Category Archives: BBC Proms

BBC Proms 2016 – A Satie Cabaret with Alistair McGowan

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alistair-mcgowan

Alistair McGowan as Erik Satie, BBC Proms 2016 (c) Chris Christodoulou

A Satie Cabaret, Cadogan Hall, Monday 1 August 2016

Who was Erik Satie?

Or, come to think of it, who is Alistair McGowan?

Clues to the answers of both questions were on hand at this stimulating Proms Chamber Music concert, where the ‘bright, airy interior’ of Cadogan Hall, celebrated as such by Proms director David Pickard, became dark as night for an hour, the curtains drawn so we could enjoy A Satie Cabaret.

Listen to A Satie Cabaret on the BBC iPlayer

McGowan has already presented a concert in similar form this year, for Satie is one of his obsessions – and it is 150 years since the birth of the composer. Ever the arch impressionist (not in a French sense!) McGowan took on Satie’s character, dressed in a trademark suit and bowler hat, even managing to grow the composer’s facial hair – or at least don a very convincing disguise!

He chose a set of autobiographical readings that captured the French composer’s irreverence, his unique approach to making music and his oblique sense of humour, one that could often have you scratching your head in wonder after the laughs had died away.

Providing the musical entertainment – with some laughs, too – were pianist Alexandre Tharaud and tenor Jean Delescluse. Their mix of piano music and song was very well chosen. In the ambient balm of his piano writing we saw how Satie used simplicity in a very original way, and how he has gone on to influence generations of disciples, Ludovico Einaudi and Michael Nyman two obvious recent examples.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04388h5/player

The songs were much less inhibited, with the riotous Allons-y Chochotte (Let’s do it, Chochotte) bringing the house down near the end. We also had brief illustrations of ‘furniture music’ from Tharaud – music for solicitors to listen to, for instance! – which found Satie a century ahead of his time, predicting the environment where we would be treated to music on hold or in a dentists’ waiting room.

McGowan was funny but also completely respectful, and was the first to appreciate Tharaud’s control and beauty of tone, as well as Delescluse’s brilliant send-ups of songs like La diva de l’Empire (The Diva of the Empire) and La grenouille américaine (The American Frog).

delescluse-tharaud

In all this was a highly entertaining hour, given in a spirit the composer would surely have enjoyed. Would that he knew his influence has been so far reaching – and even now is not fully appreciated.

Ben Hogwood

Bedroom Community at the Royal Festival Hall

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Organist James McVinnie and Bedroom Community take on the Royal Festival Hall organ for a night.

james-mcvinnie
James McVinnie Picture (c) Magnús Andersen

This thoroughly absorbing and often invigorating showcase for Icelandic record label Bedroom Community centred around the Royal Festival Hall organ. Yet at the same time it gave the audience an introduction to the diverse talents on the label, perhaps best described as a Nordic counterpart to ECM.

However that description shouldn’t typecast the label, as the evening began with a singer-songwriter. I have to say the tremulous voice of Puzzle Muteson was not to my taste, especially when covering New Order’s True Faith, but it is undoubtedly individual and charmed many of those present. His performed his own material with his own intricately picked guitar and sensitive accompaniment from James McVinnie on the piano. Meanwhile another vocalist, the new Bedroom Community signing Jodie Landau, gave us a hint of things to come with a rich, sonorous vocal that made Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Do but kill me something of a showstopper, uplifting in spite of its title.

McVinnie himself was the curator of the evening, and although it was nearly half an hour before we heard the organ itself, in his hands we got a sense of just how diverse the great Festival Hall instrument can be. We enjoyed the delicate but pointed approach of Nico Muhly in Rev’d Mustard his installation prelude and Beaming music, the notes positioned like stalactites in a cave, but it was the contrasting sonorities of Philip Glass’s Mad Rush that proved the big talking point of the first half. This was vintage Glass; soft, mellow asides on one registration cutting dramatically to imposing, craggy features where the organ resounded heroically. McVinnie’s performance was superb.

bedroom-community

James McVinnie and friends at the Bedroom Community night, Royal Festival Hall, Thursday September 24. Photo (c) Ben Hogwood

Equally thrilling was Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, the registrations again imaginatively thought out so that we got a strong sense of the composer’s genius, threading the variations on the steady bass line through the eye of a needle before the great fugue stacked up in front of us.

The new music here was most impressive, and for that we also had viola player Nadia Sirota to thank. A vivid Étude 3 by Muhly set her against the organ, while Bryce Dessner’s solo piece Delphica 3 used the instrument in a knowledgeable but passionate way, building from the profile of a study to a heart on sleeve utterance. We also heard the world premiere of Median Organs by Dessner, written for McVinnie and again notable for intricacy and strength of feeling. Dessner’s compositional career dovetails with his work as part of The National to increasingly powerful effect.

The addition of stringed instruments gave the show variety and extra depth. Double bassist Borgar Magnason lent eerie lines to the Ben Frost film soundtrack There are no others, there is only us, where hordes of starlings assembled in black and white on the projection, to music that matched their movements. It was a moving portrait of one of nature’s mystifying yet wholly affirmative wonders.

In the second half viola da gamba player Liam Byrne explored the limits of his instrument, joining McVinnie and composer Sigurðsson in a response to the Bach Chorale Prelude Ich ruf zu dir. Although the bass notes on the electronics resounded too heavily this was a brilliant piece of musicianship from all three players, sensitively expanding on Bach’s music to illustrate its contemporary dimensions, while also clearly listening to each other as the improvisation took hold. It was unexpectedly moving and, in its free approach and generous musicality, symptomatic of the evening as a whole.

Proms premiere – Tansy Davies – Re-greening

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tansy davies composer

Tansy Davies

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – without a conductor (Prom 31)

Duration: 9 minutes

BBC iPlayer link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e8r2mb

What’s the story behind the piece?

In an interview for Arcana, Tansy Davies detailed how Re-greening, written for all 164 players of the National Youth Orchestra without a conductor, is essentially an introduction to Mahler’s Symphony no.9, the piece they performed without a break afterwards.

In the interview, which can be read in full here , Davies explains how “the way the music is layered to me suggests a forest like quality; interweaving arpeggio-type figures bubbling or erupting up from the cold earth in winter, and scales or lines reaching up to the light”.

Did you know?

Before making her way as a composer, Davies sang and played guitar in a band. That was probably until she won the BBC Young Composers’ Competition in 1996!

Initial verdict

Re-greening begins with bright sounds like a forest coming to life – the opening percussion stroke, a bright, metallic sound, feels like the first sun of the day.

Then we hear the rustling of the orchestra, with harmonics from the stringed instruments and shrill woodwind that sound like the birds, sonorous brass. A song is sung by the orchestra, the popular and ancient song Sumer is icumen in, essentially a hymn that glorifies in the arrival of a new season or a new day. The chant continues, surrounded by a large orchestral sound that is used economically. The brass are prominent, Davies making great use of a big space with percussion and a huge string section.

Davies layers the sounds, so that it feels like several chords are piled up on top of each other in a full bodied texture. Then towards the end the orchestra sing again, this time a canon from English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis, set like the earlier song in C major,. This proves an unusual and moving experience when set among the excited cacophony from the rest of the instruments.

Second hearing

tbc!

Where can I hear more?

There are a couple of excellent Tansy Davies discs in circulation, partly because her music seems to be very aware of its surroundings, i.e. it is aware of the culture – both popular and classical – in which it is written. So far she has tended towards chamber pieces that are of manageable length but considerable intensity. That much is very clear from her Troubairitz disc for Gabriel Prokofiev’s Nonclassical label, which includes the excellent Neon for chamber ensemble – and from the Spine disc for NMC, which includes the Saxophone Concerto with Simon Haram:

https://open.spotify.com/album/6RZsGqMpOm3D9Kgx3YH1l3

https://open.spotify.com/album/1lr0MOXLf5xc1nLmER9EGY

Under the Surface at the Proms – About Schmidt

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Prom 73, 10 September 2015 – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Semyon Bychkov at the Royal Albert Hall

schmidt
Semyon Bychkov conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Schmidt at the Royal Albert Hall. Photo (c) Chris Christodoulou

Symphony no.2 in E flat major
http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ewbfxj#b068tnhg

‘Some music has to wait before it finds its place in the sun.’

This standout quote comes from an interview in the Proms program with conductor Semyon Bychkov, who conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in this concert of two late Romantic symphonies. The work to which he referred was not Brahms’ Third Symphony, which received an occasionally beautiful but ultimately rather lethargic performance in the first half, but the Second Symphony of Franz Schmidt, completed in 1913.

Schmidt’s music has only visited the Royal Albert Hall in full on two previous occasions. The Fourth Symphony, which experienced a revival when Frans Welser-Möst and the London Philharmonic Orchestra won a Gramophone Award for a recording of it in 1996, was heard at the festival in 1998. The relative success of this was followed by the massive sacred piece Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln (The Book of the Seven Seals), which followed a similar path, recorded by Welser-Most in 1996 and performed by the same conductor in 2000.

Schmidt was a wholly suitable choice of composer for the Vienna Philharmonic, who have been revisiting important works in their history this year. Unlike the Brahms third they did not give the premiere of the Schmidt, but the connections with the composer are close. He became a member of the orchestra in 1896, where he played as a cellist – though he did not get on with Gustav Mahler, conductor at the time. Bychkov has championed the Second Symphony with other orchestras, so it made sense to finally bring it to the Vienna Philharmonic. From what I could tell this was their first season performing this or any of his symphonies. So what of the piece itself?

Written on a large scale, the Second clocks in at around 50 minutes. It is in three movements, the large second movement dominating at around half the length of the piece – and it was the centrepiece here. A colourful and richly layered set of variations on a theme, it delights in exploring a number of completely contrasting moods, drawing unusual textures from the orchestra that reveal Schmidt the organ composer. A few of the variations sound uncannily like right hand keyboard figures played at speed, with amazing clarity of colour.

There were clear influences from Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Bruckner – yet the music was nothing like a copy of any of these composers. Instead Schmidt managed to stamp his own personality on the piece, shying away from obvious statements so that the mood was at times strangely elusive, on occasion reluctant to commit to emotion with obvious meaning.

It had operatic qualities, for sure, which could be felt in the ebb and flow of the drama and in the swell of the melodies – but the unusually luminous colours dominated, Schmidt using the orchestra in his own individual way. Here he wrote especially taxing parts for violins and violas, but the crowning glory was the massive brass chorale that appeared towards the end and was resolved without fuss.

Only the Proms could have presented this combination of orchestra and music, and should be congratulated for doing so. It was expertly performed and well received, and should go a long way to giving Schmidt’s music the chance of a revival it deserves. It will be interesting to come back in five years and see if anyone else has taken up the baton from Bychkov.

Want to hear more?

A playlist combining the Second and Fourth Symphonies can be heard here:

Meanwhile for the massive Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln (The Book of the Seven Seals), in a recent recording made for Chandos under conductor Kristjan Jarvi, click on the link below:

This is the last Under the Surface feature of this year’s Proms. There will be more explorations of rare repertoire on Arcana in the coming months, both through recordings and concerts. Stay tuned!

Under the Surface at the Proms – Nielsen and The Four Temperaments

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Prom 38, 13 August 2015 – London Symphony Chorus Womens’ Voices, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Juanjo Mena at the Royal Albert Hall


Fabio Luisi conducts the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in Nielsen at the Royal Albert Hall. Photo (c) Chris Christodoulou

Helios Overture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e4nrzc#b065xhdn

3 Motets, Hymnus Amoris and Symphony no.2, ‘The Four Temperaments’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e4nrzc#b065xhds

The Proms and one of this year’s anniversary composers, the Dane Carl Nielsen, are still relatively new friends.

This is because Henry Wood and subsequent directors of the festival did not consider his music worthy of inclusion until very recently – and indeed the Second Symphony, heard in this Prom, was only receiving its second ever Proms performance.

It was the culmination of a thoroughly enjoyable evening that showed Nielsen in several forms. We experienced religious contemplation towards the end of his life in the 3 Motets of 1931, the flowering of spring and love in the Hymnus Amoris of 1897 and then entered the symphonic boxing ring – or so it felt – for the taut arguments of the symphony, modelled on The Four Temperaments. These performances were all authentic, given by the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Symphony Chorus and Symphony Orchestra.

The evening began with a sunrise – a magical evocation conjured from almost total stillness by conductor Fabio Luisi. As the Helios Overture took shape he kept a close ear to the orchestral colour, and the shafts of sunlight grew ever stronger thanks to wonderful horn playing.

The 3 Motets were cooler, partly because the choir singing them was relatively small, but if anything this enhanced their purity. In this late trio of works Nielsen pays homage to the Renaissance composer Palestrina in a series of carefully woven lines, though there is room for instinctive joy too – as there was in the final motet, Benedictus Dominus. Yet it was the words of an old man that stuck in the memory from the first motet, Afflictus sum, with its translated text “I am feeble and sore broken”.

We then heard Hymnus Amoris, an early work begun by the brightly voiced Boy and Girl Choristers of Winchester Cathedral before blooming through two additional choirs, soprano and baritone soloists (David Danholt and Anna Lucia Richter) and orchestra. Essentially a journey through life, the 25-minute cantata has a healthy glow and pulse, its treble rich sounds bringing forward the promise of new life and love, despite the onset of old age towards the end. Ultimately triumphant, the work finished in a blaze of colour, following excellent solos from Richter in particular.

If the musical language here carried the enthusiasm of youth, the mood darkened appreciably for the symphony – and Luisi noticeably stepped up a gear in his conducting. Using a subject that has often appealed to classical composers, the Four Temperaments, Nielsen takes us on a voyage of very differing emotions, and Luisi ensured these were clearly signposted but also keenly felt.

The turbulent first movement (the Choleric temperament) has a lot going on, moving restlessly from one cadence to another, but it packs a punch and is ultimately a tale of resolve. The middle two movements (Phlegmatic and Melancholic) reveal more obviously vulnerable sides, and in the third there are dark clouds over the soul as the music spends much of its time brooding in a minor key.

There are tunes to be enjoyed, though, especially a winsome number in the second movement, and Nielsen’s development of his material is notable for its speed of thought. Several listens to each movement are recommended to get a feel for his style, but in the Second Symphony Nielsen really convinces with his emotional arguments. The final movement, Sanguine, is the culmination, telling the tale of struggles won and demons vanquished. In a performance as convincing as this it was easy to be won around, a task made even simpler by a charming encore, the Dance of the Cockerels from Nielsen’s opera Maskarade.

Want to hear more?

The obvious next port of call for Nielsen is his Fourth Symphony, the Inextinguishable – a powerful and hugely affirmative piece. It can be heard on Spotify here, with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt:

For the charming, rustic side to Nielsen’s character, the Wind Quintet is a charming place to start. Here it is as part of an all-Nielsen album from the Athena Ensemble:

 

The concert also included Nikolaj Znaider playing Brahms‘ Violin Concerto. More of that in a future post!

There will be more Under the Surface features as the Proms progress, exploring lesser known pieces and composers at the festival