Lukas Sternath (piano), Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

Gipps Death on the Pale Horse Op.25 (1943) [Proms premiere]
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868 rev.1907)
Bliss The Beatitudes F28 (1961)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sunday 7 September 2025

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

This evening’s Prom – launching the final week of the present season – was billed as ‘Grieg’s Piano Concerto’, no doubt the reason why many in the audience were attending while hardly being the most interesting aspect of a typically adventurous programme from Sakari Oramo.

In the event the Grieg received a responsive reading from Lukas Sternath (below, with Oramo), the Viennese pianist who, still in his mid-20s, was most at home in more inward passages. The second theme of the initial Allegro was enticingly taken up after a heartfelt rendering by cellos, as was the Adagio’s eloquent melody and that first emerging in the finale on flute, where it was soulfully rendered by Daniel Pailthorpe. Nor were the more demonstrative aspects underplayed – Sternath having the measure of a cadenza whose mounting rhetoric was pointedly reined-in, while the finale’s outer sections were incisively inflected prior to an apotheosis which felt the more exhilarating through its absence of bathos. A melting take on Richard Strauss’ early song Morgen!, transcribed with enviable poise by Max Reger, served to reinforce Sternath’s formidable pianistic credentials.

The 50th anniversary year of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death has seen a gratifying number of revivals, few more significant than that of The Beatitudes. The misfortune of its premiere having been moved from Coventry’s new Cathedral to its Belgrade Theatre, thus freeing up rehearsal time for Britten’s War Requiem, rather condemned it as an also-ran from the outset. Yet Bliss had created a piece unerringly suited for the consecration in what, in itself, remains an impressive conception. Unfolding as 14 short sections which can be grouped into six larger movements, this is less a cantata than a choral symphony. Setting all nine Beatitudes, Bliss none the less merged several of these and interspersed them with settings from three 17th-century and one 20th-century ‘metaphysical’ poets to commemorate the past from the vantage of the present.

The texts, drawn from Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Jeremy Taylor, anticipate a future redemption – as, more ambivalently, does Dylan Thomas in And death shall have dominion which builds implacably to the climactic Ninth Beatitude and Voices of the Mob prior to the hard-won serenity of the Epilogue. That The Beatitudes has enjoyed relatively few revivals is less to do with its intrinsic quality than the demands of its choral writing, to which the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers did notable justice. Elizabeth Watts responded with real sensitivity and perception to some radiant soprano writing and while Laurence Kilsby was a little effortful in the more demonstrative passages, he brought conviction to a tenor role both fervent and compassionate. Nor did Richard Pearce disappoint with his extensive organ part.

Oramo paced the 50-minute entity superbly as to make one hope he will tackle more works by Bliss – not least the masterly Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, which has inexplicably fallen through the net this year. He had started tonight’s concert with a most welcome revival for Death on the Pale Horse – the succinctly eventful tone poem by Ruth Gipps which, while it might not capture the visceral drama of Blake’s eponymous engraving, distils an evocative atmosphere from pithy initial ideas that audibly reflects the circumstances of its composition.

Click on the artist names to read more about soloists Elizabeth Watts, Laurence Kilsby and Lukas Sternath, the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra, and their conductor Sakari Oramo. You can also click to read more about composers Arthur Bliss, Ruth Gipps and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,652 – Tuesday 9 September 2025