BBC SSO/Volkov - Gabrieli, Stravinsky, and Brahms, 11 September 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: In ecclesiis
Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles
Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: Canzone a tre cori
Brahms: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73

Jess Dandy (contralto)

Ashley Riches (bass-baritone)

National Youth Choir

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: BBC / Andy Paradise

A splendid Prom, whose programming was not only fascinating on paper, but grew in fascination, connection, and meaning as the evening progressed, aided no end by fine performances from soloists, the National Youth Choir, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Ilan Volkov. Both halves opened with Bruno Maderna orchestral arrangements of works by Giovanni Gabrieli. First was the polychoral motet In ecclesiis, published posthumously in 1615, and arranged by Maderna in 1966. The variety yet consequential nature of Maderna’s choices concerning antiphonal responses shone through in ravishing performance. A Monteverdian sultriness to chamber passages, the grandeur of a fuller orchestra, adept handling and communication of metrical changes, and the sheer wonder of hearing this music – at long last – on modern instruments made for a wonderful curtain-opener resounding in Venetian splendour. Less ‘faithful’ passages with woodwind, harp, and eventually tubular bells brought similar joy to the ears. It built magnificently and subsided with discernment. Those sectional and consequential qualities were also to be heard in Maderna’s 1972 revisiting of the Conzon XVI à 12. Warm, lively, and highly rhythmical, it was again full of colour, not in an over-the-top Respighi-like way, which has its place, but in an unquestionable effort to communicate the essential qualities of the music to a modern audience. The intrinsic qualities of Gabrielian brass, married to warm, incisive strings and unfailingly well-chosen tempi, would have given pleasure to all but the most narrow-minded of authenticists. 

In between came one of the greatest jewels not only of Stravinsky’s late, serial period, but of his career, the Requiem Canticles heard at the composer’s Venetian funeral in 1971: of the same time, then, as Maderna’s arrangements and hailing from a less dissimilar musical world than some might suspect, old and new similarly united and inseparable. Intensity of drama and excellence of playing marked the opening Prelude: a clear indication of ‘serialism, Jim, but not as we know it’. It could only ever be Stravinsky, of course, and so it sounded, with fresh energy and commitment. The ‘Exaudi’ came to our ears as the Symphony of Psalms heard through a prism of Webern. There was something also of a musical object, even of a religious icon, to it: fitting in so many ways. The National Youth Choir’s warmth, diction, and intonation here and elsewhere were striking, as for instance in the distilled, almost homeopathic power of the following ‘Dies irae’. Ashley Riches joined trumpets and bassoons for an implacable yet human ‘Tuba mirum’, bassoon duetting continuing, amongst a quartet of flutes, and others in a duly hieratic ‘Interlude’ that unmistakeably echoed the music of Gabrieli (at least in this context). The ‘Rex tremendae’ said or sang all that need be said or sung, serial process joyously apparent. Was that Mother Goose putting in a guest appearance, courtesy of a rich-toned Jess Dandy, in the ‘Lacrimosa’? The composer’s direct Verdian homage in the ‘Libera me’, partly fragmented through unforgettable chatter of choral souls, brought us to a world of crystalline, celestial perfection in the ‘Postlude’, Messiaen a closer kindred spirit than I had ever previously imagined. 

The final work on the programme was Brahms’s Second Symphony, here given a thoughtful, striking, never less than coherent reconsideration by Volkov. It was fascinating to hear the lines of its opening texture after – in more than one sense – Gabrieli, whose music Brahms programmed amongst much alte Musik in his Wiener Singakademie concerts. The first movement unfolded relatively swiftly, though never unreasonably so; indeed, the composer’s marking ‘Allegro non troppo’ would be a pretty good summary of what we heard. Volkov handled the many tempo changes convincingly, likewise other, related changes of mood. Here, quite rightly, was a world of perpetual motivic transformation, always ‘becoming’ in developing variation: Schoenberg rather than Schenker, one might say. This was not an especially autumnal Brahms, but rather vernal music – horn calls and all – with decidedly darker undercurrents. It surprised, though never for the sake of surprise – telling phrasing here, a sudden diminuendo there – and cohered throughout, the BBC SSO’s multifaceted strings an ever-shifting backbone, if such a thing can be imagined. 

An involved (emotionally, intellectually, and texturally) second movement again brought the quality of Brahms’s counterpoint to the fore, the composer moving closer still to Schoenberg, yet also to Mozart. I am not sure I have heard this music sound more volatile, ever threatening to bubble over, its deep melancholy and Innigkeit part and parcel of a greater humanism. The third movement’s inheritance from Mendelssohn and Schumann was beautifully clear, though the other side of the coin was a tale of twists and turns, of continued suppression of darker truths. Its darkness was quite different, say, from Furtwängler’s, yet I could not help but think the older conductor might have appreciated it and nodded approvingly. And for all its ambiguity and complexity, there was a not entirely dissimilar overall clarity, even simplicity, to it. When the final movement erupted, hard driven at times yet always flexible, it proved thrilling and satisfying in equal measure, conceived both dramatically and symphonically, yet perhaps closer in scale and even temperament to a homage to Haydn rather than to Beethoven. It made, at any rate, for a winning, boisterous way to close a concert full of treasure.

And yet, meaning no disrespect to this excellent concert, the most electrifying and necessary item was yet to come: not an encore, though a return to the podium by Volkov, in which, visibly and audibly anxious, he, as an Israeli, addressed the audience in heartrending fashion concerning the genocide in Gaza. He gave those who did not wish to hear opportunity to leave, even in the face of abuse from malcontents. It would be remiss of me not to report this, though the BBC, it seems, has declined to do so. (The broadcast had by that time finished, it seems, although footage is widely available from elsewhere.) By the same token, I do not think this is quite the place to enter into any discussion of his words, other than to say I marvelled at and was inspired by his courage and stand in solidarity with him. His words (I hope I have transcribed them correctly) should now speak for themselves: 

In my heart there is great pain now, every day for months. I come from Israel and live there. I love it: it’s my home. But what’s happening is atrocious and horrific on a scale that’s unimaginable. I know that many of us feel completely helpless in front of it. Innocent Palestinians being killed in thousands, displaced again and again, without hospitals and schools, not knowing when's the next meal. Israeli hostages are kept in terrible conditions for almost two years and political prisoners are languishing in Israeli jails. Israelis – Jews and Palestinians – won’t be able to stop this alone. I ask you, I beg you all, to do whatever is in your power to stop this madness. Every little action counts while governments hesitate and wait. We cannot let this go on any longer; every moment that passes puts the safety of millions in risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Ilan (if I may). The conductor has since announced that he will no longer work in Israel.

LSO/Volkov - Lachenmann and Beethoven, 28 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Lachenmann: My Melodies (Music for Eight Horns and Orchestra)
Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

LSO Horns
London Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This concert was the latest casualty of François-Xavier Roth’s absence from the concert platform. Whilst Ilan Volkov, another conductor with considerable experience in both new and older music, made good sense as replacement, it was difficult not to feel losses of connection in programming concept and, to a lesser extent, between conductor and orchestra (if only through Roth’s long association with the LSO). 

First up was My Melodies by Helmut Lachenmann, who had celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday the day before. Eight horn players (Diego Incertis Sanchez, Timothy Jones, Angela Barnes, Jonathan Moloney, Katu Woolley, Annemarie Federle, Richard Watkins, and Ben Goldscheider) were seated at the front, encircling the conductor, in front of the strings. Volkov offered a brief introduction, with musical examples: welcome as far as it went, though it did not go beyond identification of a few musical figures. What we used to call extended techniques, which have long since passed into common instrumental practice, elicited baffling, uproarious laughter from sections of the audience, some of whom proceeded to leave, both then and throughout the actual performance. It is certainly not the case that Lachenmann and his music lack humour, but it is not really to be found there, at least not intrinsically. Perhaps that was why Volkov forewent further analysis, understandably if so. 

The LSO sounded in its element for the opening éclat, razor sharp, full of colourful, and ably guided by Volkov, if perhaps without quite the sense of what was going on beneath the surface Roth might have conveyed. (I wonder whether it may in part also have been the difficult Barbican acoustic, to which Roth would have been more accustomed.) Even when the horns played together, as often they did, forming a single ‘macro horn’, parts as well as sum were apparent through the necessary workings of sound. Passages of stillness in motion were equally given their due. I loved the interplay with the orchestra, seemingly incited and infected, and vice versa, ‘conventional’ sounds coming across all the more freshly: dialectically rendered anew, even in a single piano note or chord, or harp arpeggios. The impression of wandering in pitch, even when objectively it was not, fascinated and further incited. Sometimes, a horn echo sounded, miraculously, as if it from the distance, though again clearly it did not. This was a performance that could be heard and felt viscerally and spatially, lines darting across the orchestra, not unlike, say, Webern or Boulez, albeit less geometrically. It was exhilarating, confounding, and yes, inspiring; but equally, there was an unmistakeable quality of Romantic solitude, even loneliness. Through the horns in particular, Lachenmann showed himself once again an heir to Schumann and Caspar David Friedrich, as well as to Nono and the postwar avant garde.

To follow My Melodies with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony made excellent sense then. Volkov’s reading had its moments, yet, save for an excellent Allegretto, did not quite seem to have settled. The first movement was a case in point, as indeed was its introduction: expectant, yet lacking a sense really of heading anywhere. Some of the LSO’s playing was strangely abrasive: by ‘period’ design, I imagine, far closer at any rate to the world of John Eliot Gardiner than that of Colin Davis. The exposition blazed rather than blared and had a stronger sense of form, as did the rest of the movement, though it still lacked that necessary goal orientation. The second movement, by contrast, was given as if in a single breath, with a keen sense of expanding from a chamber ensemble, and darkly developmental throughout. The scherzo and trio seemed to have exchanged characteristics: the former at times, again seemingly by design, turning strangely inward, save for on its more convincing second reprise; the latter possessed of considerable strength. The finale went where it needed to, yet never quite took flight, dogged from beginning to end. I have certainly heard worse, but I have also heard better.

Prom 17 - BBC SSO/Volkov - Walshe and Brahms, 28 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Jennifer Walshe: The Site of an Investigation (London premiere)

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, op.45

Jennifer Walshe (voice)

Elena Tsallagova (soprano)

Shenyang (bass-baritone)

National Youth Choir of Great Britain (chorus director: Ben Parry)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

I am sure one could find something these two works had in common if one tried; one always can. The question is whether it would be anything more than a parlour game trick to do so. For instance, does saying that both composers, Jennifer Walshe and Johannes Brahms, assembled (many of) the words they set from pre-existing texts shed light on anything? Not really. Perhaps there is something less tenuous in regarding both as having a memorial element, Walshe’s The Site of an Investigation being dedicated to the memory of a friend, the actor Stephen Swift. Again, though, I am not sure that helps connect Walshe and Brahms’s music. It is probably better to treat this Prom as a performance of two contrasting works and leave it at that. 

The Site of an Investigation, from 2018, presents a more eclectic range of texts and responds to them in similarly eclectic fashion. From tweets to NASA’s plans for Mars: there is certainly a world (and beyond) to choose from, and that kaleidoscopic intent seems to be part of the point, perhaps unified only in Walshe’s own highly varied, amplified vocal delivery. I am tempted to call it performance art, given ‘events’ such as percussionists wrapping a giraffe in brown paper, twirling ribbons, and building a little tower with plastic boxes, the final act set against a pop-minimalist orchestral backdrop. ‘My horizon goal/is a surface landing/on MARS!’ and—all fall down. Tonal music, deliberately (I think) banal, is soon invaded or derided in the ‘Normal person’ section, in which we hear of someone’s need to receive 200 social media likes. It is all highly anarchic, though also (again, I think) directed at contemporary mores, often used in themselves as found material. Its big-heartedness is inviting, likewise its sheer fearlessness (surely allied). Was that an initial reference to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? It is now too long ago for me to be sure either way, but perhaps it is more important to think of John Cage’s deconstructionism, a post-Andy Warhol pop aesthetic, or even a Charles Ives-like orchestral riot in between ‘it’s hard ot tell exactly where the hate is coming from’ and the first advent of the wind machine. Perhaps, or perhaps not. Rather than seek for antecedents, I suspect it is better simply to listen here in the moment and take what you will—if anything. I rather enjoyed the half-hour or so it took and afterwards felt perplexed as to what to make of it. Over to you. 

If I say that I feel more at home with Brahms, that is not necessarily a value judgement, simply a statement of fact. I certainly liked this performance from the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Ilan Volkov. What struck me, in addition to a startlingly slow tempo, in the opening chorus was the cultivated quality of the BBC SSO strings, as if a chamber group—or perhaps a small Bach orchestra, writ a little larger. It was not all maudlin, though, far from it; rarely have I heard such joy (aptly enough on ‘Freuden’) as in these young voices’ rendition under Volkov, both sides clearly responding to one another. This movement very much set the scene for what was to come: not only dark yet consoling, but also with moments of Baroque joy such as Bach, Handel, and the many earlier composers in whom Brahms so immersed himself both as composer and as choral director might well have recognised (at least in ahistorical fantasy). 

The sarabande that followed flowed beautifully without rushing; choral singing was nicely responsorial. Volkov kept a tight rein on dynamic contrasts, exercising them to maximum effect. A special words should be said for the BBC SSO’s angelic harps. (It probably helped that I was seated near them.) At any rate, this was a properly severe apostolic pronouncement that yet consoled, even prior to the uplift wrought by Isiaiah’s return of the ransomed. That final section was taken at quite a lick, but it worked. It also contrasted well with the confiding intimacy of ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ bass-baritone Shenyang contributing with keen intelligence to the sense of cumulative power in a moving homily. Patience, as Brahms certainly knew, is a virtue. Release at its close, the souls of the righteous in God’s hands, where no torment shall touch them, both paralleled and took further that at the close of the preceding number. 

‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ and ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’ exuded sweetness without saccharine, the first bringing (however silly this may sound) summer strawberries to my mind. It was brisk, yet breathed, Volkov ensuring a fine sense of the longer line. Elena Tsallagova sometimes sounded tremulous in the latter, but at her best imparted a fine sense of a maternal angel leading us (Brahms included) on. There was no doubting our role as band of pilgrims in ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt’. Seeking that city to come, we were in need of a guide and received one, the Royal Albert Hall organ (Richard Gowers) underlining that in a highly physical, again consoling, way. The struggle to come both terrified and thrilled, St Paul, Bach, and the rest personally yet universally synthesised for us in the here and now. (There are many ways to be contemporary.) Its final words from Revelation, Brahms’s music summoning up memories of Handel and Mendelssohn, without ever sounding ‘like’ them, brought us close to completion, though it was no easy journey. There was, however, one chorus still to go, the final step—tonal as well as theological, any such distinction meaningless. This may not be liturgical music, but it strongly conveyed the sense of a closing, seraphic benediction. It bade us good night and fortified us softly yet surely, as Brahms often does.

BBC Proms (8) - BBC SSO/Volkov - Lewis and Beethoven, 26 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

George Lewis: Minds in Flux (world premiere)
Beethoven: Concert Aria: ‘Ah! perfido’ op.65
Beethoven: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.36

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Damon Holzborn (computer software design/realisation)

Sound Intermedia

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

This year’s Proms premieres—those I have heard, anyway—have been a mixed bunch: professional enough, yet often safe to the point of anodyne, having one long instead for something decidedly ‘new’ from the repertoire, be it Haydn or Ligeti, Machaut or Schoenberg. George Lewis’s Minds in Flux, however, was the real thing: music with something to say, some point to it beyond fulfilling a commission, whether or not that ‘something’, that ‘point’, remains elusive to verbal expression. It was, dare I suggest, an Albert Hall work too, making full use of the notorious space and acoustic, not so as to be enslaved by it, but rather to create new space within and beyond it, by virtue—not unlike Stockhausen—of electronic means. From its opening, electronic sounds surrounding us, woodwind and their electronic shadows, progeny, Doppelgänger echoing across the hall like gulls, reference points proved but the starting point for music both familiar and unfamiliar. A Stravinsky-meets-jazz chorale, a song, a dance, a moment of rage, a moment of consolation: here was a sonic cornucopia always in flux, the product of minds in flux. If Mahler wanted a symphony to contain everything, a whole world, Lewis seemed to say: there are many more worlds; there are silenced voices too in our colonised world. Let us hear them; let us consider them. It was ominously inviting and invitingly ominous. Perhaps it referred, perhaps not; above all, it played and invited us, our minds and bodies, to play. Charles Ives, I fancied, might have understood this strikingly intelligent, strikingly democratic invitation.

Lucy Crowe joined the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov for Beethoven’s concert aria, ‘Ah! perfido’. It was an almost equally intense reading, dignified in its post-Mozartian, slightly neoclassical way, alert, like Lewis’s work and the performance we had heard of it, to musical shadows too. Strikingly sincere, Crowe showed us that any doubts we might have to the verse (Metastasian recitative, followed by an anonymous aria text) are our problem, or other performers’, not intrinsic. Well supported and, where appropriate, directed by Volkov, Crowe rightly took her time then, rightly, erupted. Here was Beethoven on a grand scale, with passages of moving intimacy both contrasted with and necessary to that scale. 

The Second Symphony followed, in a performance of many virtues, particularly during its second and fourth movements, yet one which never quite addressed that necessary Beethovenian question: what does this mean to us? Again, an answer need not, arguably cannot, be verbal, yet Beethoven’s humanism demands something. The introduction to the first movement was alert and detailed, characterised as elsewhere by fine playing from the BBC SSO. Volkov never quite pinned down a basic pulse, though, with the consequence that it sounded restless rather than expectant, a collection rather than a chain of ideas. The main ‘Allegro con brio’ was better: occasionally hard-driven, yet essentially permitted to speak for itself and all the better for it. If it lacked inevitability, that was more apparent in the ‘Larghetto’, heard also with a keen sense of the music’s sheer loveliness. There was darkness to its heart, too, speaking of and through dialectic necessity. The scherzo was again driven hard, distant rather than immediate. Its trio was well pointed, if slightly lacking in flow. Volkov captured very well the difficult balance at the onset of the finale between quirky incident and onward propulsion. If it was good natured, it had bite too.

London Sinfonietta/Volkov: James Dillon, Stabat mater dolorosa, 21 January 2015

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Stabat mater dolorosa (London premiere)

BBC Singers
London Sinfonietta
Sound Intermedia
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

James Dillon’s ‘cantata’ – his own description – Stabat mater dolorosa had its first performance at last November’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; this was its London premiere. Co-commissioned by the HCMF, BBC Radio 3, and Casa da Musica, Porto, it is quite unlike any ‘setting’ of the poem I have heard, despite the surprising direct quotation from Pergolesi that surfaces some way through its hour-and-a-quarter duration. Why the inverted commas? Only some of the poem is set; apparently, Dillon went so far as he felt able and then stopped. Perhaps more importantly, the text is not always readily audible; more than once, I thought of Nono’s Il canto sospeso, and indeed of Stockhausen’s (misplaced?) criticism of it in Die Reihe: the effect seemed somewhere between Nono’s intention and Stockhausen’s reception, albeit with a far greater sense of restraint. However, there were times when the text was readily audible, for which considerable praise should be offered to the BBC Singers.

The background ‘chatter’ of ancillary texts is deliberately not perceptible in its detail, presenting an interesting comparison and indeed synergy with the relatively sparing use of electronics. Picasso’s idea of the ‘weeping woman’ melds with the philosopher Julia Kristeva’s Héretique de l’amour, a text in which she considers the Stabat mater in relation to her experience of child birth and her thoughts upon the Virgin Birth. (I am relying on Dillon for that information, since I have yet to read any Kristeva.) Rilke’s Visions of Christ and Donne’s A Valediction of Weeping are also present. We only know that because we are told. Does that matter? I am instinctively suspicious (reactionary that I am?) of conceptual art, but in this case, I really could see no harm, nor could I hear it, in a little background – in more than one sense. The idea of a ‘canonical’ text, a term Dillon used more than once in a brief post-concert discussion, being mediated by later writing is after all difficult to avoid in any non-fundamentalist consideration of texts as developing works.

The score really does, rather to my surprise, come across as a reimagining of a Baroque cantata. One senses something akin to ritornello form and sub-divisions not entirely dissimilar to those of the old ‘cantata mass’. (Perhaps incongruously, perhaps not, it was Haydn’s post-Baroque Missa Cellensis in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae that sprang to my mind both during and after the event.) Picasso’s ‘weeping machine’ and what one might think of its predecessors in earlier Spanish painters such as Murillo also featured strongly in my initial response. To quote the composer, whom I read afterwards, ‘Picasso’s strange but fascinating metaphor of a “weeping machine” becomes a central image in the work, whereby I cast the mechanics of mourning as a slow machine, a music which unfolds in slow motion.’ That ‘slow motion’ might take some getting used to, but actually one’s ears adjust – or at least mine did – reasonably quickly. There are moments, passages of considerable beauty, not entirely unlike Baroque obbligati. Various instrumentalists from the splendid London Sinfonietta took their opportunities to shine, without any hint of standing out too boldly. Alastair Mackie’s trumpet lingered especially in the memory. The caesuras challenged too, but productively: there still seemed to be an overarching modernist structure, rather than a mere post-modernist assemblage for us to make of what we would.

The work clearly requires more than a single listening, so I am reluctant to say much more, but I have little doubt that such listening would be well rewarded. Insofar as I could tell, Ilan Volkov directed his forces with remarkable sympathy and understanding. The London Sinfonietta has long excelled in such repertoire; long may that excellence continue.

 

Prom 38: Gerhardt/BBC SSO/Volkov - Ravel, Unsuk Chin, and Stravinsky

Royal Albert Hall

Ravel – La Valse
Unsuk Chin – Cello Concerto (BBC commission, world premiere)
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

Alban Gerhardt (violoncello)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

I have never heard the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra sound so good. Ilan Volkov clearly leaves the orchestra on a high; it will be interesting to follow its fortunes under the very different leadership of Donald Runnicles. (My first opportunity to do so will be at the end of this month in Edinburgh.) My first impressions – and these are only impressions of a southerner – had been mixed: from the Proms, I recall splendid Janáček but indifferent Mahler and Berlioz. Last year, however, I was privileged to attend a marvellous Prom, comprised of music by Jonathan Harvey, Messiaen, and Varèse. The present concert, including the world premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, kept up the good work.

One thing that struck me about the opening performance of La Valse was how ‘French’ the BBC SSO sounded: not in the old French sense we know from historic recordings, since no one sounds like that anymore, but I could readily have taken the orchestra for, say, the Orchestre de Paris or the Orchestre National de France. Such was the vein in which Volkov approached La Valse, rather than taking the starting-point of a Viennese waltz turned sour. There was a sense of fantasy from the opening, exemplified by weird, slightly sinister woodwind. Rhythm was clearly defined but not inflexible. The gloss to the strings on heard surely paid testament to Volkov’s abilities as an orchestral trainer. Much of this performance was more kaleidoscopic, less overtly threatening than one often hears. I was put in mind of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; but we all know where that leads, and so did Ravel here. Another kinship revealed more obviously than I can previously recall was with the ballet scores of Prokofiev; indeed, it was unusually clear that this was a ballet. It was a fine performance, though perhaps it tended a little too much to the orchestral showpiece; on the other hand, maybe that is just the Vienna-obsessive in me speaking – just for a change...

Alban Gerhardt was the outstanding soloist, performing from memory, in the premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto. What struck me immediately and throughout was how well written for the instrument the piece was; in Gerhardt’s words, ‘I believe she finds a way to balance colourful orchestral writing with the fragility of “just a cello”. We cellists don’t have the same projection as piano or violin, and ... Unsuk was taken great care in composing a wonderfully colourful yet transparent concerto.’ The first movement is entitled Aniri, which denotes a narrative passage – alternating with sung passages – in the Korean dramatic form, P’ansori, which would be performed by a singing actor and drummer. Thus the solo part takes the form of a recurring narrative, first announced in this opening movement. Growing from a single note, so prominently recurring that no one could fail to notice it on a first hearing, the soloists line moves away from and yet refers to it. The excellent BBC SSO provided a bedrock for the soloists’ deviation; later in the movement, these roles are somewhat reversed, putting me in mind of a sort of distorted arch form, developmental yet never quite breaking free. A highly dramatic percussion crash heralds the end of this, the longest of the movement, Gerhardt’s quivering, almost shell-shocked tone being all that remained in the closing bars. Unwanted applause followed: ‘something must be done...’.

There follows a brief, scherzo-like movement. Both soloist and orchestra – unturned percussion now very much to the fore – have plenty of opportunities, here well taken, to display their virtuosity, but never, it seemed, merely for its own sake. In a sense of contagion, solo figures are transferred to and developed by the orchestra, always restless, always febrile. The third movement is the still centre of the work. Here Gerhardt’s instrument could once again truly sing, in a vocalised part not entirely dissimilar from a Shostakovich lament. The solo part often lies very high, its tone contrasting with a Stravinskian chorale – think The Soldier’s Tale – on muted trumpets. With the fourth and final movement, the music builds to a warranted narrative climax. The cello sounds a little unsure of itself to begin with, ‘as if preparing,’ in the words of Habakuk Traber’s programme note,’ a thoughtful improvisation’. This is just how it sounded in Gerhardt’s hands. It was as if, but most definitely as if, he were slightly distracted: a difficult trick to bring off, as opposed to straightforwardly being distracted, which anyone could do. The orchestral part becomes steadily more violent, and this certainly registered in the BBC SSO’s performance. But the cello takes a different, ultimately more fruitful path, moving upwards in pitch towards the very limit of its range. It takes us back into the silence from which that initial pitch emerged: not quite Die Jakobsleiter, with its extraordinary soprano voice, but perhaps an analogy for the cello. When this fine performance concluded, I was instantly keen to hear the work again.

Volkov presented an interesting account of that towering masterpiece, The Rite of Spring. There is nowadays something of an imperative to present a new slant on the work; sometimes it can work, sometimes not, but worth trying to avert the danger of becoming merely an orchestral showpiece. Volkov’s conception seemed to be to bring the Rite closer to Stravinsky’s other Russian ballets than is often the case. Petrushka in particular was never far away, not least in the characterful playing of teeming wind. The colourful performance made a connection with La Valse. This Rite was bright and exuberant, less mysterious than some. I was impressed by the full sound of the BBC SSO’s strings, often an Achilles heel for British orchestras, but not here. Although much was bright, there were hieratic interludes, perhaps looking forward to the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, between the more dionysiac sections. The Procession of the Sage was properly dramatic, though not very mysterious: a very public procession, which, one might well argue, is very much what it is. Mother Russia was certainly present in the opening to the second part, and mystery was now conjured up by the muted trumpets (I thought of Chin’s chorale). But the general mood remained brightly colourful, sometimes evoking the Rimskian example of The Firebird. The music of the ancestors was equally full of orchestral colour, a pattern continued into the closing Sacrificial Dance. Rhythms, while far from vague, were perhaps not so blisteringly, exactly threatening as in a performance, say, by Boulez. This Rite seemed more of a conductor’s than a composer-conductor’s conception. For the seeds of what was to come, from Boulez to Birtwistle, one would have had to look elsewhere, but the concept was perfectly valid and was very well executed.

Prom 45: BBC SSO/Volkov, et al., 19 August 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Harvey – Tombeau de Messiaen
Messiaen – Concert à quatre
Harvey – Mortuos plango, vivos voco
Harvey (with Gilbert Nouno and Arshia Cont: IRCAM computer music designers) – Soundings (world premiere)
Varèse – Poème électronique
Varèse – Déserts

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Emily Beynon (flute)
Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe)
Danjulo Ishizaka (’cello)
Jonathan Harvey (sound projection: Harvey)
Jerémie Henrot and Clément Marie (IRCAM sound projection: Soundings)
Ben Bayliss and Chris Beddall (sound projection: Varèse)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Interesting and intelligent programming may prove to be a hallmark of Roger Wright’s tenure at the Proms. One can only hope so following the previous dispensation, much of which has remained in evidence during this ‘changeover’ season. At the heart of the programme lay the music of Jonathan Harvey, a fine composer, far too often overlooked in his own country. It would seem that his marriage of modernism, not least a keen interest in French spectralism and electronics, and a deep, syncretic spirituality – yes, I too generally run a mile upon hearing that word; but this is the real thing, not the easy-access, synthetic bells and smells of the ‘holy minimalists’ – has not always appealed to the English empirical temperament. All the more reason then to grant him such a splendid opportunity as this. Harvey studied with Messiaen and the two composers’ concerns in various ways overlap. An ongoing association with IRCAM – brain-child of Boulez, another Messiaen pupil – brought us the classic electronic work, Mortuos plango, vivos voco, and a new work, Soundings, co-commissioned by the BBC, IRCAM, and Radio France, as the third and final part of a trilogy ‘referring to the Buddhist purification of body, mind, and speech’. Soundings was composed by Harvey as Composer-in-Association to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, who premiered it this evening. And then, for the third part of the concert, we turned to the still-bracing dawn of electronic music, to the work of Varèse. Having questioned the suitability of the Royal Albert Hall for various more ‘conventional’ works, I am happy to report that, on this occasion, the space worked very well. This may partly have been owed to the vagaries of seating – even sitting a few seats away appears to make quite a difference here – yet the space itself added something important, visually and acoustically, to the electronic works.

Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen, for piano and digital tape, opened the programme. In a brief programme note, Harvey cited Messiaen as a ‘protospectralist ... fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, ... [who] found therein a prismatic play of light’. And so, the tape part of this 1994 tribute is made of twelve piano sounds tuned to the harmonic series, one for each pitch class. The piano part, in equal temperament of course, then plays with these series, both combining with and distorting them: ‘never entirely belonging, never entirely separate’. This interplay was dazzlingly captured by Cédric Tiberghien, as were the bell-like echoes – a slightly nauseous yet colourful pealing – not only of Messiaen but also, I fancied, of the Debussy of La cathédrale engloutie. ‘Echoes’ was also the operative word for the crucial role of the hall. Harvey and Tiberghien exploited the full extremities of the keyboard, before moving to a piercing climax of an almost Messiaenesque ecstasy.

Concert à quatre (1990-92) is Messiaen’s final work, completed by Yvonne Loriod, in consultation with Heinz Holliger and George Benjamin. From the very first notes, it is instantly recognisable as Messiaen, indeed as the work of the same composer who, compositional developments notwithstanding, had written L’Ascension sixty years earlier. Emily Beynon and Alexei Ogrintchouk are both principals with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose long experience with French music was surely valuable here, but the BBC SSO too managed to sound convincingly ‘modern French’ (think of the Orchestre de Paris or the Orchestre National de France). In the first movement, the Entrée, it was once again Tiberghien’s opportunity to shine, the piano being treated as a solo instrument apart from the rest of the concertante group. Needless to say, he grasped this opportunity, exhibiting glistening tone and dazzling rhythmical precision. The orchestra’s ten (!) percussionists, including wind-machine, certainly made their presence felt too, though never unduly. For the second movement Vocalise, Messiaen transcribed with ornamentation a piece he had written in 1935 for a series of vocal studies. It is tribute to the constancy of his style and voice, that this in no sense sounded out of place. The beautiful A major melody, ‘warmed’, in Paul Griffiths’s excellent choice of verb, by the composer’s third mode of limited transposition, was passed between each of the soloists in turn, the orchestra here being of secondary importance, timbral ‘warming’ furnished by a limited number of strings. Beynon presented a ravishingly lyrical opening, followed by an equally heart-stopping duet between oboe and piano, Ogrintchouk being possessed, it would seem, of unlimited and luxurious reserves of line and breath. The unapologetically Romantic ’cello entry was meltingly taken by BBC New Generation Artist, Danjulo Ishizaka, who also shone in the ensuing Cadenza. So too did the combined forces of the xylophone, xylorimba, and marimba. For the final Rondeau, Ilan Volkov clearly delineated its verse-refrain form. He and his players also imparted a welcome sense of the apocalyptic. The dialogue between piano and bells took on an aptly ecclesiastical tinge as versicle and response. This movement teemed, quite properly, with life and joy.

Mortuos plango, vivos voco, for eight-channel tape (1980), was inspired by the sounds of bells and choristers at Winchester Cathedral, where Harvey’s son had sung. The largest bell has inscribed upon it the text: HORAS AVOLANTES NUMERO, MORTUOS PLANGO, VIVOS AD PRECES VOCO (‘I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead, I call the living to prayer’). Harvey cleverly – and movingly – conveys this through the ‘dead’, however rich, sound of the bell and the ‘live’ sound of the boy, the audience inside the surrounding sound of the former, whilst the latter ‘flies freely around’. I was reminded not only of the English cathedral tradition– and of English cathedrals themselves –but also of the strange, threatening, yet ineffably beautiful Venice of Nono. It was interesting to note how very much more human, less alien, this work sounded than Stockhausen’s COSMIC PULSES had a couple of weeks before. This is new music concerned with utterly ‘traditional’ Christian concerns of life and death, nowhere more so than in the dying away al niente of the bell sounds. The hall itself took on an aptly Gothic splendour as the frame for the music.

In Soundings, Harvey explains, he ‘wanted to bring together orchestral music and human speech. It is as if the orchestra is learning to speak, like a baby with its mother, or like first man, or like listening to a highly expressive language we don’t understand. The rhythms and emotional tones of speech are formed by semantics, but even more they are formed by feelings – in that respect they approach song.’ Quite apart from the eloquence with which the composer elucidated the imperative behind his work, this is very much what we heard, for which tribute should also be paid to Volkov and his excellent orchestra. (How very different from the dispiriting Mahler and Damnation of Faust I heard them give at the Proms a few years ago.) The Ur-quality of the opening inevitably brought to mind earlier ‘creations’ of music out of the void: The Creation, Das Rheingold, Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces. This sounded very much as Harvey described it: ‘like an incarnation, the descent into human life.’ Leader Elizabeth Layton did sterling work with several taxing solos, although she was far from alone in this respect. Swarming strings and Messiaenesque chattering woodwind were keen contributors. The second of the three movements – continuous, yet distinct – is an expansion of the work Sprechgesang (for English horn and chamber ensemble). For Harvey, it is ‘concerned with the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions of domination, assertion, fear, love, etc.’, which ‘finally moves, exhausted, to mantra and a celebration of ritual language. The mantra is orchestrated and treated by shape vocoding.’ The voices actually put me in mind of an electronic version of Berio’s Sinfonia, which of course has its fair share of ‘frenetic chatter’. Passages of joy were reminiscent once again of Messiaen, who would surely have understood and shared Harvey’s concerns. There were even Romantic ghosts in the machine in the guise of virtuoso piano (splendidly performed by Lynda Cochrane) and languorous woodwind phrases. For the third movement ‘speech has a calmer purpose; it is married to a music of unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant.’ This was certainly apparent, not least in the ominous monodic passages for brass and electronics. The movement built towards a shattering, almost Brucknerian climax, before reverting to some earlier material, taken in different directions, with some further Messiaenesque activity. Divisions between work, performance and audience broke down as the sound enveloped us and took us somewhere beyond, to the transcendent. ‘The paradise of the sounding temple is imagined.’

Varèse’s Poème électronique, for pre-recorded magnetic tape, was composed for Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. (Those were the days!) It was the architect’s insistence, against considerable scepticism from Philips, which ensured that Varèse would be the composer of precisely 480 seconds of music, created second by second from both ‘real’ and purely electronic sounds. (Interestingly, much of the technical design for the pavilion was delegated to Le Corbusier’s assistant, none other than the young Xenakis.) Although the pavilion was demolished, Varèse’s music was preserved and subsequently transferred to computer. The opening bell sounds provided a link with Harvey, but soon we hurtled into an extraordinary futuristic world with a multiplicity of sounds, from organ to heavy industry. At this distance – we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary –there was occasionally something of the Heath Robinson to some of this, but every work, even that of Varèse, must eventually be classicised and take upon itself something of its own time as well as ours. The closing storm-winds set the scene for the déserts of the following, final work.

Here, in Déserts, for fifteen wind instruments, percussion (all ten players once again, including piano), and magnetic tape (1950-54), we were once again awakened by the chiming of bells. An overriding impression from both work and performance would be summed up by the word Boulez had not so long previously used at the head of the seventh of his piano Notations, as yet unpublished: Hiératique. The ghost of Varèse’s own Ionisation was far from lain. Volkov and his instrumentalists were impressively insistent, accomplishing the paradoxical feat of sounding both variegated and monolithic – in fact, rather like the three interpolated passages of ‘organised sound’. All the necessary precision and timbral starkness were there. The electronic sounds are again utterly of the twentieth century – unlike much tamer twentieth-century music – in their evocation of an age of warfare and ‘technological progress’, of deserts both natural and urban, and of what Varèse called ‘this distant inner space where no telescope can reach, where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude’. Gleaming brass was uncompromisingly Corbusier-like, as opposed to the Bauhaus constructivism of some at least of twelve-note Schoenberg; it is interesting, how often one reaches for architectural simile when thinking of Varèse, more often indeed than one does with Xenakis, of whom one might have expected it. This performance marked a fine end to an outstanding concert.