Prom 75 - Haitink supervises the Vienna Phil

Bernard Haitink (Photo: Jane Bown)

Is there any more infuriating an orchestra than the Vienna Philharmonic? They’re often cited as the world’s greatest orchestra and can produce a warm and lyrical sound unmatched by any other ensemble on the planet. But their quality seems to have an on/off switch, and their second appearance at the 2012 Proms showed the best and worst of their playing.

Bernard Haitink – a remarkable institution in his own right – conducted the VPO’s two Proms. I was only able to make it to the second, but was rewarded with what for me was always going to be a season highlight: This super –distinguished maestro leading the VPO in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Haitink is much loved, but his unfussy and rhythmically foursquare approach isn’t suited to all repertoire. The Alpine Symphony wouldn’t seem to be an obvious fit, given that so much of it benefits from an almost lurid overstatement of its descriptive qualities. Haitink has form in this music, though, having recorded it with the LSO (for their in house label), and, while this Proms performance was not the last word in the work, he made a strong case for treating Strauss’s 50 minute tone poem in symphonic terms.

What we got was a typically controlled and sustained arc that prioritised flow over detail. It necessarily sacrificed the initial thrill of Strauss’s ecstatic sunrise for an even greater climax at the top of the mountain, while trying to show a clear line throughout. The VPO answered his direction with radiant playing that maintained its warm lyrical intensity at a fortissimo full cry. They did quiet too: never have I heard the opening (and closing) brass statement sound so distant and perfectly balanced.

But it’s never plain sailing with the VPO, and as if to even out all that was miraculous and finely crafted, there were fluffs aplenty. It’s moments such as these that show what the VPO’s really up to: with heads buried in their parts, these musicians are following each other and not the conductor, and a bungled entry seems to sow confusion in the ranks. Their performance of Haydn’s 104th Symphony (the London) demonstrated their refusal to play together – precision is impossible like this, sacrificed instead for beauty of tone.

And then, as though to drive that point mercilessly home, they embarked on the obligatory Johann Strauss II encore (Voices of Spring/Frühlingsstimmen) with all the sloppy indifference of an amateur orchestra at the first rehearsal after the holidays. Haitink may as well not have been there – this was orchestral playing by committee – and he certainly should have known better. 

BBC Proms week 8: Rattle's brilliant Lutosławski

Witold Lutosławski on the podium

What a difference a day makes. Only the previous evening, I'd been feeling a little deflated at the too-perfect-by-half playing of the Berlin Philharmonic in a couple of French items, but after their second Prom (Prom 64) with chief conductor Simon Rattle, I positively floated out of the Royal Albert Hall. The difference? The Berliners did what they do best - Romantic German stuff - and Rattle did what he does best - weird twentieth century stuff.

Yefim Bronfman joined them for the biggest and best of Brahms's concertos, the Second Piano Concerto. His was a robust and confident performance, perhaps without the nobility of Emil Gilels or the vivid storytelling of Nelson Friere, but compelling none the less. And the Berliners were at home in Brahms's classicism, which seems only to gain from the orchestra's inherent refined weight.

But it was the orchestra's performance of Witold Lutosławski's Third Symphony that really sent me away with a grin on my face. It's hardly a concert hall regular, but the symphony is a forceful drama that communicates something urgent and belligerent (those punchy Es heard as a recurring motif). Rattle knew Lutosławski and has remained a champion of this highly distinctive composer, and in the Berlin Orchestra he has an ensemble able to deliver every glistening detail of this score. He also judged the mood in the hall just right, including an encore (Dvorak's Slavonic Dance in C, Op.72/7) after a piece that he would usually have given the last word.

Week 7 at the BBC Proms: Visitors from Europe

Frank Peter Zimmermann

We’ve got to that end of the Proms season when the big boys roll in, and this year is bigger than most. As though they were moths attracted by the glow of London’s Olympic summer, the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandaus and Vienna Philharmonic all appear twice in the space of nine days and while there are some who decry the arrival of the touring bands with their stock programmes, it’s a pretty exciting time to be a prommer.

Prom 57 brought the first hint of that special European sound usually saved for the Musikverein and the Concertgebouw. They may only be (relative) youngsters, but already the players of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchestre seem to have mastered the super refined sense of balance heard in the Vienna and Berlin orchestras, where the honeyed brass tone is a restrained extension of the greater ensemble and the strings behave as though they were one big instrument. That much was immediately evident in the Act 3 Prelude and Good Friday Music from Wagner’s Parsifal, the opener of conductor Daniele Gatti’s wonderfully logical programme exposing different strands of Austro-German romanticism. It’s a cliché worth ditching to describe these operatic extracts as ‘bleeding chunks’; they provide such a wonderful way in to Wagner’s monumental music dramas for so many people – especially when performed as well as they were here – that I have to roll my eyes whenever I read someone reaching for that tired metaphor. Gatti completed to circle at the concert’s end with the Act 3 Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, realised as glowing as the Parsifal.

Frank Peter Zimmermann was a formidable and inviting guide in Berg’s Violin Concerto. In some ways, it isn’t surprising that this is the only firmly established serialist work in the concert repertoire – there’s a tender expressive core to it that makes it so much more than a demonstration of twelve-tone techniques. I’m sure that other violinists would push Berg’s anguished moments further than did Zimmermann, but his was a reflective performance that wasn’t afraid to turn ugly when the music required. And for once, the ubiquitous Bach encore was justified, by Berg’s own delicate reference to a Bach chorale towards the end of his concerto. And Zimmermann’s Bach was its own captivating journey, wringing more intensity of feeling from the A minor Solo Sonata’s Andante than many manage.

Richard Strauss’s sumptuous Rosenkavalier waltzes (patched together later by others and much disparaged in their concert form) made for a revealing contrast with the leaner, meaner waltzing madness of Ravel’s La valse. I’d always thought the Ravel to be extravagant (deliberately and self-destructively so, of course), but it came off as restrained when coupled with Strauss’s excess. Gatti drew tremendously delicate playing from the GMJO, but maybe showed his hand too early in the Ravel by painting the whole in the psychotic colours that are usually reserved for the conclusion. A great concert, though.

I’m afraid I felt a little less enthusiastic about Prom 63, the first of the Berlin Phil’s two appearances this year, which as I write is clocking up more and more rave reviews. Sir Simon Rattle’s programme – Ligeti, Wagner, Sibelius, Debussy and Ravel – looked a hotchpotch on paper and turned out to be in the event. I could follow the thread of the first half – exquisite clouds of melting sound in Ligeti’s Atmospheres flowing without a break into a wonderfully sustained Prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin, followed by the bleak granite-like blocks of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony – but I couldn’t see the connection to Debussy’s Jeux or Ravel’s Daphnis second suite. Maybe the connection was buried deep, but these Rattle programmes often feel like we are being Told Something and not getting the link just leaves me feeling like a bit of a fool.

But my real problem was how slick the whole thing was. No one on Earth plays with the finesse, refinement and jaw dropping perfection of the Berliners, but neither is there ever a sense of danger or risk. I’ve never heard the end of Daphnis et Chloe more gorgeously turned, but I’ve certainly heard it sound more thrillingly rumbunctious, more like it could explode or collapse at any moment. This is, after all, one of the hardest things an orchestra can play. Listening to this orchestra is like being in a car – a Rolls or something – and seeing the countryside flash past at great speed, and not being able to feel a single bump in the road. A technical marvel, certainly, but hardly the ride of your life.

 

Proms review: weeks 5 and 6

When humanity, at some final day of judgement,  is called to account and asked what it produced of worth, our defenders can point to Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and say 'one of our number made this'. If it was all that was left of our culture, archaeologists in some far distant century might find it, listen to it in slack-jawed amazement and conclude 'yes, they really did know what they were doing'.

Is there anything else as mind-expandingly strange, exhilarating and fantastical as Gurrelieder? The BBC SO's performance in Prom 41  - played to a half empty hall - has left my mind turning the music over again and again in the days since, wanting another fix of Schoenberg's hyper-colourful masterpiece. Jukka-Pekka Saraste stood in for the increasingly elusive Jiří Bělohlávek, looking a little lost at times, but directing a performance that proved just how uplifting this colossus is. The contrast with the simultaneous Olympic closing ceremony, seemingly a parade of the middle aged and mediocre, was too depressing to contemplate.

Marin Alsop brought her new band, the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra, to Prom 45, opening with an engaging if rather harried New World Symphony. Legendary Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire joined them for Villa-Lobos's Momoprecoce; all pleasant enough but rather rambling. Ginastera's Estancia Suite was better, but the SPSO seemed to be some way short of world class in the music of their own continent.

Prom 46 got the all-too-rare live TV treatment, making for a much more engaging two hours of telly than the 'recorded for broadcast at a later date' stuff that seems to be the BBC's preferred option at the moment. It looked a bit niche on paper - three Vaughan Williams symphonies in a row - but turned out to be a fascinating programme that made a convincing case for the variety and quality of this rather pigeon holed composer. Andrew Manze is more familiar from his baroque violin playing, but did a very good job with the BBC Scottish SO, particularly in VW's 5th. It convinced this sceptic that he needed more Vaughan Williams in his life, so job done.

Overblown Romantic rarities are part of the fun of the Proms, and the LPO brought a great one with them for Prom 48. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony has come in for a fair amount of flack for its perceived gaudiness over the years, but when confronted with a performance as good as this, it’s hard to resist. The score is something of a favourite of conductor Vladimir Jurowski’s and he drew playing of crackling brilliance from his orchestra. Alice Coote made the first half just as special with the most vividly felt singing of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen that I have ever heard.

I missed week 6’s two biggest Russian fixes – the CBSO’s Leningrad and Gergiev’s Cinderella – but Prom 54 brought Shostakovich’s 10^th Symphony from a celebrated orchestra/conductor pairing. I’ve actually not heard any of their acclaimed Naxos Shostakovich discs, but their 10^th confirmed that Vasily Petrenko is getting some outstanding playing from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. It was an extremely well drilled rendition but, given the relative straightforwardness of his approach, I’m not sure that Petrenko really knows what this symphony has to say.

The best thing in the concert was Peter Maxwell Davies’s new 9^th Symphony, being played in London for the first time. It’s a dark and angry work that plays with Mahlerian conflicts of style and revels Max’s command of an unfolding musical thread.

Proms preview: Vadim Gluzman interview

Violinist Vadim Gluzman makes his debut at the BBC Proms this year, with a performance of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto. I spoke to him a few weeks ago about the piece and about growing up in the Soviet Union. You can read my interview over at ClassicalSource.

Week 1 at the BBC Proms

Another Proms season judders into life, like a massive classical music Olympiad. Of course, this year, there’s another festival of remarkable human achievement going on up the road, promising to make London a no-go area for a chunk of the summer. But Prommers are hardy folk, and they’ll continue to fill the Royal Albert Hall somehow.

The First Night was a curiously programmed celebration of British music. Despite good intentions, I never did hear the whole thing, sampling only Mark Anthony Turnage’s Canon Fever. It caused a lot of ire over at The Guardian but seemed a fairly innocuous example of the contemporary music that gets some people so het up. The first Prom that I really got stuck into was Prom 4, in which John Adams conducted the combined orchestras of the Royal Academy of Music and the Juilliard school. It culminated in a performance of Adams’s City Noir, his 2009 symphonic canvas that explores the sultry atmosphere of the Californian film noir genre. Adams presented it with the LSO a few years back and then, as now, I found it a slightly rambling and insufficiently varied romp through the very post-minimalist style into which the composer has settled. It still has a cracking ending, though.

I made it to the arena for Prom 5, to hear the BBC Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena bringing refined lyricism to Struass’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony. It featured the British premiere of Leterna magica, by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, but her fifteen minute tribute to Ingmar Bergman paled in comparison to the masterpieces of orchestral writing with which it sat. I fear, though, that the concert will be remembered for Anne Schwanewilms’s performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Her poor form was pretty astonishing and it later emerged that she was feeling ill. Certainly, there’s little point sticking the boot into her already much discussed problems, but if she knew she was ill, why not withdraw and save it for another day?

Sakari Oramo took to the podium for Prom 6 (replacing Jiri Belohlavek) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The programme concluded with an outing for Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, one of the composer’s most significant works and a piece that seems to grow and grow in stature each time I hear it. Oramo’s view was brighter than some, making less of the sombre tone that got Prokofiev into trouble with the Soviet authorities. But Prokofiev’s balletic colours shone brilliantly and the sting in the tail cast a long shadow over what had gone before.

Devil’s Trill will be away for week 2, which continues Daniel Barenboim’s cycle of Beethoven symphonies with the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. So you’ll have to let me know if you enjoyed all of the Boulez with which they’re coupled, or whether the whole things feels like a series of barbed wire sandwiches. Enjoy.