‘Adventures in classical”, promises the BBC Radio 3 branding at the back of the stage for this year’s Proms season. It’s a slogan certain to irritate sticklers for grammar. But it may also fox anyone tempted to assume that a First Night programme culminating in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – perhaps the most famous piece of classical music out there – is less of an “adventure” in 2024, more of a safe bet.
Particularly as preceded by a Handel favourite, some choral Bruckner, Clara Schumann’s best-known work and a world premiere too short to frighten anyone. On paper, this didn’t look high-octane.
What happened in the packed Royal Albert Hall was a different matter. The overture to Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks started with a monumental wash of sound, Elim Chan conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra baton-free, arms sweeping as if applying thick paint with a roller.
But she also commanded minute pianissimos and a level of detail easily lost in this mixing-bowl acoustic. The fast movements were thrilling – as airborne and sprightly as the opening had been weighed down – with impossibly crisp trumpet playing and achingly stylish strings.
Presumably included to mark the composer’s 200th anniversary this year, Bruckner’s short Psalm 150 setting is not his most interesting work. It’s hard to imagine it better sung than by the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus here – the tonal blend exquisite, the sheer volume invigorating. The moments of orchestral counterpoint were lucid and Sophie Bevan provided a classy cameo in the brief passage of chromatic soprano filigree.
Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto was completed when the composer was only 15, as a vehicle for her own pianistic brilliance. With Isata Kanneh-Mason at the keyboard, its moments of Mozartian grace came paired with serious muscle.
Kanneh-Mason’s virtuosity was relentless – notes pouring out like so much liquid – but it’s the tender lilt of her fleeting duet with the principal cello that stays with me, quiet but intensely communicative.
The world premiere of the young British-Japanese composer Ben Nobuto’s Hallelujah Sim was intensely communicative in a very different vein: it’s a rare premiere that repeatedly prompts giggles, never mind laughter.
But this short piece was a high-energy, witty riff on the many “hallelujahs” of the Bruckner psalm setting, now glitchy and looped, fragmented and periodically interrupted by an AI voice (imagine Alexa taking a choir rehearsal). It was periodically cacophonous and enormous fun.
And then there was Beethoven. That oh-so-famous motif was as emphatic as it had to be. What followed, though, was both extremely fast and left space for phrases to resonate. Chan’s dynamic control was superlative, her gestures ranging from minute finger-waggles to full air-traffic control.
The slow crescendo at the end of the third movement was breathtaking, its eventual bloom into the start of the finale a delight, like a remastering of one of the most exciting moments in the repertory. That finale surged towards the end. And just when you thought they couldn’t go any faster – and that it couldn’t get any more joyous – they did.
