Category Archives: BBC Proms

BBC Proms 2023 – BBC Symphony Orchestra / Semyon Bychkov: Bruckner Symphony no.8

Posted on by
Reply

Prom 65 – BBC Symphony Orchestra / Semyon Bychkov

Bruckner Symphony no.8 in C minor WAB108 (1884-7, rev. 1889-90 [ed. Nowak])

Royal Albert Hall, London
Monday 4 September 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Chris Christodoulou / BBC

It may have taken 70 years for its Proms premiere but the Eighth has since become the second most often played of Bruckner’s symphonies (this being its 21st hearing), and a near capacity house greeted tonight’s performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov.

At home across a broad repertoire, Bychkov has of yet directed relatively little Bruckner, and the first movement took its time to settle. Fugitive rather than speculative in their emotional import, those distinct motivic elements lacked a final degree of definition and only began to take on greater cumulative focus during a development whose unfolding drama was matched but not exceeded by the climax of the coda – after which, that inexorable winding down into silence was precisely controlled while curiously unevocative in its sense of time running out.

With the outer sections taken at a swift but never headlong tempo that enabled its underlying ostinato pattern to be perceived throughout, the Scherzo exuded energy while also mystery in what remains Bruckner’s most powerful instance of a genre he made his own. The brass was at its most assured, and Bychkov duly avoided any temptation to make the lengthy trio a self-contained episode. Its unforced progress brought winsome contributions from woodwind and harps, the reprise then having audibly greater impetus as it surged towards its decisive close.

As so often in this symphony, the Adagio found the interpretation and its realization in most potent accord. Mindful to draw its continual thematic restatements into a consistent process of developing variation, Bychkov conveyed the music’s expressive but also spatial grandeur with an assurance hardly less evident in its unfolding tonal trajectory. Nor did the excising of material in revision impede its course, even if the sudden appearance of cymbals and triangle at its climax sounded more than usually redundant. A pity, moreover, that momentary failings of intonation among Wagner tubas affected what was otherwise his near perfect rendering of the coda – Bruckner’s distilling of main motifs, underpinned by the halting accompaniment, finding closure only at that point where everything stops as the movement comes full circle.

From here the Finale set out with due purposefulness, even though the occasional rhythmic hesitancy gave notice of an approach in which the whole did not quite match the sum of its admittedly impressive parts. Strategically coinciding with those divisions of the movement overall, the chorale-like main theme brought a resplendent response as left its eloquent then ominous successors sounding incidental within the ongoing formal scheme, and though the extensive development did not lack for variety of content, its discursiveness made for a less than perfect unity. Any remaining tentativeness was none the less dispelled in a coda whose gradual emergence made for an apotheosis of unusual clarity – the superimposing of themes not just ingenious in its technical skill but cathartic in its conveying of a journey completed.

The illustrious rollcall of conductors who have tackled this work at the Proms speaks for itself, and while Bychkov might not yet have joined the ranks of Wand, Haitink and Mehta et al, his belief in and commitment to Bruckner’s Eighth was amply communicated to all those present.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Meanwhile click on the names for more information on the BBC Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Semyon Bychkov – and finally composer Anton Bruckner

BBC Proms 2023 – Kirill Gerstein, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Vladimir Jurowski: Weill, Adès & Rachmaninoff

Posted on by
Reply

Prom 60 – Kirill Gerstein (piano), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski

Weill Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (1928, arr. 1929)
Adès Piano Concerto (2018) [Proms premiere]
Rachmaninoff Symphony no.3 in A minor Op.44 (1935-6, rev. 1938)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 31 August 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Andy Paradise / BBC

Marking its centenary this October, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra may be less known abroad than other Berlin orchestras but this Proms debut under chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski confirmed an ensemble at home across the broad range of modern and contemporary music.

Not least in Little Threepenny Music, a ‘selection’ Kurt Weill arranged from his and Bertold Brecht’s reworking of The Beggar’s Opera which takes in several of that show’s best-known numbers while also affording a demonstrable overview of its satirical concerns. The BRSO responded with vigour and not a little pathos – above all, in the Threepenny Finale and its juxtaposing pensive ambivalence with a glowering decisiveness: that final chorale making plain its damning inditement of German cultural failings in the era of the Weimar Republic.

A spirited participant, Kirill Gerstein took centre-stage for the first hearing at these concerts of the Piano Concerto written for him by Thomas Adès. Now as before, Gerstein’s dexterity in negotiating this score’s pert amalgam of intricacy and bravura warranted respect: whether in what might be called the ‘Self-Portrait with Gershwin and Ligeti (though Prokofiev is also there)’ of the first movement, Stravinskian cortège of the central Andante, or the interplay of vivacity and uncertainty in the final Allegro. An attentive accompanist, Jurowski summoned playing as tensile and supple as the orchestral writing demands – though abetting the overall impression (his recent works in particular) that even as consummate a conceptualist as Adès needs to instil those ideas, often arresting in themselves, with comparable musical substance.

Gerstein’s transcription of Rachmaninoff’s In the Silence of the Secret Night (Op.4/3) duly prepared for the latter’s Third Symphony. First given at the Proms 85 years ago, it still attracts dislike from those who find it a self-conscious update of the composer’s inherently Romantic idiom as well as those who dislike such an idiom in any case. Not that Jurowski’s account brooked any compromise in marrying consistent technical precision to a powerfully shaped conception of music often appealing, frequently intriguing and not a little unsettling.

The stark rendering of its introduction – spectral ‘motto’ then surging tutti – set the course for an initial movement where contrast between expectancy and eloquence came to a head in the development with its anguished fusion between heart and brain. The Adagio unfolded with an almost Sibelian inevitability, not least in the seamlessness by which its outer sections flowed into then out of a central scherzo abounding in that sardonic humour as became a mainstay of Rachmaninoff’s later years. Nor was there anything blandly predictable about a finale whose opening exuberance was ably maintained through a consoling but never wantonly languorous secondary theme, eventually resolving into a coda whose unfolding as a crescendo of activity brought the whole work – and the present reading – animatedly and satisfyingly full circle.

Impressive music-making on all levels and Jurowski further cemented the Proms connection, specifically that between Rachmaninoff and Henry Wood, with the latter’s transcription of the former’s Prelude in C sharp minor Op.3/2) – as tempestuous as it proved exhilarating.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Meanwhile click on the names for more information on artists Kirill Gerstein, the Berlin Radio SO and conductor Vladimir Jurowski – and finally composer Thomas Adès

BBC Proms 2023 – Jon Hopkins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jules Buckley

Posted on by
1

Prom 58

Hopkins
ATHOS (arr. Jules Buckley) (BBC Commission, world premiere)
Feel First Life (arr. Peter Riley & Leo Abrahams)
The Wider Sun (arr. Sam Gale)
Singularity (arr. Simon Dobson)
Music for Psychedelic Therapy – excerpt (arr. Peter Riley)
Form by Firelight (arr. Peter Riley)
Luna Moth (arr. Sam Gale)
Collider (arr. Simon Dobson)
Abandon Window (arr. Tom Trapp)
Recovery

Jon Hopkins (piano, programming), Leo Abrahams (guitar), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master David Young), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jules Buckley

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 29 August 2023

by Ben Hogwood photos by Mark Allan / BBC

Electronic and orchestral music are more closely related than you might think, with Jon Hopkins a classic case in point. For 15 years, the pianist and producer has been carefully sculpting his music either as a contributor for other artists (King Creosote, Coldplay and Brian Eno to name just three) or making his own, weather-beaten albums. Starting with Opalescent and Insides, these have developed into immersive meditations (Singularity and the most recent long player Music for Psychedelic Therapy) by way of more full-bodied rave music (2013’s Immunity). How, then, does this music hold up in a packed and expectant Royal Albert Hall?

Extremely well as it turns out. In order to achieve what he described beforehand as ‘a meditation for 5,000 people’, Hopkins has to temporarily turn his back on beat-driven, post-rave landmarks such as Collider or Form By Firelight. When such material appears, its percussive impact is modified so that the main job is done by the timeless, meditative chorale echoing around the hall.

Hopkins’ music is repetitive, but as with the best exponents of minimalism – Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams, for instance – the material under repetition rewards the investment made. The mind is eased, enjoying the upfront melodies but also taking up the option of picking out new threads beneath the surface, like examining a tartan pattern under a magnifying glass.

The tartan analogy is purposeful, for Hopkins’ earlier music has a distinctive Celtic edge furthered by his work with King Creosote. The Wider Sun, from 2009 album Insides, has an authentic left of centre tuning, is slow but packs emotional heft, beautifully arranged by Sam Gale and masterfully weighted by Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra strings.

Before that we hear a new piece, the 25-minute ATHOS demonstrating Hopkins’ control of larger structures. This is a natural direction for his music to be taking after Music for Psychedelic Therapy, for it is effectively an album ‘A’ side of several interwoven tracks. The profile and material of ATHOS sits closely to composers such as Arvo Pärt, and in particular his Credo, but Hopkins has up his sleeve a number of heart-shifting modulations. Accentuated by the Royal Albert Hall organ, these are once heard, never forgotten moments.

So, too, are the choral passages, thanks to pinpoint interpretations from the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus, whose lines float effortlessly above the orchestral forces. Their vocal control is masterful and effortless, ensuring the sustained notes keep their emotional impact without wavering. Lesser singers would have tailed off long before these ones even think of blinking!

The sequence of music, running for approximately 75 minutes, is well chosen. Only on occasion does the source material become oversimplified, and as it turns out these moments serve as natural pauses for breath in the musical tapestry.

Guitarist Leo Abrahams, appearing for the last two numbers, makes a critical contribution (above). A good friend and established collaborator with Hopkins and Eno, he brings a sharper timbre to the shredded distortion of Recovery, which is – as throughout – complemented by imaginative and sympathetic lighting.

This was a multisensory Prom, containing a different sort of symphony to which the Royal Albert Hall is normally accustomed. Hopkins has proved his credentials in mastering larger structures, and his development in this field will be worth watching for sure. For now, the afterglow remains.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. For more on the artists, click here to read about Jon Hopkins, Leo Abrahams, Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra

BBC Proms 2023 – Christian Tetzlaff, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo – Weir, Schumann & Elgar

Posted on by
Reply

Prom 51 – Christian Tetzlaff (violin), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

Weir Begin Afresh (BBC commission, world premiere) (2022-3)
Schumann Symphony no.1 in B flat major Op.38 ‘Spring’ (1841)
Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1907-10)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 24 August 2023

by Ben Hogwood photos by Andy Paradise / BBC

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and their chief conductor Sakari Oramo have been on fine form this Proms season, and for their fourth outing together chose a concert whose first half celebrated the vibrancy of spring.

Judith Weir (below) has already written about green matter for orchestra, with her tone poem Forest premiered in 1995 and appearing at the Proms in 2019. Begin Afresh, its title inspired by Philip Larkin verse, takes a more forensic approach, looking at the wonder of trees in an urban setting. Effectively a musical diary, it begins in April, where we found orchestra leader Igor Yuzefovich teaming up with the woodwind section to lead an awakening from months of darkness. Fresh textures and opulent harmonies promised much, but October assumed a heavier tread, trees struggling to produce leaves with the onset of colder weather. Darker colours, including the sharper tone of the piano, came to the fore, but there was strong resolve reminiscent of Sibelius in the colours and phrasing, tonal but restless. True darkness set in among the lean lines of February, where roots fought against the frost, their sinewy profiles etched by the lower strings. Begin Afresh found its victory to be hard-won, but proved to be an attractive and pictorial piece deserving of more outings in the future.

Schumann’s Spring symphony, written in 1841 in the heady aftermath of his marriage to Clara, occupied an odd place in the program but benefited from a freshly minted performance. The initial fanfare set the tone for an interpretation of clarity and poise, the burbling woodwind on fine form. The ensuing Allegro molto vivace was bracing, and was complemented by a softly voiced second movement Larghetto. Here the softer shades were ideally weighted, the strings’ intimate thoughts conveyed with deep feeling. The Scherzo found the violins applying extra force, the theme balanced by two light-footed trio sections that danced happily. Oramo’s fluent reading of this wonderful symphony ended with a convincing last movement affirmation.

If spring was the main focus of the first half, Elgar’s Violin Concerto was ideally suited to late summer. There are many violin concertos in this year’s season – 13 at last count – and although this is the longest work by some distance, it did not tarry here. This was thanks in part to relatively quick tempo choices but mostly due to wholehearted investment from Oramo and soloist Christian Tetzlaff, who clearly loves the piece. From his first statement the violinist was in full, assertive control yet his most meaningful contributions were also the quietest, beckoning the audience in to Elgar’s most intimate thoughts and emotions.

The orchestral counterpoint was clearly and carefully managed by Oramo, himself a dignified Elgarian, with opportunity given for the strings to release ardent feelings in the climax points. The main themes were lovingly delivered, especially in the rapt slow movement Andante, the audience largely silent as the compelling dialogue took hold. While Tetzlaff took every opportunity for virtuoso display, reminding us that no less a violinist than Fritz Kreisler commissioned this work in 1904, none of the acrobatics were for personal gain. Instead they were at the service of Elgar’s expression, which made the final pages all the more telling. As the quiet music took hold a chill spread through the music, a sombre realisation that love – in this case – might not prevail. This realisation unwittingly found a parallel, a musical realisation of the temperatures dropping and the nights drawing in as they do in late August.

The concerto may have had an affirmative finish but these thoughts remained, reinforced by a tastefully restrained encore of the Andante from Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata no.2 in A minor BWV1003. As with the performance before, it was beautifully judged.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Meanwhile click on the artist names for more on Christian Tetzlaff, Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

BBC Proms 2023 – Stevie Wonder’s ‘Innervisions’ with Jules Buckley and guests

Posted on by
1

Prom 48 – Stevie Wonder‘s Innervisions (1973)

Too High (arr. Rob Taggart)
Visions (arr. Callum Au)
Living for the City (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
Golden Lady (arr. Neuffer )
All in Love is Fair (arr. Tommy Laurence)
Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You) (Music of my Mind, arr. Neuffer)
They Won’t Go When I Go (arr. Tim Davies)a
Jesus Children of America (arr. Davies)
He’s Misstra Know-It-Allb
Creepin’ (Fulfillingness’ First Finale, arr. Taggart)c
Something Out of Blue (Where I’m Coming From, arr. Davies)c
Higher Ground (arr. Neuffer)
Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer (Where I’m Coming From, arr. Davies)d
Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing (arr. Tom Richards)d
Superstition (Talking Book)
If It’s Magic (Songs in the Key of Life)

Cory Henry (vocals / keyboards), aLaura Mvula, bLianne Le Havas, cVula Malinga, dSheléa (vocals), Vula’s Chorale, Jules Buckley Orchestra / Jules Buckley

Royal Albert Hall, London
Monday 21 August 2023

by Richard Whitehouse photos by Andy Paradise / BBC

From Nina Simone then Aretha Franklin to Stevie Wonder – these ‘tributes’ masterminded by Jules Buckley have become as much a Proms staple as were John Wilson’s stage-and-screen projects, with the 50th anniversary of Innervisions too notable an occasion to be passed over.

Now routinely hailed as one of the greatest albums, Innervisions was not always held in such esteem – being considered strong in atmosphere if short on hooks, which is rather to miss the point of its nine numbers merging into a seamless continuity broken only with the side-break of the LP. It duly elides between songs of love, self-awareness and social commentary with a mastery abetted by Wonder’s ingenuity as a musician and his skill as a producer; indeed, few albums, from what was to be the heyday for production, can rival its tangible space or depth.

Wonder’s distinctive if by no means inimitable voice makes his songs ideal for covering and, in Cory Henry, have a consummate keyboardist and eloquent singer able to encompass their conceptual and emotional range. Hence the dextrous organ intro’ then big-band stylings that underpinned the breezy ambivalence of Too High, or soulful communing of Visions with its textural enhancements from flute and electric guitar. It may have lacked the original’s urban ambience, but Living for the City emerged as an anthemic parable of racial injustice; then the amorous overtones of Golden Lady were enhanced by its shimmering slow shuffle.

An edgy vocal complemented the insistent groove of Higher Ground with its electronic and synthesized sounds which are no less intriguing today, while the Christian confessional that is Jesus Christ of America exuded piety but no undue emoting. The moodily reflective aura of All in Love is Fair benefitted from that deft backdrop of strings, as did the Latino-inflected jive of Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing as here made for an irresistibly upbeat ending to the album itself. Typical of Wonder, though, that he should have concluded the original’s playing order with the snide political diatribe of He’s Misstra Know-It-All and which can still punch like a velveted fist when rendered, as here, with the allure of guest vocalist Lianne La Havas.

This begs the question as to whether such a classic album is best heard as an integral unity or interspersed, as was its second side, with other items – which latter course enabled a capacity house to sample each of those albums from Wonder’s ‘golden age’. Thus, the composite that is Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You), its interplay of easy grooves with fatalistic thoughts ably rendered by Henry, but the pensively resigned They Won’t Go When I Go felt coarsened and sentimentalized by histrionics from guest vocalist Laura Mvula. Not so the darkly insinuating Creepin’ with superb lead from backing vocalist Vula Malinga, who duetted with Henry on the burnished Something out of the Blue. A star of last year’s Aretha tribute, Sheléa handled the soaring pathos of Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer with aplomb, then all reassembled for a rousing send-off in the inevitable guise of Superstition.

It could have ended there, but Henry returned for a rendition of If It’s Magic in its original (and superior) version – confirmation that Stevie’s output will long remain a thing of Wonder.

For more on the 2023 BBC Proms, visit the festival’s website at the BBC. Click on the names for more information on Cory Henry, Laura Mvula, Lianne La Havas, Vula Malinga, Sheléa, Vula’s Chorale, Jules Buckley and Stevie Wonder himself