MUSIC Closing rituals
BBC Proms 69, 71, 75 ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON
T
he Proms turned to Rome for the final straight. Huge crowds filled the Albert
Hall – Kensington’s Colosseum – for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Stéphane Denève, its conductor of five years, who demonstrated imperious control in Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” Overture (6 September, Prom 69). The players were as if tied to his fingers as he achieved an immaculate tutti gallop followed by a pianissimo so delicate it could have been mistaken for the wind. One sat up. Which orchestra again? The RSNO? Better than the Berlin Phil. It was disappointing that pianist Paul Lewis
gave a less than gladiatorial account of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Too tame; a lion refusing to roar. The Three Interludes from James MacMillan’s opera The Sacrifice, however, captured in a short space the twist- ing emotions of the story – feuding families, a patriarch’s deliberate walk into the line of fire, remorse – while Respighi’s Pines of Rome celebrated the city’s sturdy stone beauty until the recorded song of a nightingale flew free
of the muted orchestra in a lilies-of-the-field moment – man’s art paling beside nature’s – which still haunts 90 years after it was conceived. The privilege of performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring this year went to the Orchèstre National de France (7 September, Prom 71), which has a kinship with the piece as it was in Paris in 1913 that Nijinsky first danced its visceral vision of the future. It was not that the rioting audience didn’t under- stand it; rather that they understood it all too well. Last Tuesday the crowds couldn’t have rampaged even if they’d wanted to, so tightly were they squeezed into the arena. Daniele Gatti first shaped the impressionistic contours of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and La Mer, the one wispy and ephemeral, the other surging and elemental if not quite reaching tempest vehemence, before handing over to the silky solo bassoon to give The Rite’s evocative intonation. He conducted from memory, beaming at the grinding rhythms, allowing the brasses, the greasy trombones and whining Wagner horns a little too much weight against the vainly struggling strings. The Dances of Young Girls were overcome, although the two mademoi- selle percussionistes pounding the giant tam-tam remains an enduring image. The Proms saved the best wine till last. On the penultimate night (10 September, Prom 75), John Eliot Gardiner conducted an
astounding performance of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, this year being the 400th anniversary only of its publication in Venice, the first performance having taken place some years earlier in Mantua according to current research. The work gave birth to the performers, as it was for a 1964 attempt on the Vespers, when the early music movement was yet in its infancy, that Gardiner formed the choir from his fellow Cambridge under- graduates. Now here they were again, several generations on, bringing the work to a fruition that would have amazed even the composer. Gardiner used the spaces of the Albert Hall as if it were the basilica of St Mark’s Venice, with musicians in alcoves and galleries calling to each other across the vault, as it were. The blazing valveless trumpets unfurled their fan- fares with thrilling power as the choirs processed on to the stage singing from mem- ory and led by the crane-like chitarrones, or long-necked lutes. The soloists sang with exceptional vigour, none it seems more affected by the occasion than the tenor Alex Ashworth, who delivered with seraphic clarity the opening call to wor- ship in music borrowed from Monteverdi’s own Orfeo. If opera was transformed here into a religious service, the Albert Hall was suddenly a temple. I have never heard a more moving account of the Magnificat. God was magnified and the performance crowned a fabulous season. Rick Jones
“The most important thing in prayer and song is for us to focus on the fact that we are singing for God” (Mother Abbess)
Voices – Chant From Avignon is an album of beautiful, soothing Gregorian chant, recorded by the Benedictine Nuns of Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation in their Abbey near Avignon in Southern France.
The Nuns were ‘discovered’ after an extensive world-wide search for the best choral ensemble, and have created an album of evocative tranquility and inner-purity.
This extraordinary album is released on November 8th 2010 but can be pre-ordered now via Amazon.
The community has granted unprecedented access to their cloistered way of life through a series of films and interviews. To see these and hear preview tracks from the album, go to
www.chantfromavignon.com
www.chantfromavignon.com
18 September 2010 | THE TABLET | 37
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