BBC SO/Oramo - Mahler, 4 October 2025

Barbican Hall

Symphony no.9

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is not a young person’s work—a young person as conductor, that is, not as listener or indeed orchestral musician. There will be exceptions; there always are. It is not, though, a work to be rushed into; frankly, no Mahler symphony is, though that has not stopped many. That is not, of course, to say it need be an old person’s work; Mahler, after all, was in his later forties when he wrote it. Coincidentally or otherwise, Claudio Abbado was more or less – very slightly less, I think – the same age when he first conducted it. It benefits, at least, from a degree of maturity: musical, but also emotional and intellectual. Serious musician that he is, Sakari Oramo has wisely left it until last. There was no doubting, though, the preparation that had gone into this, his first time conducting the work. He had its measure and communicated it well to a packed Barbican audience, drawing out the best from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of which he is now its longest serving conductor. I hope we shall hear it again from him before long, but this was an auspicious, well-considered, and well-timed debut, taking nothing for granted and thereby resulting in a fresh, convincing performance of a work whose confrontation with mortality and what might lie beyond can, given the present state of the world, rarely have spoken more personally or necessarily. 

The opening was tentative and uncertain in the right way: that is, such was its mood, not a characterisation of the playing. The vast Andante comodo, often accounted Mahler’s single finest sonata-form achievement, built slowly and, by contrast, certainly. Yet, almost before one knew it, there came the first great orchestral cri de cœur, with all its multivalence and complex ambiguities. The music continued to sing, as it must. Variegated string playing, articulation in particular, was detailed – Mahler’s instructions are nothing if not detailed – and yet without fuss. How malevolent the darker timbres and harmonies sounded. I was put in mind of an observation by Adorno concerning Parsifal, so rich in implication for late Mahler in particular, of ‘eine düstere Abblendung des Klangs’, a ‘lugubrious dimming of sound’ that yet left space, even necessity, for agonies, such as those of Parsifal in and after Wagner’s second act, to play out. This was especially the case for the wind – shades of Kundry as ‘rose of Hell’ – even to the extent of according to an edge, in context rather than by design, to the purity of Daniel Pailthorpe’s flute solos, and certainly to those harp phrases (Elizabeth Bass and Elin Samuel) on the threshold of the Second Viennese School. The greater trajectory was all there, but it was properly built from detail; a broad brush, if every appropriate, could hardly be less so. Form and, if one may call it this, musical narrative unfolded with an urgency that had everything to do with understanding and nothing to do with minutes on the clock. Urgency does not and never should equate to mere speed. If, just occasionally, I felt that climaxes might have opened up further, in retrospect that single-mindedness was amply justified; far better that than sentimentalism, and there is no single way here. More importantly, the music peaked neither too early nor too frequently. Grief-laden, yet anything but mawkish, it seemed to suggest, even to say: this is how the world is. And it is, is it not? When consolation came, it had been earned and came from within. A sense of return at the movement’s close was not a case of full circle, but of revisitation given what had passed in the meantime. 

Oramo and the orchestra offered a splendidly deliberate foundation, its strength and integrity almost Klemperer-like, on which the ambiguities of the scherzo could rest, and/or from which they could grow. Overused it may be, but it is difficult not to reach for the word sardonic. Puppets danced above the abyss, somehow suspended from something that would not let them fall, something or even someone that may not, perhaps cannot, be named. Bruckner night at Wozzeck’s tavern ceded, or at least shared the stage with, sounds of the Prater and, more distant, more insidious, strains of Götterdämmerung. A Ländler corroded and transformed: what did it mean? And again, who might say? Yet, that it had meaning, whether or no it could be put into words, could hardly be doubted: a Viennese dream that not only permitted but demanded interpretation. 

The Rondo-Burleske, ‘sehr trotzig’, raged with a malevolence that may have been intrinsic or may have reflected a world to which the music ‘itself’ reacted. There was, at times, especially earlier on, a smile too, though by the close it would be but a bitter memory. Again, there was an impression of marionettes playing out their drama, or it being played out for them, through them. Who pulls the strings? Driven equally by harmony and counterpoint, it offered a final Mahlerian tribute, beleaguered and yet in its way triumphant, to Bach. Marching bands would not, could not fall silent. Indeed, for a few heartrending moments, the world of the Third Symphony seemed if not to return, then to be fondly recalled, only to be banished by something closer to the spirit of the Sixth. 

The finale followed attacca, its opening as rich in compassion as in texture and in string sentiment expressed with – not dependent on – vibrato. There were still daemons to be exercised, but there was, it seemed, a God—and He might just aid us. Clear reminiscences of the first movement made clear the nature of the journey we had taken. Violin tone was transmuted from gold into silver, even for a moment into ice that chilled the bones. There would be no easy to path, yet we could trust that there was one. Stoically, Mahler summoned the reserves to keep going. For the lights might be going off – one could hear and almost see them, one by one – but there was no alternative. The Mahlerian subject somehow, somewhere remained, a voice of humanity, the hymn’s ‘still small voice of calm’, or even a peace that passed all understanding. Having passed through a weird twilight zone, metaphysical (Wagner, Schoenberg, and others) and even political (Nono, I fancied, might have divined the Gramscian ‘Now is the time of monsters’), and having refused to let go, humanity spoke—and sang. In a ghostly revisitation of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, there was a flicker: maybe of hope, maybe even of peace, unquestionably of something. Music bore witness.

(The performance will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday 16 October at 7.30 p.m.; it will be available for thirty days thereafter on BBC Sounds.)

 

Hadelich/BBC SO/Oramo - Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, Davis, and Strauss, 24 July 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Stravinsky: Chant du rossignol
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64
Anthony Davis: Tales (Tails) of the Signifying Monkey (European premiere)
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28

Augustin Hadelich (violin)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Stravinsky seems unfashionable in London right now. Maybe it is my imagination, or maybe it is a consequence of increasingly non-existent public funding that what once stood at the very core of twentieth-century repertoire is now not considered ‘safe’ enough. I am sure, though, we used to encounter his music more frequently. Like the opera from which it is drawn, the Chant du rossignol seems always to have been curiously neglected. Goodness knows why; both are magical works and not obviously ‘difficult’. Boulez was, of course, a persistent and compelling advocate. It is perhaps especially fitting, then, that the BBC Symphony Orchestra should programme the work in his centenary year for the music festival at which Boulez was a longstanding, greatly valued guest, probably in no composer more often than Stravinsky. 

Sakari Oramo’s predecessor would surely have admired the éclat with which this performance opened and might well have heard more than a little of his own compositional history in what followed. Not that Oramo neglected Stravinsky’s ‘Russianness’ in a colourful, detailed, incisive, and magical performance that also boasted a good measure of Debussyan languor when called for, humour too (for instance in downward trombone slide). Echoes – more properly, pre-echoes – of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring were to be heard in harmony, metre, timbre, and much else. Narrative was clear and meaningful, in what duly sounded as a drama in (relative) miniature. Perhaps, though, it was the haunting stillness at the work’s heart that lingered longest in the memory. Solos – flute, violin, trumpet, and others – were all finely taken by BBC SO principals. I have little doubt Boulez would have loved the harp playing too. 

I cannot recall offhand whether Boulez ever conducted the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, but I imagine he might have done. He certainly admired the composer’s orchestral music, contrasting it and that of Berlioz to Schumann’s, in that one would never retouch or rebalance, given the composers’ perfect scoring. The opening is tricky, though it should never sound so—and certainly did not here, in a beautifully ‘natural’-sounding performance of the first movement that flowed fast without ever sounding rushed. Conductor, orchestra, and the simply outstanding soloist Augustin Hadelich captured Mendelssohn’s world, emotional as well as stylistic, to a tee. A poignant second subject was never remotely sentimentalised. Indeed, all had just the right sort of Romantic ardour and humanism to it. There was a wonderfully fresh sense of discovery too; at times, one might almost have been hearing it for the first time—and doubtless some in the audience were. The movement’s concision once again astonished me: seemingly over before it had begun, and just as dramatic in its different way as the Stravinsky. Transitions between movements were equally well judged, the central Andante given with a rapt lyricism that was far from restricted to the violin. Unendliche Melodie, as Wagner might have been compelled to admit. Like the concerto as a whole, it was deeply moving without evidently trying to be. An elfin finale, as infectious as anything in the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, emerged bright as a button, Hadelich’s playing both splendidly old-world and very much of now. The encore – which I have had to look up – was his own arrangement, effortless in idiom and despatch, of Carlos Gadel’s ‘Por una cabeza’. 

It is probably better to pass over what Boulez might have made of the European premiere of Anthony Davis’s unabashedly tonal Tales (Tails) of the Signifying Monkey, drawn from his opera of the same year (1997) Amistad. Davis clearly has a fondness, as his admirably informative programme note made clear, for unsual metres: dances in 11/8, 13/8, and so on. Likewise for ostinato: perhaps one of Stravinsky’s deadlier legacies. He knows what he is doing in writing for the orchestra too, and deftly brings in sounds from the jazz world. I could not help thinking, though, that what we heard sounded considerably over-extended and might have worked better illustrating a television series. Applause was polite yet reticent; I think the audience had it right. The United States is truly a foreign country, nowhere more so than its musical culture. (Consider Boulez in New York.)

Till Eulenspiegel is a relatively rare example of a Strauss work Boulez conducted. There is an excellent live recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, once released by the orchestra itself and which seems to be available on YouTube too. How different things might have been, had Wieland Wagner’s death not brought to an end the prospect of Boulez and him collaborating on Salome, Elektra, and Ariadne auf Naxos. An endearingly, acutely strange commercial recording of Also sprach Zarathustra suggests they would have been as different from hitherto received wisdom as the Wagner and Mahler that changed the way we hear and understand that music forever. Back to the present, Strauss’s tone poem received a finely judged performance from Oramo and the BBC SO that lacked nothing in requisite virtuosity, yet likewise did not take that virtuosity for musical substance. If I found it occasionally a little hard-driven, there was plenty of flexibility where called for. Episodes were discerningly characterised whilst taking their place in the grander narrative. Counterpoint was admirably, necessarily clear, characters and situations leaping off the page. The BBC may have been in anything but safe hands since Boulez’s time; Radio 3 is now reduced to screaming ‘Adventures in Classical’ from garish banners hung around the Royal Albert Hall. Its eponymous Symphony Orchestra continues to do very well indeed.

Komsi/BBC SO/Oramo - Howell, Weill, and Mahler, 16 April 2025

Barbican Hall

Dorothy Howell: Lamia
Kurt Weill: Der neue Orpheus, op.15
Mahler: Symphony no.4 in G major

Anu Komsi (soprano)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor, violin)

Placing little-known music with a Mahler symphony might be thought both a sensible and high-risk strategy. It will almost certainly result in the music gaining a wider audience. In the case of Dorothy Howell, though, it is difficult to imagine many wishing to extend that acquaintance. To be fair, she was young when she wrote Lamia, premiered (1919) and championed by no less than Henry Wood. Maybe there are better pieces from later on in her career. The muted reception accorded to a committed performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo said it all, alas. I cannot imagine anyone would have divined inspiration in Keats without being told so. An opening two-flute figure intrigued; like everything else, it led nowhere in particular. This was a tone poem that might just about have appealed as to those for whom Delius’s music is too goal-oriented and too radical in musical language. If introductions to introductions to introductions were your thing, you might still find it featureless, though there usually seems to be an English ‘enthusiast’ market for rhapsodic expanses of lateish-Romantic sound. 

Weill came, then, as a relief, in a rare opportunity to hear his 1925 cantata Der neue Orpheus. It continued a vaguely Grecian theme, yet is anything other than nostalgic, setting Yvan Goll’s ironic, surrealist – perhaps ironically surrealist – poem in a witty set of musical parodies taking us from Clementi to Wagner via Stravinsky, Mahler, and other milieux. And that is only one central section of its twenty-minute span. (Howell, apparently, was significantly shorter, yet felt longer.) Can one hear absence? Almost certainly, if only contextually. The absence of violins in the chamber orchestra was surely felt in that sense at least, in typically wind-led sound, adopted with immediate security and conviction of idiom by the BBC SO. The orchestral introduction, imbued with a keen sense of drama, might have been the opening to an opera. Vividly communicative, Ana Komsi’s account of the text relished its surrealism but also the humanity seemingly gained (shades already of the uneasy collaboration between Brecht and Weill?) by its alchemic conversion into vocal music. . ‘Everyone is Orpheus. Who does not know Orpheus?’ Such apparently lofty universalism was immediately deflated, even alienated, by banal detail of his vital statistics and personality. Increasing presence of Busoni in the orchestra was splendidly brought out by Oramo, reminding us not only of the identity of Weill’s teacher, but of the conductor’s recent outstanding account of his Piano Concerto, Pierrot- as well as Orpheus-like, Oramo took up his violin, as sounds of the circus took us closer to the world of Mahagonny and, especially notable, that of The Soldier’s Tale. 

If Goll and Weill’s Orpheus moved its audience in performance of a Mahler symphony, so did his interpreters. Not quite what I was expecting, this Mahler Fourth was arguably more dramatic in a stage sense and less Classical than most. It was not so much that movements in themselves and in relation to one another seemed to have been conceived separately as that conception apparently having been born more of contrast than line, even continuity. The first movement’s opening was more deliberate than usual, really holding back before launching into a spirited first subject. It had charm, style, precision, heart, and heavily inverted commas. Flexibility is written as well as called for interpretatively, but both varieties seemed emphasised here and throughout in a notably nightmarish reading, in which sardonic presentiments of the Fifth Symphony took precedence over those of neoclassicism. It was doubtless more context than anything else, but Weill at times seemed only to be just around the corner. And the music certainly breathed: not always regularly, but it breathed. 

Weird, childish, all things in good measure, the second movement got a move on without being hurried. If Oramo loved it a little too much from time to time, it was a fault in the right direction. And here a certain sort of neoclassicism did come to the fore; there were passages in which Schoenberg’s Serenade, op.23, was unquestionably a kindred spirit. It seemed to foretell both movements to come, the third unfolding ‘naturally’, almost in reaction, without trying to turn it into Bruckner. There remained in such contrast a highly modern subjectivity. Mahler’s inheritance from Beethoven was neither overlooked nor overplayed in a passionate yet far from overblown performance whose climax proved properly moving. So too did the advent of the finale, palpable as it must be in sincerity that is childlike yet never childish. Komsi’s singing contributed a further level of intercession as intermediary between us and the saints. This was rightly more Styrian than Sienese, in voice and orchestra alike. I am not sure I have ever felt more immediately involved, mediation notwithstanding, as if a definitive, magical link had been forged in the Great Chain of Being.

BBC SO/Oramo - Elgar, 13 December 2024

Barbican Hall

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, op.38

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was to have been something entirely different: Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, conducted by Andrew Davis. The death of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor led not only to a necessary change of conductor, in the guise of the orchestra’s current chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, but to a change of programme, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, a work with which Davis was more strongly associated, taking the place of Berlioz’s oratorio, as a memorial. Having been a little nonplussed by the change, I soon realised that it made greater sense as a memorial, not least on account of the tangible commitment from a chorus and orchestra – a considerable Barbican audience too – to remembering their erstwhile colleague. I had a few reservations concerning the performance itself, none especially grievous; I hope it will not seem unduly curmudgeonly to share them, alongside the many estimable qualities to what I heard. For whatever reason, they did not seem to be shared by most members of a highly enthusiastic audience. 

The principal problem was arguably the hall itself and its constricted acoustic. For once, the Royal Albert Hall might not have been too poor a venue; large-scale choral works, many of which Davis conducted there at the Proms, tend to fare better than most. Brass in particular tended to blare, something it was difficult to ignore in the Prelude. I was a little surprised that Oramo, who must by now be used to the difficulties, did not do much about them: a pity, given the fine Elgar sound from the rest of the orchestra, strings in particular. Oramo certainly showed flexibility in his reading here, though some tempo choices and changes I found  puzzling. 

David Butt Philip’s entry, ably supported by Oramo and the orchestra, announced a surprisingly Italianate way with the music: more Puccini than Wagner or Strauss, let alone Brahms. Indeed, Oramo increasingly brought things I had either not heard or had forgotten, but which seemed very much to grow out of the score, a nice line in dance rhythms included. This was certainly, at least in the first part, an operatic reading: not necessarily how Davis would have done it, but then a tribute should not be an imitation. The struggle was dramatic, it seemed, rather than overtly theological, Oramo skilled at guiding crucial transitions. Many, I know, have problems with the work on the latter ground; it even had to be given with a revised text for early performances at the Three Choirs Festival. One could surely say the same, though, of its avowed model: Parsifal. Perhaps this was a way, conscious or otherwise, ecumenically to broaden its appeal. At any rate, if I sometimes felt a little loss on Newman’s side, there was an undeniable keen sense of joint endeavour, audience included, that appeared to offer ample, even quasi-religious compensation to many. Never showing the slightest sense of strain that occasionally accompanied Butt Philip’s often thrilling and full-throated approach, Roderick Williams proved a wise and faithful guide for the journey both underway and to come. The BBC Symphony Chorus, of which Davis remained President until his death, offered performances throughout of warmth, heft, and blend that worked with, rather than against, the difficult acoustic. 

The second part, quite rightly, took us to a very different place, ushered in by string playing of which any orchestra or conductor would be proud. Sarah Connolly’s Angel’s finely spun, infinitely compassionate performance was a jewel: rooted in Newman’s words, yet equally communicating beyond them through Elgar’s music. Choral and orchestral demons were a colourful, malevolent band, ‘angelicals’ in turn beautifully contrasted. Where sometimes – only sometimes – I had found the first part meandering, Oramo here seemed ever clearer in his mission to bind the work together, motivically, harmonically, and yes, theologically. In that, Wagner returned, as did Parsifal more specifically in the passage of approach to God. Brahms did too, above all the German Requiem, most keenly in the choruses. Moreover, I could not help but find something a little Liszt in an endeavour that, perhaps despite Newman, retained a little of the Faustian. Music once again proved a superior, or at least different, agent of synthesis to words.

And yet, it is not really a matter of either/or, but rather of combination, of that shared endeavour to which I referred above. ‘Farewell, but not for ever brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow’: for some a necessity, for some doubtless an obscenity. Heard here from Connolly, at a darker time than many of us have known, it offered, however briefly, a semblance of consolation.

Prom 39: Hartwig/BBC SO/Oramo - Turnage, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar, 15 August 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Turnage: Time Flies (UK premiere)
Vaughan Williams: Tuba Concerto in F minor
Elgar: Symphony no.1 in A-flat major, op.55

Constantin Hartwig (tuba)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Three very different English composers were to be heard here, in excellent performances from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. Elgar’s First Symphony was for me unquestionably the highlight, but the varied conspectus will have offered something for many. It is especially welcome just now to be reminded that, notwithstanding unremitting hostility from our fathomlessly philistine government and media, there can still be something to celebrate in English artistic endeavours, past and present. Nadine Dorries does not yet hold all the cultural cards.  

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Time Flies is a co-commission from the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and the BBC SO. Its premiere, like so many, fell victim to Covid, as did the Tokyo Olympic Games at which it was due to take place. The piece’s three movements, ‘London Time’, ‘Hamburg Time’ and ‘Tokyo Time’, the last considerably more extended than its predecessors, last about twenty-five minutes in total. ‘London Time’ opened with an urban confidence, metallic and syncopated, perhaps more redolent of London a dozen years ago than now. Upbeat and playful, that opening material nonetheless fell downward through disorienting, corrosive chromaticism, until we reached one of Turnage’s trademark saxophone solos, prior to a final section in which various tendencies are combined. Hope for the future? Perhaps.

The opening trumpets of ‘Hamburg Time’ seemed to recall Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man or, after a while, the Janáček of the Sinfonietta. Stravinsky too came to mind, especially as woodwind became more prominent. But these were ghosts; Turnage’s is the fundamental voice. A sense of wide-open space similarly dissolved in unease, reassertion of something perhaps not so very different from socialist or at least collectivist realism the hallmark of what follows. Jazz rhythms, sonorities, and attack of ‘Tokyo Times’ were refreshingly distinct from faded orientalist tropes. Turnage evokes them, of course, rather than simply recreating them, another sign of Stravinsky’s presence (perhaps Henze’s too). An enigmatic chorale at the centre—post-Messiaen, or is it post-Weill?— cautioned against easy answers.

Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto was treated to a splendidly nimble reading from Constantin Hartwig and the orchestra. The first movement’s liveliness was justly ambiguous, culminating in a beautifully played cadenza imbued with a sense of longing the more impressive for not being milked. The central ‘Romanza’ offered a fine instance in miniature of Vaughan Williams’s ability to create something folklike that is entirely composed rather than found. Again, there was longing without cloying, let alone sentimentality. The tuba part sounded at times almost like a descant, albeit amidst or beneath orchestral textures, at any rate in intriguing counterpoint. The finale offered darker, even diabolical, play not so distant perhaps from Prokofiev, though certainly speaking with a different accent. Another cadenza, different in character, proved equally fine in execution. A sudden end underlined the composer’s achievement in concision, never outstaying his welcome. That, alas, is more than can be said for a dreary encore, apparently Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, which served mostly to underline Vaughan Williams’s skill in tuba-writing.

Oramo’s studied tempo for the opening of the Elgar avoided sentimentality without going down the more common road of swiftness. Articulation further underlined a premonition of shock, even shellshock. When the full orchestra entered, it sounded glorious, as much maestoso as Elgarian nobilmente, without a tinge of regret. Did it, though, lead to the Allegro material, or was it more a matter of sectional contrast? I missed something, a sense of connection, however intangible, characterising performances otherwise as different as Boult and Barenboim. That, however, was my only doubt concerning this fine performance; given the excellence of everything else, I am happy to allow the fault may have been mine. For Oramo captured even-handedly Elgar’s Wagnerian and Brahmsian tendencies; as did the BBC SO’s sound. And the return of the opening material unquestionably arose from preceding breakdown, mood-swings necessitating something both old and new. It was not only Brahms and Wagner, though: the most liminal qualities of this movement evoked, yet never merely recreated, both featherlight Mendelssohn and phantasmagorial Strauss, the latter especially at the point of disturbing recapitulatory collapse. If the frame of reference were not so wide as that of Barenboim’s extraordinary recent performances, we had likewise travelled a long way from the Boultian ascendancy.

The second movement similarly had a Mendelssohn-cum-Brahms underpinning to its steely (anti?)-militarism. As with Mahler, who increasingly came to mind, there were startling new vistas to witness, though the light, often the half-light, crucially was different in quality. For all the alleged serenity of the third movement, there were darker forces at work too. Harmonies summoned Hagen from his watch. At the close, there prevailed a rapt inwardness not so different from Schumann’s Innigkeit, albeit exquisitely and even tragically late. Disorientation, even brokenness, marked the onset of the finale, the question being ‘is this irreparable?’ It was no easy question to answer, a struggle of Brahmsian order indicated. If here, Elgar comes perilously close on occasion to imitation of Brahms, it is a fault in the right direction—and here a winning one. Ultimately, nobility in both work and performance won out, not despite but on account of the slings and arrows.

 

Kulman/Skelton/BBC SO/Oramo - Mozart, Larcher, and Mahler, 22 February 2019

Barbican Hall

Mozart: Symphony no.35 in D major, KV 385, ‘Haffner’

Thomas Larcher: Nocturne – Insomnia

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde

Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano)

Stuart Skelton (tenor)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

A strange concert, this, in which the Barbican Hall proved Mahler’s enemy in particular. In a half-reasonable world, London would have a decent orchestral concert hall; let us hope that plans to give the London Symphony Orchestra a new home will come to something sooner rather than later. The LSO sounds transformed when heard elsewhere – even at the more than problematical Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. Other orchestras, even when, like the BBC Symphony Orchestra, they play at the Barbican with some regularity, often experience greater difficulties. Woodwind playing in particular here sounded distinctly odd, even crude, at least from where I was seated; the sound could not remotely have corresponded to how the musicians were ‘really’ playing. A new hall cannot come soon enough.

The two pieces in the first half suffered less. Mozart’s Haffner Symphony had an excellent start, the first movement cultivated, warm, nicely phrased, and directed – if occasionally a little fussy. Its tonal and motivic drama registered with strength and meaning, having one marvel at the composer’s concision. The Andante had many similar virtues, yet ultimately Sakari Oramo’s vision had one missing both warmth and charm. It was very much on the fast side: not necessarily a problem in itself, had it yielded more. This was Mozart progressing efficiently rather than having us enter a garden of delights. If the minuet and trio were at times also a little plain, their direction was clear. The finale, alas, was driven so mercilessly as to lose much of its humanity. It can be taken as fleet as you like, but speed should never be an end in itself, still less a cause for hardening. If only the three succeeding movements had been at the same level as the first.

Thomas Larcher’s ensemble piece, Nocturne-Insomnia, was written in 2007-8 and revised in 2017. Its two parts correspond audibly and meaningfully to the two words of the title, so much so as to offer something not so very different from a post-romantic tone poem. We heard a keen ear for harmony and how to make broadly tonal harmonies sound once again new(ish). What one might have expected to sound commonplace here sounded hard-won, the first part strangely reminiscent of a Bruckner Adagio. The music wound down, as it had, in retrospect, wound up, leading us far from what we had been led to expect, insomnia upon us. Even the coda of apparent sleep at the close, high string harmonics and accordion, sounded provisional, ready to be disrupted.

Larcher’s piece received, for me at least, the most compelling performance, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde only intermittently convincing, let alone moving, until the great final movement. The ferocity of the opening took me by surprise, although it was probably more a matter of the congested Barbican acoustic than anything else. Stuart Skelton had no difficulty making himself heard in this ‘Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’, although his performance here and elsewhere was not without effort. (I suspect he may not have been well.) There was, rightly, bitter anger to be heard at times, for instance when he told us of the ‘wild-gespenstische Gestalt’ amongst the graves. At any rate, his diction was excellent, set against admirable orchestral clarity from the BBC SO and Oramo. The orchestra sounded as if framing a finely-etched painting in ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’. Set against the fine burgundy pinot noir of Elisabeth Kulman’s mezzo, all that lacked was a sense of the orchestral moments of painting coming to life, of movement rather than a frieze. It is autumn, after all, not winter. The third movement, ‘Von der Jugend’, would have benefited from greater charm, however ironic, though its chinoiserie was piquant enough. By now, alas, Skelton seemed all too audibly to be struggling.

Oramo’s stiffness of gear change in ‘Von der Schönheit’ sounded strange, as did the blatant vulgarity of the brass sound (again, perhaps partly the fault of the acoustic). It all sounded a little too close to Shostakovich. The more overtly inward moments of ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’ fared better, the rest oddly unsettled. Nevertheless, the darkness of the opening to ‘Der Abschied’ sounded a necessary note of fatal certainty, at first a sharper-etched successor to the fourth movement of the Third Symphony, before proceeding along its own, very different path. The brook, ‘der Bach’, suggested a now unattainable Beethovenian pastorale: our glance back towards something no longer possible. If balances were often less than ideal, there remained something plausible to the alienation that even that elicited. At last, I realised what had truly been missing (as well as a better hall): a sense that this was symphony as much as song cycle. It was too late for that really to be put right, but the close, from that long orchestral interlude onwards, vouchsafed a taste of that richer alternative.

First Night of the Proms: Gabetta/BBC SO/Oramo - Tchaikovsky, Elgar, and Prokofiev, 15 July 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Tchaikovsky – Fantasy Overture: Romeo and Juliet

Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor, op.85
Prokofiev – Cantata: Alexander Nevsky, op.78


Sol Gabetta (cello)
Olga Borodina (mezzo-soprano)
BBC National Chorus of Wales (chorus master: Adrian Partington)
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Adrian Partington)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

 

What to make of the unannounced decision to open this concert with the Marseillaise? I am sure it was well intended, and perhaps should leave it at that. Music, especially avowedly political music, has associations, though, and what many, but not all, English and French listeners might understand as solidarity following the previous night’s carnage in Nice, might sound rather different to a listener from, say, the Maghreb. Nationalism is, after all, a big part of the problem – as London has rediscovered with a vengeance over the past few weeks. The issue of ‘national anthems’ is fraught too; ours, in the (Dis)United Kingdom is about as divisive as it could be, eliding membership of a nation with monarchism and thus necessarily defining republicanism as a foe within. French revolutionaries, insisting on national sovereignty, offered a not entirely dissimilar binary opposition: that, ultimately, led to the execution of Louis XVI, who, having a veto, could not be part of the nation, which, in a time of emergency, led to one particular conclusion. It also led to – well, we know the rest. Returning to the Royal – yes, Royal – Albert Hall, applause at the end heightened the oddness. If the opening number were a sign of respect, however problematical – and that is how I took it, standing like everyone else – then why would one applaud? Might an aestheticised version of the anthem, for instance that of Berlioz, not have been another option? I felt conflicted, then, but I seem to have been in a minority; many were clearly inspired by the hope and solidarity they felt had been afforded.

 

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet sounded, in this context, especially dark in its fatal opening bars. The introduction took its time, pace gathering with a proper harmonic foundation; Sakari Oramo is far too musical a conductor to whip up artificial ‘excitement’. The Allegro sounded turbulent indeed, counterpoint nicely Berliozian (should that not be too much of a paradox). The BBC Symphony Orchestra played the ‘Love’ theme gorgeously, without a hint of vulgarity. On more than one occasion, the harp stole our hearts, although so, to be fair, did the BBC woodwind. Tension between programme and material was productively explored, so to enthral and indeed to move all the more. There could certainly be no doubting the strength of the partnership between the BBC SO and Oramo.

 

Sol Gabetta joined them next for the Elgar Cello Concerto, with equally fine results. In the first movement, the Moderato material proved very much the child of the preceding Adagio, transition emotionally as well as technically seamless, whilst remaining a transition nonetheless. Much the same might be said of the transition between first and second groups; although the mood lifted in some respects, it remained dependent (secondary, one might say) upon what had come before. It was not all doom and gloom, by any means; Elgar’s Mendelssohnian inheritance came sparklingly to life at times. Underlying sadness, however, remained inescapable. The background of German, even leipzigerisch, Romanticism was also present in the scherzo; it sometimes came into the foreground too, albeit without banishing unease entirely. Elgar’s modernity, even modernism, was as unquestionable as its roots. (Applause and bronchial outpourings were most unwelcome at the movement’s close.) There was nothing morose about the Adagio, although it certainly sounded deeply felt. It was, rather, passionately songful, with wonderfully hushed tones too to relish, both from Gabetta and the orchestra. Dialogue and incitement were the generative order of the day in the final movement. Light and shade were expertly judged, likewise harmonic motion. Kinship with Elgar’s symphonies was clear, although, by the same token, this was decidedly later music too, almost an English cousin to Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ultimate weight was placed on the finale, and rightly so. Gabetta returned to the stage, following justly warm applause, to perform Pēteris Vasks’s Dolicissimo, her solo vocal as well as instrumental; this was an auspicious Proms debut indeed.

 

The second half was given over to Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky Cantata, based on the composer’s score for Eisenstein’s film of that name. Its nationalism can hardly fail to make one uneasy too; Stalin is quoted in the Proms programme as having declared to the director, ‘Sergey Mikhailovich, you’re a good Bolshevik after all!’ Not that Stalinism by this stage had so very much to do with Bolshevism, but anyway… Prokofiev, awkwardly for many of us who admire him, often, although not always, seemed to flourish in such circumstances. Those who would have us believe that art is somehow removed from politics could not be more wrong; more to the point, their protestations could not be more pernicious. However much one might want to wish away awkward questions, such as over the Marseillaise, one cannot – and should not.

 

The opening orchestral number, ‘Russia under the Mongolian Yoke’, was cold yet colourful, just as it should be. The ‘Song of Alexander Nevsky’ revealed choral forces (both the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC National Chorus of Wales) both weighty and clear. Prokofiev’s homophonic writing helps in the latter respect, of course, but only helps. The ‘patriotism’ and militarism of the words – ‘Ah, how we fought, how we hacked them down!’, ‘Those who invade Russia will meet death,’ etc. – is all the more perturbing when performed with such musical conviction as here. An impeccably post-Mussorgskian orchestral opening announced ‘The Crusaders in Pskov’, the dissonances of course quite Prokofiev’s own, harking back to The Fiery Angel and forward to Romeo and Juliet. Even here, in ‘socialist realist’ land, there is some of the bite of the more youthful composer’s acerbity – and so there was in performance. Echoes of Boris Godunov sounded all the more strongly as the number progressed. One could hear what must have attracted Claudio Abbado to this music.

 

The following chorus, ‘Arise, Russian People’, provided a not un-Mussorgskian contrast. Motor rhythms in particular rendered the composer’s identity unmistakeagble. Glockenspiel and xylophone offered the most enjoyable of rejoicing later on. ‘The Battle on the Ice’ is the longest number in the cantata; here it proved very much the musical and emotional heart too. Its introduction was not only atmospheric, but atmospheric in a filmic way. Oramo brought out the glassy violas at dawn to strike a proper chill. Still more chilling was the barbarism of war proper, those motor rhythms and grinding dissonances once again proving the engine of progress; the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony hovered not so far in the musical future, whilst Mussorgsky’s shadow was, once again, rarely far from the aural stage. Eisenstein came to the eyes of our imagination. Olga Borodina walked onto the stage for ‘The Field of the Dead’, seemingly as an angel of death. And yet she sounded, in her ineffably Russian fashion, a note of consolation as well as one of tragedy. This contralto-like rendition held the hall spellbound. The final chorus, ‘Alexander’s Entry into Pskov’, struck a more difficult note. Now is not the time, to put it mildly, for patriotic rejoicing in London, and disconcerting it sounded, even when of a ‘foreign’ variety. It was magnificently done, though, chorus, orchestra, and conductor alike clearly relishing their musical task. Perhaps they had succeeded in putting the words to one side.

BBC SO/Oramo - Mahler, Symphony no.3, 24 September 2015

Barbican Hall

Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano)

Trinity Boys Choir (chorus master: David Swinson)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Jackson)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

 

No orchestra benefits from the dreadful acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall; given the frequency of its Proms performances, no orchestra therefore suffers so much from that acoustic as the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In a work of the scale of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the Barbican might seem to offer the opposite problem. There were times when the hall did feel a little on the small side, the acoustic becoming unduly congested, but for the most part, this performance from the BBC SO and Sakari Oramo convinced, both on its own terms and those of the hall.

 

There was certainly a good sense even at the very opening of the first movement of how Mahler prolongs, twists, transforms phrases to afford motivic and other development over its great span. (One can perhaps overemphasise the length of the work: great by symphonic standards, true, but hardly by those of Wagner, to whom Mahler perhaps owes most of all.) The dryness of the acoustic permitted us to hear a good deal of instrumental detail, not least the notes in downward glissandi, and in general militated against a soft-centred, generic ‘late Romanticism’ which tends to sentimentalise Mahler and assimilate him to quite the wrong sort of imagined Vienna. I could, for instance, imagine the sound having elicited an admiring nod from Boulez. Echoes of the Second Symphony and presentiments of what was to come (‘O Mensch!’ in particular) were readily apparent. What to make of them? Perhaps that was for us to decide. For the performance of the marching music was well judged in its ambiguity. ‘false optimism’ would be too pat; there was something here perhaps beyond conventional meaning, or at least verbal meaning. Later, of course, the material took a considerably darker turn and properly chilled, its roots in imagined village revelries and urban militarism notwithstanding. ‘Politics in a new key?’ Perhaps. Aspirant musical cinematography, its metaphysical underpinning, and provoked reflections did not, however, work against structure; one could certainly perceive the wood for the trees. That structure was rather infused with formal dynamism as well as local colour and flavour.

 

I had a few doubts concerning the second and third movements, which did not, I think, entirely avoid a sense of lingering a little too long, of sprawl. Otherwise, however, there was some beautiful moments – and not just those of wondrous hush. The second movement was unusually acerbic: no unduly cloying sweetness here, which is not, of course, to say no sweetness. There was more than a hint of the Totentanz. Perhaps detail slightly overwhelmed the whole, especially towards the end, but when compared to the mauling Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic gave this symphony a few years ago, this was a model of cohesion. The third movement opened as bracing in its – an inevitable metaphor, now – mountain air as Webern’s music. However, countervailing and/or differing forces ensured the multi-dimensionality of the drama – and of our response.

 

Karen Cargill brought the appealing nature and character of her voice to sound as one with the nature and character of the music in the fourth movement: not just colour, depth, and vibrato, but her use of the words, with respect to meaning and also to their musical quality. Orchestral stillness surrounded them and yet, as Galileo might have said, the music moved – in more sense than one. The fifth movement was appropriately child-like, although certainly not childish. Mahler’s alienated soul rarely permits the unmediated, however much it might long for it. . The Trinity boys offered not only very impressive diction but also a splendidly ‘Continental’ sound: more St John’s than King’s. Cargill was able here to show a more urgent side to her Lieder-singing, hers a dignified and illuminating performance.

 

Dignity was also the watchword of the final Adagio, especially its opening. The acoustic was not ideal for climaxes but did not too seriously detract either. Oramo offered a warm, rich account, the BBC strings and later other instruments giving a wonderful impression of chamber music writ large, almost as if this were the String Quartet Mahler never wrote. The music was chaste and yet suffused with longing, simple yet complex, private yet public: yes, one could certainly think of this and feel it as ‘what love tells me’. This truly sounded, and I can think of few greater compliments, as if it were Mahler’s voice speaking. But might not the audience have allowed us even a second or two of space for reflection before applause?

Prom 28 - D'Orazio/BBC SO/Oramo: Beethoven, Brett Dean, and Stravinsky, 7 August 2014

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven – Egmont, op.84: Overture

Brett Dean – Electric Preludes

Stravinsky – Oedipus Rex

 
Francesco D’Orazio (electric violin)

Oedipus – Allan Clayton

Jocasta – Hilary Summers

Creon – Juha Uusitalo

Tiresias – Brindley Sherratt

Messenger – Duncan Rock

Shepherd – Samuel Boden

Speaker – Rory Kinnear

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Jackson)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

I admit that I came to this concert mostly with the second half in mind. It was a more than pleasant surprise, then, also to find a good deal more to enjoy before the interval than I had expected. It is not, of course, that I do not think the world of the Egmont Overture, but I have increasingly become weary of the state of present-day orchestral Beethoven performance. (Oddly, the problems bedevilling symphonic Beethoven seem less apparent or at least far less widespread in solo and chamber music.) Sakari Oramo’s account with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, then, came as a breath of fresh air. The introduction was full of suspense and foreboding, unfolding at a tempo that simply sounded ‘right’ (which is not, of course, to say that another could not). Already there was a proper sense of the mystery of Beethovenian development. The transition to the main Allegro was well handled, and throughout there was a good sense of formal dynamism. Characterful woodwind and forthright brass (admittedly, not always ideally precise) added a great deal. The ‘Victory Symphony’ at the end – I know that it is not actually entitled as such here – was perhaps a touch harried, but if a shortcoming, it was one that was readily forgiven. This was a real Beethoven performance.

 

Brett Dean’s Electric Preludes, for electric violin and orchestral strings, received its first Proms performance, Francesco D’Orazio joining the orchestra. In six ‘character pieces’, some of them continuous, Dean’s work explores, in his words, ‘the intersection between high instrumental virtuosity of a “classical” nature on the one hand and sound-worlds that are only possible with electronics on the other, all commented upon by an essentially “unplugged” string chamber orchestra’. As a summary, that seemed to me to tally very well with what I heard. The first movement, ‘Abandoned Playground’ is scurrying, at times almost filmic in quality and ‘atmosphere’, though perhaps a little repetitive. Despite its inspiration by indigenous painting from around Papunya, in Australia’s Northern Territory, the second movement sounded – at least, impressionistically, to me – more ‘abstract’, though perhaps matters would be different if one knew the art.  The short ‘Peripetea’ that follows, fast and highly rhythmical, had a sense, both as work and performance, of providing what it says, a dramatic turning-point. A slow movement, ‘The Beyond of Mirrors’, seemed more fully to emphasise electronic sounds, and yet at the same time to engage in ‘traditional’ violin and string fantasy. So too, in another mood, did the following ‘Perpetuum mobile’, which put me in mind almost of electric Prokofiev (the finale to the Second Violin Concerto). Its lengthy cadenza seemed perhaps to outstay its welcome, but there could be no gainsaying, here or elsewhere, D’Orazio’s command of technique, idiom, and expression. Likewise, the BBC SO sounded reinvigorated under its new Principal Conductor. The final ‘Berceuse’ traces an unhurried path from a dark, almost growling opening to quiet ecstasy – or so it sounded here in what seemed to me an excellent performance.

 

There followed an equally excellent performance of Oedipus Rex, in which the singularity of this ‘opera-oratorio’ announced itself as only it can, whether through form, language, or that oppressive atmosphere engendered by the pervasive minor third and its implications. The orchestra and Oramo continued to be on fine form, now joined by soloists, men’s voices from both the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Chorus, and Rory Kinnear, a splendid narrator throughout, declamatory without a hint of the excessive ‘ac-tor-li-ness’ which often comes into play here. Stravinsky’s opening chorus was splendidly attacked by chorus and orchestra alike, truly plunging us into the drama. Motor rhythms and ostinato made one all the more aware than usual of Poulenc’s blatant plagiarism in Dialogues des Carmélites (not that Stravinsky, given his record, need have disapproved). The aggression of neo-Classicism was as apparent in Oedipus’s ensuing claim of deliverance as in, say, the Octet; there is nothing placid about this æsthetic. I especially liked the clearly questioning choral ‘Quid fakiendum, Oedipus, ut liberemur?’ There soon followed what for me was the only real blot on the performance, the dry, wooden solo from Juha Uusitalo’s Creon, not helped by a pronounced vocal wobble. An intriguing, quasi-liturgical sense of versicle and response between ensuing chorus and Oedipus (‘Solve, solve, solve!’ ‘Pollikeor divinabo!’ etc.) swiftly compensated. Brindley Sherratt’s Tiresias sounded ‘old’ in character but without detriment to his fine musical delivery, precise and clear of tone, declamatory yet most definitely ‘sung’. The oddness of Stravinsky’s tenor writing constantly forced itself upon one’s attention, at least as much here as in, say, The Flood, but Allan Clayton coped – indeed, more than coped – very well.

 

The second act brings the extraordinary entrance of Jocasta. I mean it as no disrespect to the rest of the cast when I say that Hilary Summers truly stole the show with her unmistakeable contralto, somehow wonderfully archaic in a Mediterranean sense. Stylistically, she sounded just right, ‘operatic’ in Stravinsky’s utterly personal way (all the more so, the more ‘impersonal’ he might try to be). Oramo’s urgent yet spacious pacing seemed well-nigh ideal here, whilst choral imprecations of Fate hammered home their ritualistic point. Jocasta being joined by Oedipus, we heard what registered wonderfully as both parody and instantiation of the operatic duet. Indeed, it was a strength of the performance as a whole that issues of genre seemed, in unforced fashion, to come so strongly to the fore. Duncan Rock’s arrival as Messenger had one wishing he might have sung Creon too: his was a thoughtful, expressive performance, as was that of Samuel Boden as Shepherd, whose sappy tenor dealt so well with the vocal awkwardness of Stravinsky’s writing as almost to vanquish it. (It should not be entirely vanquished, of course, since it is a crucial part of the work and its ‘expressive’ – to use a loaded word in any Stravinskian context – power.) The weird jauntiness of the chorus, ‘Mulier in vestibulo’ led inexorably, as in performance it must, to the stone death of ‘Tibi valedico, Oedipus, tibi valedico’. Oramo and his forces had much to be proud of in this concert.