Tag Archives: Sir Henry Wood

Arcana at the Proms – Prom 43: Paul Lewis, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada – Ravel, Mozart, Holmès & Mussorgsky / Wood

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Ravel Ma mère l’Oye – suite (1910-11)
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat, K595 (1790-91)
Holmès La Nuit et de l’Amour (1888)
Mussorgsky arr. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Paul Lewis (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 22 August 2024

reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) Sisi Burn

A colourful Prom from the CBSO this year, reaching a deafening climax with Proms founder Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. More of that anon, but the orchestra, under principal conductor Kazuki Yamada, began with music by Ravel – whose orchestration of the Mussorgsky we tend to hear.

Mother Goose was cool to the touch but given a winning performance, Ravel’s colours spread across the orchestra as the music came to life. The CBSO strings were elegant and refined, leaving the starry moments to the woodwind, who excelled – particularly the gruff contrabassoon in Conversation of Beauty and the Beast, winningly played by Margaret Cookhorn. The hues of the closing The fairy garden were ideal, too – though Yamada’s decision to bring the music to a near standstill before the final, wondrous tune won’t have been to all tastes, no matter how skilfully it was achieved.

Elegance was the watchword for Paul Lewis’s Mozart, too – a thoughtful and graceful account of the composer’s last piano concerto, published in his final year but thought to have begun three years prior. This is Mozart in relatively subdued form, but still cracking a smile in the attractive first movement. Soloist and orchestra took a little while to align within the Royal Albert Hall acoustic, but once they did the first movement dialogue, complete with Mozart’s own cadenza, was fluent and balletic. The slow movement lullaby was a treat, Lewis with stylish phrasing of the melodies, while the finale enjoyed its lightfooted dance, a theme so simple and yet so memorable; classic Mozart.

Following the interval we heard the brief but romantic La Nuit et de l’Amour by Augusta Holmès, a pupil of César Franck whose music was appearing at the Proms for the first time. It was a charming miniature with a memorable tune, whose presence shone through. It acted as an upbeat to Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s tour through the gallery, a version predating the celebrated Ravel by seven years.

Unlike the Frenchman, Wood goes for broke on several occasions during Pictures At An Exhibition. His decision to include only the first Promenade, where Mussorgsky describes his observer walking around the exhibition, means the pictures are a little squashed together, but in this performance the dramatic impact was heightened. Gnomus was frankly terrifying, while The Old Castle was headed by a sensitive and touching euphonium solo; Becky Smith projecting beautifully from the gallery.

Wood’s version is brassy on occasion, and the CBSO players excelled – as did the wind and percussion, whose unpredictable interventions had the audience jumping on several occasions! They were a feature of Bydlo, the old carriage rumbling into action with all its bells rattling, the lower strings and brass in deep toil. Nothing quite prepared the throng for the final Great Gate of Kiev, however – not even the sinister outlines of the preceding Baba Yaga. The gate itself came slowly into view, the toll of the nine bells of the Liverpool Philharmonic bells up in the gallery both solemn and unexpectedly chilling. Soon all notions of reserve were brushed aside, however, Wood’s orchestration demanding the nine bells at full volume – delivered in a brilliant peal from the gallery by Graham Johns. However – from the arena at least – they did rather swamp the combined forces of the orchestra and organ, who were barely audible at times.

Excesses like these no doubt helped Emerson Lake and Palmer in their decision to arrange Pictures for rock group in 1971 – and certainly had a positive impact on the Proms audience, who were thrilled by the drama and the sheer volume. So too was Yamada, who had already been dancing on the podium, but as the Gate reached its tremendous conclusion he pivoted to urge the audience into applause, long before the final chord had rung out. How refreshing to see a conductor living in the moment, reading the occasion and the audience, and crowning a memorable Prom with shattering, exhilarating noise.

The playlist below collects the music from this concert, including the only available recording of the arrangement of Pictures At An Exhibition by Sir Henry Wood:

Published post no.2,283 – Saturday 24 August 2024

In concert – Jeremy Denk, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Gershwin, Clyne, Ravel & Mussorgsky / Wood

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Jeremy Denk (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Gershwin An American in Paris (1928)
Clyne ATLAS (2023) [CBSO Co-Commission: UK Premiere]
Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899, orch. 1910)
Mussorgsky orch. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 1 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra may have taken its overall title from the final work, but ‘pictures’ were everywhere in evidence and not merely those ‘at an exhibition’ – not least with Kazuki Yamada as enthusiastic as ever at the helm.

While it loses out to his Rhapsody in Blue in the popularity stakes, Gershwin’s An American in Paris is surely the most successful of his orchestral pieces for matching its immediacy of imagery to a resourceful structure. Encouraging the CBSO to a bracing response in the outer sections, and with Jason Lewis’s nostalgic trumpet initiating that pathos-laden central phase, Yamada secured a response whose full-on expression was offset by too sectional an approach – the music proceeding in a stop-start fashion rather than unfolding organically as it should.

Over recent years, the New York-based Anna Clyne has emerged among the leading British composers of her generation, with this first UK hearing for her piano concerto ATLAS keenly anticipated. Inspired by the eponymous and epic collection of the artist Gerhard Richter, this likewise falls into four ‘volumes’ rather than movements, which also underlines their relative formal freedom. Certainly, the ingenious interplay between soloist and orchestra is a tough challenge which Jeremy Denk met head-on – whether in the coursing energy then yielding eloquence of the opening Fierce, alluring textural overlaps of Freely, intimate, the lilting nonchalance of Driving or cumulative activity of the final Transparent with its surge to an emphatic close that (as with this work overall) was capricious and allusive in equal measure.

Doubtless motivated by Denk’s coruscating virtuosity, the CBSO gave its collective all in a work which (rightly) appealed to those present – the pianist responding with his deft take on the Heliotrope Rag co-written by Scott Joplin and the tragically short-lived Louis Chauvin.

After the interval, a rare moment of calm – Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess given with a studied if never stolid grace, Elspeth Dutch’s horn and Katherine Thomas’ harp enhancing its appeal. As with Fauré’s Pavane, this is ideal music for opening the second half of a concert.

And so, to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – heard here in the orchestration by Henry Wood which preceded and was duly superseded by Ravel’s. Wood is more interventionist, not least by reducing the recurrent ‘Promenade’ to a stealthy introduction, but not necessarily less faithful to the piano work’s spirit – hence the scabrous immediacy of Gnomus, sombre aura of The Old Castle (Andrew McDade’s tuba balefully intoning on high above stage-right), or fatalistic tread of Bydlo with its evocative percussion. Respighi was probably taken by this glowering depiction of Catacombs with a ghostly recollection of the promenade hardly less effective, and if Baba Yaga gets summarily curtailed here, the crescendo of bells launching The Great Gate[s] of Kiev set the tone for a treatment whose opulence borders on overkill.

Not that this inhibited the CBSO from projecting Wood’s organ-clad texture to the maximum, to the enthusiasm of an audience that erupted in the lingering resonances at its close. Quite a way to end an impressive performance, and a memorable concert, on a day that saw Yamada become this orchestra’s Music Director and the CBSO launch ‘A Season of Joy’ for 2024/25.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and also to read about the recently announced 2024/25 programme. Click on the names for more on pianist Jeremy Denk, conductor Kazuki Yamada, and composer Anna Clyne

Published post no.2,168 – Saturday 4 May 2024

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

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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

Arcana at the Proms – Prom 18: Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mahler and Britten

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Prom 18: Stuart Skelton (tenor, above), Claudia Mahnke (mezzo-soprano), Leif Ove Andsnes (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Edward Gardner (above)

Britten Piano Concerto Op.13 (1938)
Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (1908-1909)

Royal Albert Hall, Thursday 1 August 2019

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood
Photo credits Chris Christodoulou

You can watch this Prom on the BBC iPlayer here

Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) received its Proms premiere in the year 1914, long before the huge upturn his music experienced in the 1960s. It is an example of Sir Henry Wood’s instinct for new music that it reached the Proms so soon, though the programme labelling of the piece as a ‘Henry Wood novelty’ does the work a massive disservice. A certain Benjamin Britten was on to it too, describing in 1937 the impact of its final set of poems, Der Abschied, and how it ‘passes over me like a tidal wave’.

Mahler was one of Britten’s foremost influences, specifically the Fourth Symphony, which you can hear at the Proms later in the season on Sunday 11 August. There is not much Britten this year, but what there was in this concert was brilliantly performed. The Piano Concerto has a youthful spring in its step, treating the instrument equally as a creator of percussion and melody, following in the traditions of Prokofiev and Shostakovich as it does so.

This performance showed it off in full. Leif Ove Andsnes (above), who has lived with the work for 25 years and performed it on his Proms debut in 1992, had its measure. Technically he was superb, leading from the front with an account of targeted bravura, never showing off for the sake of it and always keeping a melodic shape to even the most percussive of chord sequences. Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra offered solid support, if very occasionally falling behind the piano rhythmically – though that could also have been the Royal Albert Hall acoustic playing tricks. The strings were beautifully shaded in the quieter moments of the Impromptu, whose emotional depths hinted at a darker presence behind the technical feats – perhaps the presence of the Second World War, only a few years away.

Andsnes delivered an unexpected encore in the first movement of Mompou’s Suburbis, stylistically close to Ravel and Falla but still evoking its own individual nocturnal scene.

The Mahler followed the interval, lasting just over an hour – but given the quality of the performance the time passed in a flash. To date Edward Gardner’s encounters with Mahler have been relatively minimal, but the natural gravitas he gave to the orchestral writing in Das Lied von der Erde, not to mention the room made for the chamber-like instrumental solos, showed his instincts are ideally suited to the composer. The BBC Symphony Orchestra wind – fully deserving of their curtain call at the end – were on top form, as were the strings, their quiet thoughts during the final song in particular staying rooted in the memory.

Fine as the orchestral playing was, the two singers rightly shared the limelight. Stuart Skelton’s tenor was a thing of wonder, called into high register action at a daringly early stage in proceedings but delivering wholeheartedly from the off. His characterisation of the two drinking songs was spot on, the gestures and body language wholly at one with the words, giving him the creative licence to exaggerate a note or two. Here he had support from BBC Symphony Orchestra leader Igor Yuzefovich, and a suitably inebriated violin solo during Der Trunkene im Frühling (The Drunkard in Spring). Meanwhile in Von der Jugend (Of Youth) some nimble negotiation by Skelton of Mahler’s score gave the song an invigorating freshness. That he was able to project these natural and very human elements of phrasing without ever sounding contrived spoke volumes for the degree to which he has clearly inhabited this piece, as evidenced in his contribution to the Proms Twitter feed a few hours before.


Mezzo-soprano Claudia Mahnke (above) was equally assured in her delivery, the voice and its phrasing again completely comfortable with Mahler’s demands in Der Einsame im Herbst (The Lonely Soul in Autumn) and Von der Schönheit (Of Beauty) before, in the celebrated Der Abschied (The Farewell), time stood still and the music became a thing of wonder. These otherworldly contemplations felt as though they extended from the Arena floor of the Royal Albert Hall right up to the stars, far beyond the dome, and Mahnke’s rapt expression spoke of how she too was experiencing the same transporting effect. Gardner’s operatic instincts stood him in good stead, particularly in the recitative-like sections, where orchestral players held notes like baroque continuo staples, but the overall effect was in aid of the contemplation of life itself.

The rude interjection of a mobile phone did nothing to break the spell, for these two singers, and the 80 or so instrumental singers behind them, had created something very special together.