I've washed the vinegar out of the hanky I had ready to put over my nose and mouth just in case.

Repeated BBC4 31st July; iPlayer (Part 1); iPlayer (Part 2).

Visualising the Proms

It suddenly struck me that my Prom habits are a little paradoxical. I've tended to think of a TV broadcast of a Prom as distracting and at home prefer to listen to the audio on Radio 3 with no visuals except any my imagination might conjure up in my head. As the cliche has it, radio has better pictures.

Yet when I can I prefer , it occurs to me, to see as well as hear a Prom in the Albert Hall rather than listen to it at home; and yet I don't think of that as distracting. I seldom sit there with my eyes closed. So tonight I feel I ought to try to resolve the paradox. I didn't really concentrate  on the China Phil's Prom, but it's broadcast on BBC 4 tonight. Hopefully including the encore, which everyone seems to think was a lot of fun and which I missed altogether.

Television analogue audio is generally awful, but since I have a more hi-fi-amenable set up now, I might as well use it. So I shall watch in HD, and, hopefully listen the same way, with the digital output of my Humax tuner through a digital-to-analogue converter and my serious hi-fi system.

I will, probably, be a little distracted, as I sometimes am when the BBC cameras are in the Albert Hall. As I sometimes am in the theatre or the opera. I blame it on my mis-spent youth, some of which was spent as an Assistant Stage Manager for a theatre.

Which means in Covent Garden, I can't help but check out the lighting rigs and thinking about the technicalities of the scene changes while I'm watching the activity and the singers on the stage. So it is sometimes in the Albert Hall, for all the BBC's cameramen are dressed to impinge as little as possible on the audience's attention, from head-to-toe in black. I always wonder exactly what is on those notepads attached to the sides of the cameras that the cameramen (and women) flip the pages of every few minutes.

Instructions from the director as to when to move, when to zoom, when to pull back, I presume. I can't imagine that the camera operators are all following marked-up miniature scores, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out some of them are more knowledgeable about music than the tennis that presumably some, or all, of them were filming at Wimbledon shortly before.

I know, though, I shall be distracted by one thing. I can't help it, but I'm always fascinated by most directors' ability to focus on the instruments of the orchestra as their parts appear in the score. So I shall be looking out for when Camera 3 is still on the violins when Camera 4 should be on the horns . . .

Now, should it be gunpowder green, jasmine, or Assam for the interval?

Right up Stalin-Allee: Prom 7 Shostakovich 10

In a Proms season of anniversaries, this particular Prom is, perhaps, a year adrift for a memorial in round decades. But 61 years on, and with what's happening in eastern Ukraine, and with the growing blatancy of Russia Today's propaganda, it could be a timely reminder. Especially as for quite a few years now, in some sections of Russian society, and among some minds, Stalin's been becoming  a pussycat, Gulag claws neatly filed away.

I don't know whether Jiří Bělohlávek had anything like that in mind, though he was a young man of 22 in that first of many springs that turn to frosty winter in Prague of 1968. Musicians are not notoriously political.

True, the first movement was taken more quietly, more gently, perhaps, than one might expect; and seemingly on the slow side, though the emphasis there should be on the adverb. But only compilers of comparison lists listen to one movement of a symphony at a time, instead of following it through as a whole, and by the time Bělohlávek came to the Andante forty minutes or so later, it should have dawned that was the softness of the soft shoe shuffle of the secret police. As threatening as anything more pointed.

If the Allegretto (the supposed 'portrait of Stalin' if you believe Volkov, and I've never been too eager to) was less brutal and fierce than other examples, it made the point that you can be a villain, but a smiling one. In oppressive states, under tyrannies, it is usually safer to pay attention to the second and pretend not to note the first.

And in that mood, nor was the Allegro so abandoned. Stalin may have been in the grave, or under a Kremlin wall, or wherever he is, for more than half a century, but it would be over-confident to be too sure the 'ism' though it might have been lying low, is lying forever dead. And that I think, was what this thoughtful, carefully paced and un-flamboyant performance was about. Threats like that, as the last movement of this performance should have insinuated into the audience's minds by then, are not so easily dissipated with a roaring climax.

However much I'd like to believe that too. And will stick for the future with a recording, shall we say, with a brasher certainty about it?

Heard via  iPlayer.

Spirits of the Forest: Prom 9 Janacek, Glagolitic Mass

Photo credit: National Museum of Denmark, detail, the 'Gundestrup Cauldron'; created some time in the first or second century BC in what is now south-west Romania or north-west Bulgaria.


At the age of fifteen, it seems, Janacek joined  a pilgrimage of 40, 000 people to sing in the open air in honour of St Cyril.  That's about seven times the number you get in the Albert Hall for the last night lustily singing 'Jerusalem'; one imagines those 40,000 sang very lustily indeed.

It must have been as impressive and memorable to a young Janacek as a couple of days at Glastonbury would be to a teenager now, though possibly without any naked mud baths (but you never know how the Spirit takes some people) and bearing in mind the Glastonbury crowd, as far as I know, doesn't go much for mass community singing.

How I got the impression they were singing hymns in a forest, I can't really say, but if there was an imaginary locus in which to place Gergiev and the LSO orchestra and chorus for Janacek's Glagolitic Mass that is what it had to be. The musical spirits of this forest were far more pagan than Christian; more hamadryad than holy, to be fended off with loud and enthusiastic singing. As much, perhaps, out of the strength the fear of dark places, uncertainly tamed or exorcised, gives you as religious commitment.

Certainly, that is how the splendidly vehement and vigorous LSO Chorus sounded. And, whether it was spirits or beasts of the forest that were to be kept at bay by sheer volume of sound and energy, Gergiev's Maryinsky soloists (not to mention the Albert Hall organ) weren't lacking either.

As we all know, time has its own gearbox. (If you live in London as I do, it seldom seems to get out of third or fourth. In a small village in France I visit often, it hardly ever seems to get out of first.) I had the distinct impression that Gergiev was rather forcing the pace. Checking the timings, though, he can't have been. He just had a highly-tuned machine, obviously.

The initial intrada did sound almost frenetic, not to say fierce. but, whether it was the reconstructed score, or Gergiev, there was a majestic and commanding orchestral tonal colour from the start, modulated by an almost surprisingly pastoral folk-iness at the appropriate moments.

I noticed that a Guardian reader was put out by the score for this performance being referred to as a 'reconstruction', whereas it might properly be called a 'reversion' to the original. (The 2011 Prom—BBC SO/ and Chorus//Jiří Bělohlávek—to which the reader refers, and insists was preferable by far, however, was also a 'reconstruction') This is a useful short guide to Paul Wingfield's edition:

The main differences between the two versions are as follows: the original reinstates the Intrada movement at the beginning of the mass as well as in its usual place at the end. This gives the Mass a perfect arch form with Věruju (Credo) as its centerpiece. There are meter changes in both the Úvod (Introduction) and especially in the Gospodi, pomiluj (Kyrie) where 5/4 meter was originally conceived and then switched to easier 4/4. The Věruju movement contains the largest changes, with the orchestral middle section, the "Raspet" (an orchestral commentary on the Crucifixion), longer and more complex in the original version and containing a wild section with three sets of timpani omitted in the revised version, as well as off-stage clarinets. Finally, the Svet (Sanctus) movement is extended thrillingly near the end, reaching ever higher and higher.

[John L Webb, MusicWeb International]

I shall probably add to this a little later, but I was feeling a bit bad about the delay.

The Critics. . .Divided

Not for the first time (and I'm sure it wont be the last) I have to wonder whether some critics attended (or listened to) the same performance I did:

"In Prom 9 Barry Douglas had his work cut out as soloist in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1, because Valery Gergiev conducted the London Symphony Orchestra as if on tranquillisers, but Douglas finally succeeded in injecting some authentic Brahmsian passion. Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass benefited from a volcanic performance by the London Symphony Chorus."

[Michael Church, the Independent]

(See below, and later, above.)

Stormy Weather of the Soul: Prom 9; Brahms Piano Concerto No1

It is difficult to avoid creating a narrative writing about music. Even more difficult to avoid creating an autobiographical one, especially when the performer (in this case Barry Douglas) is specific, as he was talking to the R3 presenter, about the connection between this concerto, Robert Schumann's lapse into insanity and Brahms' relationship with Clara.

Not to accept that, though, is to risk writing only for the musically informed, about metronome markings and intricacies in the score. Which is music as frozen architecture.

Better, then, to treat, as I think Douglas and Gergiev actually did in the ninth Prom, music-as-story as metaphor, the concerto as the stormy weather of the soul; and a journey through psychological seasons with weather forecasts that in retrospect (recalling Brahms worked on this concerto for five years) were variable and often suspect and the long-range forecasts particularly unreliable. Just like those on the BBC. . .

The ochestral introduction was almost brutally thunderous; yet Douglas throughout was punchy and fierce, gentle and lyrical, precisely as the emotional temperature demanded, almost, but never in fact, to the point of exaggeration. Much as I feared beforehand he might actually be rather heavy-handed: Douglas is not a pianist who in the past I've always credited with the lightness of touch, or the lyricism of the 'portrait of Clara' in the slow movement, he displayed tonight.

Orchestra and piano were finely balanced: in the Maestoso equally brooding and threatening with hints of rays sunlight; in the Adagio, full of spring rays, distant black clouds, a smell of freshness and probably one of the most delicate, perfect examples of 'pricking stars from heaven's vault' anyone might wish to hear.

And finally, a culmination and resolution; storms, tempests, gales partially in the past, life-affirming sunlight, but nonetheless, in the final cadenza an unmistakeable reminder of the threats such emotional weather as Brahms; relationship with the Schumanns brings with it to the soul. Especially if you are in your twenties.

This was, from both Gergiev and Douglas, a cleverly thought-out performance and supremely executed. It was played unashamedly symphonically in scale, and with the piano played within an inch of its life. Didn't Brahms describe it as 'a symphony with a piano obbligato'? That does imply a certain element of musical schizophrenia, and there was a distinct element of that, deliberately imposed, as though for a moment piano and orchestra were struggling against being antagonistic, in the last movement, the Rondo, before the final climactic resolution. As in fact it had been briefly and perhaps more pointedly in the first movement.

This performance clearly did depend on accepting a narrative; even a narrative as musical metaphor of mental processes, rather than as a deterministic programme, but  neatly avoiding the pitfalls of attempting a musical biography.

It would not have suited its first audience, nor its first critic: "this rootimg and rummaging, this dragging and drawing, this tearing and patching of phrases and flourishes!" Gergiev and Douglas went for all that with terrific gusto and absolutely no smoothing over let alone tentativeness; but with a stylishness, power and utter confidence that arrowed every bar deep into the listeners' hearts.

Douglas said on radio 3, that Brahms' Piano Concerto in D minor is 'an intensely emotional experience that changes people'. Certainly, for this listener, he, Gergiev and the LOS fulfilled the first; whether it was one that would have quite such a transformational effect, I'm not sure. (Though it evidently failed in both endeavours for at least one critic and one lay—I presume—listener.) But you cannot fault them trying to achieve it, or how they tried.

A live performance of this concerto. thoroughly thought out and rigorously executed in its evident aims, really doesn't get much better than this. Not for me, anyway.

R3 (FM) live relay

iPlayer

Sonic Hedgehogs

I'm beginning to wonder, though it is early days, if the Radio 3 Proms broadcasts are not as good as they used to be. Of course, it may be that with age my 'sonic memory' is fading, but I don't think so.

I mentioned briefly, writing about the interlopers among the flying saucers, that the BBC's microphone setup seems to have been noticeably expanding over the last few seasons. The main rig over the Arena below the dome seems to have grown markedly even compared to last year.

I  have never been fond of 'multi-miking'. The most extreme example of which—to demonstrate—I saw a recording company which I won't name using in St John's some years back. Every instrument had a microphone; and not only that, but every bass and cello had what is called a 'boundary mic' at its foot.

There were as many microphones in, among, above and over the orchestra as a hedgehog has prickles, or so it seemed. I didn't care for the result. A plethora of mics such as that required an awful lot of jiggery-pokery before it became listenable to people with only one pair of ears.

 It's been some time since I recognised anything similar to the simplest form of miking an orchestra at a Prom: what is known as a 'Decca Tree'. Anyone who collects classical music recordings will know that in the late fifties and through the sixties Decca produced some of the finest and most realistic orchestral recordings ever made.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons why a simple arrangement like that is not practicable in the Albert Hall. But I'm wondering if it's going too far the other way. An important element of recorded music is the ambience of the venue; listening to the last couple of Proms on Radio 3, I don't seem to hear that any more. Last night particularly, it sounded almost as though the orchestra was playing in a dead space, not one filled with a lot of breathing human beings.

And something, I think, is happening to what, technically, we call the 'sound stage.' Anyone who has been to a Prom at the RAH knows the orchestra is spread over quite a distance not only from side to side, but fore and aft. Yet, what I seem to be hearing is, as it were, two or three layers rather than any impression of the real distance between, say, the first violins at the front and the brass well behind.

There isn't the depth that I'm pretty sure used once to be there. Nor, I feel, is there quite the range of the upper strings that you hear in the hall, or the distinctness of the string sections you actually do hear there.

Perhaps, and I'm being tentative about this, the sound balance is being engineered for its suitability for digital broadcast; these are all common artefacts of digital compression and limiting, however good it is. Or, perhaps, a consequence of the sound being mixed primarily for surround and only secondarily for common-or-garden 'true' high fidelity strereo.

If that is the case, it's a sad retrograde step. But one, I fear, no-one will be able to do much about, since it became a commonplace quite early on in the development of digital audio that, as has come about, the majority of radio listeners would soon have forgotten, and some would never know, what 'high fidelity' actually sounded like.

As someone—I won't say where from—told me then, when I wanted to know why no-one was proposing to broadcast digital audio at anywhere near the equivalent standard of what the recording industry was already using, when there was no technical reason whatever for not doing it, "Give it five years and nobody will be able to tell anyway."

Apologies for the diversion; now, I really must concentrate on writing about Brahms.

Prom 9: A holy trinity, Brahms, Janacek, Gergiev.

The real review will come along a little later, after I've rendered my notes into some kind of intelligibility.

I had wondered a little if we absolutely needed another Brahms Piano Concerto or another Glagolitic Mass at the Proms, but over the years, Gergiev at the Proms with the LSO has never disappointed, and he didn't tonight.

(I say 'never', though just a—very—few times I've thought he might not have challenged, or provoked, might sometimes be a better word, the audience as much as he might, or often has.)

But neither the Brahms nor, especially and outstandingly, the Janacek, could have been construed as being unchallenging in the sense of thought-provoking. I don't think I have ever heard, and wonder if I may again, such a raw no-holds-barred Glagolitic Mass of such pure energy as I did in this Prom.

If you heard the interval talk, you would have learnt that Janacek, at what is now the X-box*/pizza-devouring age of 15, had joined a pilgrimage of 40,000 people. Who sang in the open air. Whether that did surface in some musical form fifty years later, we cannot tell. But hearing Gergiev, the Maryinsky soloists, the LSO and the LSO choir, it's hard to believe that a memory of it could not have been resonating round his skull like a great cathedral bell.

One brief technical note: the broadcast balance probably overdid the power of the soloists, maybe made them sound more vehement than strong; it put them forward of the orchestra, when, apparently, they were actually behind it, underneath Henry Wood's bust.

Even allowing for what I suspect is a little added mic enhancement of the audience in the Albert Hall this season, by the sound of it, the audience was just as enthusiastic as I am.

*Other games consoles are also available. Or so I am led to understand.

I'm sorry I couldn't go to hear it live; if you didn't hear it at all, you really must. It'll be repeated on Radio 3 tomorrow (Friday 25th at 1300).

iPlayer 

Flourishing Artistry: Chamber Prom 1, Rameau, Les Arts Florissants

It can be difficult really to love Rameau. And it did look a bit presumptuous of the BBC Proms Guide contributor to describe him as 'the French Bach'. Would even the most musically patriotic Frenchman (or woman) really go that far?

(Don't answer that. I know it's probably a 'Yes'.)

But if ever there was a musical manifesto that a French patriot could point to to go some way, at least, to giving that assertion some body, it was Les Arts Florrisants at the Cadogan Hall.

The band has always ben something of a favourite of mine, though I've not been, in the past, always without reservations about William Christie's direction.

That lunchtime, they were under the direction from the harpsichord of Paolo Zanzu, who I don't really know, though I presume I must have heard him playing continuo with the band; but both his playing and direction were utterly delightful. Usually, I find it difficult not to associate Ramaeau from the absurdly intricate formalities and rules of the Court at Versailles. As though, somehow, all those rules about who sat on a three-legged stool, who on a chair, who had how much of their name or rank on which door, who could wear what height of platform heels, and strut them along which corridor, were all also getting into the musical notation.

Not in this concert, though. This was Rameau with his high-heel shoes kicked into a corner. (We'll pretend that, Versailles notoriously not having any loos, we don't know what they might have landed in apart from just a corner.) And, especially in (I think, I haven't got the programme) the Premier Tambourin et Deuxième Tambourin en Rondeau) amazingly light, fast and frisky. With not a foot (or a finger) wrong.

On Monday, Les Arts Florissants played like bon viveurs to a man (and woman). Enthusiasm, complexity and joie de vivre splendidly moderated by delicacy and, yes, even where required in the last piece of the concert, that somewhat more sober kind of 'mathematical', 'celestial sewing machine' precision and intricacy that might just, at least, for its duration, have you believing quite devoutly Rameau could, after all, be the 'French Bach'.
Beautifully judged performances throughout. The tone of the instruments absolutely beautiful too and very nicely balanced. It may be on the iPlayer for longer than usual. If you missed it first time around, Go listen to it. I insist.

And watch out for Paolo Zanzu.

"Sewing machine"? Peter Porter once called Bach 'the celestial sewing machine'.




R3 FM (recorded)


Repeated Sunday 27th July 1300 R3 

iPlayer

UFO's Among the Flying Saucers

When the Albert Hall was remodelled, so were the 'flying saucers'. For a while, anyone who went up into the gallery could see what these things looked like from close up.

The acoustic effect was, I thought, reasonably successful, though not without some disadvantages. On the plus side, I believe it improved the sound, particularly, of second violins: they appeared to acquire more 'body' Bass strings, too, became a little fuller, as well as, I think, becoming a little drier with less 'bloom',  enhanced by some conductors' experiments since with placing lower strings at stage right, instead of stage left.

It also seemed to me that the new arrangement improved the brass too, in both clarity, separation and dynamics: most observable, perhaps, if you listen in the hall to any piece where a bass trombone has any prominence. It certainly serves early instruments much better  than it did years ago; and has improved the clarity of small ensembles, too.

But there were some disadvantages. In some seats in the Circle, you could hear an echo that I didn't recall being there before; and there were places in the gallery (particularly at the organ ends where stewards once tended to usher people with disabilities to seats) where again, one heard the echo, or the orchestral sound became noticeably unbalanced. I've been avoiding that part of the Albert Hall now for years, ushers' solicitude notwithstanding.

This season, the flying saucers have been joined by other UFO's. Among them, the circular lighting rig we've seen before, though I haven't really noticed that causing any particularly notable deleterious effects, though acoustically it's hard to credit there can't be any.

This year, though, there are other interlopers. I've no idea what they are: they look like huge flat screens, though up there obstructed by all the microphone and lighting cables, one presumes only people in the gallery would have anything like a decent view of them. Now I can't really believe that anything that big isn't going to muck about with what the 'flying saucers' are supposed to do. Though I shall have to listen to a few more live concerts this season before I can decide one way or another.

I've noticed, too, that the microphone arrangement is getting distinctly more complex. Long gone are the days when you could just about discern a fundamental stereo pair. Some of this year's arrangement, I suspect, is for the benefit of broadcast listeners, the better to pick up the more enthusiastic—and often, not really very discriminating, stamping and whooping from the higher seats and the gallery? Or would that be unduly cynical? Listeners at home. I know, can often be a little misled over the enthusiasm of a Prom audience, which can often sound rather more generous than it actually was. And more than some presenters would have you believe . . .

I shall try to have a closer look. Even—though I don't hold out much hope, technical information on Prom broadcasts has never been easy to come by and very much harder the last decade or so—try to get some inside info from the OB vans . . .

I'm old-fashioned. All my hi-fi is connected up with proper wires. Worse, the listening set up in my living room is all wired up back and forth to my audio editing system in my bedroom. All of which somehow get into a tangle—as any collection of more than two cables inevitably will, it's a law of physics—which constantly needs the kind of attention the Gordian knot did until Alexander got impatient. An approach, however tempting sometimes, especially this week as I'm trying to fathom why one of my cabling systems between one system and the other seems to have decided to become partially defunct, isn't really advisable if I want to carry on actually listening . .

Pity the outside broadcast engineers. Who, a few seasons back, I noted with some amusement, had abandoned their own attempts at understanding what had gone wrong with one of their cable runs, and just tied a label to it in obvious despair that said "Fu'd".

This is just one part of this year's cable spaghetti leading out of the Albert Hall. All, as far as I could see, 'unfu'd'. So far.

(Had to censor that; the whole word apparently got search engines' puritanism filters engaged. Oh, ffs, grow up!)