What a difference an election can make. There is a new atmosphere at the BBC Proms this year, one of timid hope and, yes, relief. With the divisive culture wars over and the licence fee declared safe, hearts should be lighter on the first night at the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. They are joined by the BBC Singers, the group with the most to celebrate after their threatened collapse last year, which became a symbol of the previous government’s aggressive hostility to the arts in Britain.
Bruckner’s cry of “Hallelujah!” while singing Psalm 150, Prom 1 with such power, conductor Elim Chan turned up the volume. But that was only for the evening’s big surprise, Ben Nobuto Hallelujah Sim, A highly entertaining “step-by-step tutorial” for choir and orchestra, structured like a video game and ironically first released on the same day that Microsoft systems crashed around the world.
A synthetic voice instructs the performers to complete four levels of hallelujah, each with their own difficulty (singing separate sections, joining them together, singing faster, singing slower, randomising syllables, singing backwards), while the orchestra plays a wildly cartoonish accompaniment. Nobuto (b.1996) believes we live in an internet-saturated age, and here he takes traditional musical elements and gives them a 21st-century digital sheen, creating something brilliant, clever and funny. Rehearsals must have been a nightmare, so credit goes to choirmaster Neil Ferris and Chan, who held it all together. The audience loved it, which isn’t always the case with a new piece at the Proms.
Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason (who last week lobbied parliament for better music in schools) made an impressive solo debut last year with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto and became an instant Prommers favourite. This year, as a champion of female composers, she performed Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, a work she first recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 2019. Critics noted her boldly ambitious playing at the time, a quality that was repeated last week. Clara Wieck was only 13 when she began composing this piece and was clearly a challenging pianist. Kanneh-Mason brought real authority to this adolescent firework display, but perhaps the highlight was her beautifully judged duet with principal cellist Louisa Tuck in the delicate central movement.
We all think we know Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but under Chan’s direction it takes on new life, details emerge, melodies are accentuated, rhythms are sharply defined. There is always a sense of growing excitement in the work, but here it gallops into the final allegro with dramatic purpose. A thrilling conclusion to an unforgettable evening.
Manchester’s jewel of an orchestra, the Hallé, reached a milestone last week with its final Prom, conducted by musical director Mark Elder, after 25 years.Prom 4As at his farewell concerts in Manchester, Elder was keen for every element of the Hallé to be part of this Prom – orchestra, adult choir, youth choir and the excellent children’s choir. This created an impressive wall of choral sound in James MacMillan’s arrangement of verses from Dryden, Timotheus, Bacchus and Ceciliabut it had the unintended consequence of emphasising how much more relaxed young voices were than their older counterparts, with the adult sopranos frequently struggling with MacMillan’s difficult upper line. Although warmly received, this is a curious, uneven work, its most persuasive passages devoted to Dryden’s portrayal of the transformative power of music.
Mahler’s fifth symphony was a perfect fit for Elder to showcase the wealth of talent in every section of the orchestra he had built over the last quarter century: the strings elegant, the brass sharp, the woodwinds agile. The long journey from funeral darkness to uncertain, triumphant light was mesmerising, the famous adagietto for harp and strings, Mahler’s love song to his future wife Alma Schindler, beautifully judged, never sentimental, something Elder had already hated, he told the audience in his farewell speech. The focus was on the players and the future, both at the Proms (he was once a young Prom) and in live music: “It is something we all need, perhaps more than ever before.” Amen to that.
Schindler’s name came up again at an interesting but poorly attended ball, a reenactment of a concert given in Vienna in 1905, at which brothers-in-law Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky had first performed two extremely impressive tone poems: Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and Zemlinsky Mermaid (Ball 5). Poor Zemlinsky chose the Hans Christian Andersen story of the little mermaid who watches her lover marry someone else because it resonated with his own experience – the Alma he longed for married Mahler. Conductor Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales revelled in Zemlinsky’s emotionally charged music, sometimes kitsch, shimmering with supernatural mystery.
But no matter how brilliant and accessible, Zemlinsky’s music does not share the depth and complexity of Schoenberg’s richly colored music. PelleasyUnder Bancroft’s assured direction, Schoenberg summons a large orchestra (nine horns, full wind instruments, 16 wind instruments, two harps, two timpani) and brings these forces together to tell the story of a love triangle that inevitably ends in tragedy. The sonorous, restless score writhes and twists as it charts the plot of Maeterlinck’s dreamlike play, passionately portraying the passion of Pelleas and Melisande and the enraged jealousy of the prince who cannot bear to lose Melisande. This spellbinding narrative is sure to be a highlight of the season, and it’s only week one.
Star ratings (out of five)
Prom 1 ★★★★★
Prom 4 ★★★★
Ball 5 ★★★★★