Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – James McVinnie, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Adès @ BBC Proms: Sibelius, Gabriella Smith & Adès

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James McVinnie (organ), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Adès

Sibelius The Swan of Tuonela Op.22/2 (1893, rev. 1897 & 1900)
Gabriella Smith Breathing Forests (2021) [UK Premiere]
Adès Five Spells from The Tempest (2022) [Proms premiere]
Sibelius The Tempest – Suite No. 1, Op. 109 No. 2 (1925-6, arr. 1929)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 2 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Andy Paradise

Having worked across the board with orchestras in London (and elsewhere), Thomas Adès tonight conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in what, for his ninth Prom as a conductor, was a typically imaginative programme that centred on concepts of nature and the elements.

A concept, moreover, whose primary focus was Breathing Forests – an organ concerto by the American composer Gabriella Smith (below). She herself has described this work as ‘‘a reflection on the complex relationship between humans, forests, climate change and fire’’; one that unfolds across three interconnected movements and whose evoking the fast-slow-fast archetype belies its overall ingenuity. The opening Grow picks up on Ligeti’s ‘op-art’ pieces of the late 1960s as it pulsates gently if insistently into life, then the central Breathe draws from the interplay of soloist and orchestra a variety of methodically evolving textures; given emotional impetus in the final Burn as it builds to a climax which spatially engulfs the whole ambience, though its continuation towards a clinching apotheosis sounded just a little gratuitous in this context.

What was never in doubt was the sheer dexterity of James McVinnie (below) in conveying the power and poetry of the solo part, to which the BBCSO’s contribution was scarcely less visceral. As musical representation of the natural world in time of crisis, this piece more than left its mark.

Adès as composer was featured after the interval with Five Spells from ‘The Tempest’, a suite drawn retrospectively from his eponymous opera. This ranges widely over the parent work – beginning, not unreasonably, with its Overture such as depicts the play’s opening storm in guardedly elemental terms. From there it heads into Ariel and Prospero, akin to a scherzo where the contrasting characters of the two protagonists are vividly played off against each other. A more nuanced juxtaposition is evident from Ferdinand and Miranda, its inherently amorous nature conveyed with due reticence, then The Feast affords a culmination of sorts with its stealthy interplay of character-imbued motifs. The end comes, naturally enough, in Prospero’s Farewell – Caliban with the music evanescing in the most equivocal of terms.

The programme was framed with music by Sibelius – opening with The Sawn of Tuonela as emphasized the music’s hieratic poise and fatalistic aura, as did those eloquent contributions from cor anglais and cello. Maybe Adès will one day tackle the whole Lemminkäinen Suite?

The First Suite from Sibelius’s compendious score for The Tempest opens with the searing evocation The Oak Tree which was a little underwhelming here, though there was nothing amiss in the characterful Humoreske or in Caliban’s Song with its telling bizarrerie. The Harvesters is a reminder of Sibelius’s innate gift for light music at all stages in his career, as also the animated Canon and insinuating Scene; to which the plangent Intrada/Berceuse then the ominous Interlude/Ariel’s Song provide startling contrasts. The truncated Prelude follows on seamlessly through to its decidedly abrupt end. Right through this sequence, the BBCSO was always attuned expressively and, while a sense of the music as teetering on the edge of some greater catastrophe was minimal, there was no denying Adès’s insight overall.

Click on the artist names to read more about organist James McVinnie, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Adès. Click also for more on Thomas Adès as a composer and Gabriella Smith, and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,648 – Friday 5 September 2025

In Appreciation – Rodion Shchedrin

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by Ben Hogwood Picture by Sl-Ziga, used from Wikipedia

Last week we learned of the sad news that Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin had died at the age of 92. You can read a brief obituary of him at the Guardian website.

Shchedrin was a colourful orchestrator, and my occasional encounters with his music were rarely less than entertaining. One that particularly stands out was his Piano Concerto no.4, a broad canvas of dazzling virtuosity and exotic harmonies.

Meanwhile on record the orchestral colour is always evident in his Carmen Suite ballet, an arrangement and enhancement of Bizet’s music with percussion to the fore. His Concertos for Orchestra are also full of original thoughts, while the ballet Anna Karenina – an illuminating score – is a standout work, written for his ballerina wife Maya Plisetskaya (above, with Shchedrin).

The playlist below brings the first Concerto for Orchestra, Naughty Limericks, as an overture to the Piano Concerto no.4 and the Carmen Suite. Added to that is the Anna Karenina ballet in full.

https://tidal.com/playlist/95bcf4c9-0374-4e56-a5de-1918c2a9bc14

Published post no.2,646 – Wednesday 3 September 2025

In concert – Peter Moore, London Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Bancroft @ BBC Proms: Folk Songs & Dances

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Peter Moore (trombone), London Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Bancroft

Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite (1923)
Schuller Eine kleine Posaunenmusik (1980) [Proms premiere]
Tippett Triumph (1992) [Proms premiere]
Arnold arr. Johnstone English Dances Set 1 Op.27 (1950, arr. 1965)
Grainger The Lads of Wamphray (1904), Country Gardens (1918, arr. 1953), Lincolnshire Posy (1937)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Saturday 30 August 2025 11am

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

His pained countenance may have adorned its programme cover but Sir Simon Rattle’s ‘routine surgery’ meant this morning’s Prom was directed by Ryan Bancroft, though the works played by woodwind and brass (and basses) of the London Symphony Orchestra remained the same.

The concert duly breezed into life with Vaughan Williams’ English Folksong Suite, heard in its original scoring for concert (i.e. – military) band such as imparts a forthright impetus to its outer marches – the former alternating brusqueness with insouciance, and the latter similarly balancing energy with geniality. In between these, the intermezzo provided welcome respite with its soulful medley. Expert as are the arrangements for orchestra by Gordon Jabob or for brass band by Frank Wright, this remains the ideal medium for an unassuming masterpiece.

It would have been remiss of the Proms not to include a piece by Gunther Schuller in the year of his centenary, with Eine Kleine Posaunenmusik being a fine choice in context. Fastidiously scored for trombone and ensemble, whose wind and brass melded into tuned percussion with notable solos from piano and harpsichord, its five succinct movements outline a succession of vignettes in which Peter Moore sounded as attuned expressively as technically. With music as distinctive as this, Schuller’s fourth appearance at these concerts will hopefully not be his last.

Surprising that Michael Tippett’s Triumph should have remained so obscure within his output. Seemingly made during work on The Rose Lake, this ‘Paraphrase on Music from The Mask of Time’ is for the greater part his arrangement of the oratorio’s sixth movement, though it could be heard as encapsulating his music over the decade from the mid-’70s. The main portion pits fractured lyricism against dissonant outbursts as befits its genesis in a setting of Shelley’s The Triumph of Life and, if the closing affirmation sounds added-on, its finality is hardly in doubt.

There could hardly have been a more pointed contrast than with Malcolm Arnold’s initial set of English Dances – its sequence of winsome, bracing, elegiac then energetic numbers ideally conveyed in Maurice Johnstone’s arrangement. Their concision was thrown into relief by the relative garrulousness of The Lads of Wamphray, an early example of Percy Grainger’s love for folksong which, in this instance, rather outstays its welcome. Rattle presumably enjoys it and Bancroft gave it its head, but its inclusion here was not warranted by its musical quality.

From the other end of Grainger’s career, his concert-band arrangement of Country Gardens exudes all the wit and irony of his later creativity. It made a canny upbeat into Lincolnshire Posy, one of a select handful of concert band masterpieces and where the LSO gave its all. Thus, the incisive Lisbon (Dublin Bay) was followed by the pathos-drenched Horkstow Grange then intricately imaginative Rufford Park Poachers; the jaunty The Brisk Young Sailor by the darkly rhetorical Lord Melbourne (very different from Britten’s elegiac take).

The surging impetus of The Lost Lady Found brought to a suitably rousing close this suite and what was a fine showcase for the LSO woodwind and brass, an unexpected if welcome appearance by Bancroft and, above all, a demonstration of the potential of the concert band.

Click on the artist names to read more about Peter Moore, the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Bancroft. Click also for more on composer Gunter Schuller and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,644 – Monday 1 September 2025

In concert – Khatia Buniatishvili, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Jaime Martin @ BBC Proms: Sutherland, Dvořák & Tchaikovsky

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Khatia Buniatishvili (piano), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Jaime Martin

Sutherland Haunted Hills (1950) [Proms premiere]
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no.1 in B flat minor Op.23 (1874-5)
Dvořák Symphony no.6 in D major Op.60 (1880)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Friday 29 August 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

Eleven years after its well-received debut at these concerts under the late Sir Andrew Davis, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra made its unintentionally eventful return with current chief conductor Jaime Martin and a programme which, for the most part, played to this orchestra’s strengths.

A significant presence in Australian music throughout the mid-twentieth century, Margaret Sutherland has yet to receive her due in live or recorded terms; making this performance of Haunted Hills the more timely. Inspired by the Dandenong Ranges, just outside Melbourne, her symphonic poem evokes the timelessness of its environment as surely as the fate of the Aboriginals who came there. Its starkly dissonant opening then granitic opening paragraph recall that Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony had been unleashed barely two years earlier, and while much of what follows is notable more for its judicious orchestration than formal cohesion, the musical persona that finally emerges is distinctive enough to warrant further hearings of this piece within the context of Sutherland’s not inconsiderable output overall.

Logistical factors necessitated a reordering such that Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony came before the interval. Not a stranger to these concerts (tonight’s being its ninth hearing in 72 years), it responded well to Martin’s interventionist if rarely intrusive approach – not least an opening Allegro (its non tanto duly observed albeit with no exposition repeat) at its most persuasive in a development whose seeming discursiveness was purposefully reined in, and on to a coda whose heightened sense of arrival was mitigated only by those slightly tentative closing bars.

Not the deepest among Dvořák’s symphonic slow movements, the Adagio is surely his most felicitous in its expressive shadings and emotional understatement. Martin made the most of these, as too the contrast between the Scherzo’s impetuous outer sections and its ingratiating trio. The surging acceleration at its close prepared unerringly, moreover, for a Finale as finds Dvořák at his most Brahmsian though, here again, Martin (above), steered a forthright course through its overly rhetorical development before he infused its coda with an exhilarating affirmation.

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto cannot often have occupied the second half of a concert, though Khatia Buniatishvili made the most of her delayed appearance. Most striking was the amount of hushed playing during a lengthy opening movement whose indelible introduction was kept well within emotional limits. If coordination between soloist and orchestra was not all it might have been, the latter’s entry after a suitably dextrous cadenza was an undoubted highpoint, though not a rather blowsy coda. A melting take on the Andantino was enhanced with poetic contributions from flautist Prudence Davis and cellist David Berlin – while if, in the final Allegro, Buniatishvili’s passagework could seem unnecessarily skittish, she and the Melbourne players came together admirably in a surging but not unduly bathetic peroration.

As to extra-musical occurrences at this concert (for a full BBC account, read here), these artists responded simply by focussing on the music. As an envoi, Buniatishvili’s elegant rendering of the Adagio from Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, arranged by Johann Sebastian Bach, could not have been more fitting.

Click on the artist names to read more about pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martin. Click also for more on composer Margaret Sutherland, and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,643 – Sunday 31 August 2025

In concert – Soloists, Danish National Concert Choir & Symphony Orchestra / Fabio Luisi @ BBC Proms: Beethoven 9th Symphony, Bent Sørensen & Anna Clyne

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Clara Cecile Thomsen (soprano), Jasmin White (contralto), Issachah Savage (tenor), Adam Palka (bass), Danish National Concert Choir, Danish National Symphony Orchestra / Fabio Luisi

Bent Sørensen Evening Land (2017)
Anna Clyne The Years (2021)
Beethoven Symphony no.9 in D minor Op.125 ‘Choral’ (1811-24)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 21 August 2025

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou, Ben Hogwood (soloists)

Celebrating their centenary this year, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Fabio Luisi led us from the quiet of evening to the blazing light of a sunny morning in the course of this concert.

The challenge facing any concert programmer containing Beethoven’s Choral Symphony is how to lead up to it. This Prom approached from a contemporary angle, beginning in near silence with Bent Sørensen’s contemplative Evening Land. The Danish composer’s imaginative orchestration was key to the success of his picture painting, beautifully rendered by Luisi, as was the threadbare violin solo with which leader Christina Åstrand began. Childhood reminiscences of the Danish island Zealand took place in the half-light, contrasting with visions of nocturnal Manhattan that came through in bursts of technicolour, honouring Leonard Bernstein. Making a lasting impression, however, was the beautiful oboe solo from Kristine Vestergaard that marked the illness and subsequent passing of Sørensen’s father.

Having eavesdropped on this intimate opening piece, the Danish National Concert Choir rose for Anna Clyne’s musical account of the Covid pandemic – already consigned to history, it seems. Few people would like to revisit those days in a concert experience, but Clyne’s message – channelling the text of Stephanie Fleischmann – was one of underlying resilience. The choir began in stasis, occupying an added note chord which somehow drew parallels with the Björk song Possibly Maybe for this correspondent, before the piece flourished. A dreamlike mood was enhanced by a pure, almost complete lack of vibrato from both choir and orchestra, while the harmonic language drew strong parallels with the latter stages of Holst’s suite The Planets – Saturn and Neptune in particular. An autumnal chill was evident in spite of increasingly frenetic activity in the orchestra, and the piece ended in an uneasy acceptance of events passed, rather like our own emergence from lockdown.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the ultimate hymn to freedom, though it does of course go through a titanic struggle before that release, in the form of Schiller’s Ode To Joy, can be attained. Luisi led us through the dark, pre-twilight moments in an account notable for its poise and guile. Using relatively fast speeds, the first movement took a little while to light the touch paper, but once ignited the music powered forward with increasing determination. The scherzo was quick, quite matter of fact with its timpani interventions, and balanced by a bucolic trio where the wind kept pace heroically with Luisi’s quick baton. Their attractive textures and warm melodic phrasing were a key feature of both this and the Adagio, again on the quick side, but managing its fanfare interventions impeccably.

Left to right: Clara Cecile Thomsen (soprano), Jasmin White (contralto), Issachah Savage (tenor), Adam Palka (bass), beneath the bust of Sir Henry Wood @ BBC Proms

And so to the finale, with a memorable exposition for the Ode to Joy theme from sotto voce cellos and basses, the Royal Albert Hall hushed in anticipation. The choral passages were suitably exultant, the 75-strong choir drilled to perfection if cooler in temperature than the orchestra. The four soloists (above) were led by impressive bass Adam Palka, whose authoritative recitative “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” was a highlight, and while the quartet’s ensemble pieces wavered a little in tuning the sense of release and elation was keenly felt and clearly relished. The smile on the face of the music spread to the audience in the exhilarating closing bars as the orchestra took flight, completing an impeccably controlled interpretation on the part of Luisi that came to the boil at just the right time.

You can listen back to this Prom concert on BBC Sounds until Sunday 12 October.

Click to read more about the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,634 – Friday 22 August 2025