What a difference an election can make. There’s a new atmosphere at the BBC Proms this year, one of tentative hope and, yes, relief. With divisive culture wars over and the licence fee declared safe, hearts must have been lighter in the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on the first night. Joining them were the BBC Singers, the ensemble with most to celebrate after their threatened demise last year became such a symbol of the previous government’s belligerent hostility towards the arts in the UK.
No wonder Bruckner’s great shout of “Hallelujah!” in his setting of Psalm 150 came over in Prom 1 with such force, conductor Elim Chan pumping up the volume to maximum. But this served only as a prelude to the great surprise of the evening, Ben Nobuto’s Hallelujah Sim, a hugely entertaining “step-by-step tutorial” for choir and orchestra, structured like a video game and given its premiere, ironically, on the day that Microsoft systems were crashing all around the world.
A synthetic voice instructs the performers to complete four levels of hallelujahs, each with their own challenges (sing in individual parts, now combine, sing faster, sing slower, randomise syllables, sing backwards), while the orchestra plays a crazily cartoonish accompaniment. Nobuto (b.1996) believes we live in an age saturated by the internet, and here takes traditional musical elements and gives them a 21st-century digital gloss, making something shiny, brilliantly clever – and funny. It must have been a nightmare to rehearse, so credit goes to chorus master Neil Ferris, and to Chan, who held it all together. The audience loved it, which is not something you can always say about a new piece at the Proms.
Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason (who last week was lobbying parliament for better music provision in schools) made an impressive solo debut last year with Prokofiev’s third piano concerto, becoming an instant favourite with the Prommers. This year, as a champion of female composers, she showcased Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, a work she first recorded in 2019 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Critics remarked then on her boldly assertive playing, a quality replicated last week. Clara Wieck was just 13 when she began composing this piece and was clearly already a formidable pianist. Kanneh-Mason brought real authority to this display of adolescent fireworks, but perhaps the highlight was her beautifully judged duet with principal cellist Louisa Tuck in the gracious central movement.
We all think we know Beethoven’s fifth symphony, but under Chan it took on a new life, with details revealed, melodies underlined, rhythms sharply defined. There is always a sense of growing excitement running through the work, but here it cantered towards the final allegro with dramatic purpose. A thrilling end to a memorable evening.
Manchester’s jewel of an orchestra, the Hallé, reached a milestone last week with the final Prom to be conducted by its music director, Mark Elder, after 25 years at the helm (Prom 4). As in his farewell concerts in Manchester, Elder was keen that every element of the Hallé should be part of this Prom – the orchestra, the adult choir, the youth choir and the excellent children’s choir. This made an impressive wall of choral sound in James MacMillan’s setting of verses from Dryden, Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, but had the unintended consequence of highlighting just how much more at ease the younger voices were than their older counterparts, the adult sopranos often struggling with MacMillan’s demanding top line. Though warmly received, this is a curious, uneven work, its most convincing passages reserved for Dryden’s depiction of the transformative power of music.
Mahler’s fifth symphony was a perfect choice for Elder to display the rich talent that exists in every section of the orchestra he has built over the past quarter-century: strings sleek, brass trenchant, woodwind agile. This long journey from funereal darkness to uncertain, triumphant light was spellbinding, the famous adagietto for harp and strings, Mahler’s love song to his future wife, Alma Schindler, beautifully judged, never once tipping into sentimentality, something Elder abhors anyway, as he told the audience in his farewell remarks. His focus was on his players and on the future, both of the Proms (he was a teenage Prommer once) and of live music: “Something we all need, perhaps as never before.” Amen to that.
Schindler’s name cropped up again in an intriguing, though sparsely attended Prom – a recreation of a concert given in Vienna in 1905, when brothers-in-law Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky premiered two highly expressive tone poems: Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid (Prom 5). Poor Zemlinsky chose Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the little mermaid, who watched her beloved marry someone else, because it matched his own experience – his longed-for Alma married Mahler. Conductor Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales revelled in Zemlinsky’s emotionally charged score, which gleams with supernatural mystery, sometimes verging on the kitsch.
But however radiant and accessible, Zemlinsky’s music doesn’t share the depth and complexity of Schoenberg’s richly coloured Pelleas, which glowed under Bancroft’s sure direction. Schoenberg calls for a huge orchestra (nine horns, full brass, 16 woodwind, two harps, two timps) and marshals these forces to tell the story of a love triangle that ends, inevitably, in tragedy. The sonorous, restless score writhes and contorts as it charts the plot of Maeterlinck’s dreamlike play, ecstatically portraying the passion of Pelleas and Melisande and the raging jealousy of the prince who cannot bear to lose Melisande. This ravishing account will surely be a highlight of the season, and it’s only week one.
Star ratings (out of five)
Prom 1 ★★★★★
Prom 4 ★★★★
Prom 5 ★★★★★
All Proms are available on BBC Sounds; Proms 1 and 4 are also on BBC iPlayer. The Proms continue until 14 September
