ARTS RICK JONES RAISING THE ROOF
The BBC Proms, London’s great festival of summer music, begins this weekend. Our music critic chooses choral highlights, with help from the conductor of the Last Night
T
his year’s Proms highlights are the epic scores based on poetic or reli- gious texts performed by sprawling orchestras and hun-
dreds of singers in long ranks reaching up to the organ loft. There is nothing more awesome than the sight of a vast choral society, with ritual precision and solemn demeanours, ris- ing as one in its concert rags and filling the glass dome with sound. With only a slight sense of irony, the director of the Proms, Roger Wright, the son of an Anglican vicar, has pro- grammed them all
on the Sabbath,
designating them Choral Sundays. They begin this Sunday (17 July) with the monster: Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony, which requires two orchestras (BBC National Orchestra of Wales and BBC Concert Orchestra) and eight choirs. Written between 1919 and 1927, the number of performances has not yet reached double figures. Tickets sold out within hours – although the £5 tickets for promming (standing in the arena in front of the orchestra) are, as always, available only on the day. The rows of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses sit motionless for half the work, holding the audience in dramatic suspense before rising to sing the great fourth-century song of praise, Te Deum Laudamus. Although Brian had no strong religious convictions, the sentiments expressed in the ancient text – praise to the maker, gratitude for the com- forting spirit, confidence in the future – reflect spiritual urges deep in humanity’s collective psyche. Even in today’s secular culture, religious
texts are still favoured for festal gatherings. While society awaits suitable screeds from the humanists, we will continue as crowds to contemplate death through the requiem (even Brahms’ non-religious version uses extracts from the Bible). The Choral Sundays include those by Verdi, Mozart and Britten. Verdi’s (24 July) sold out almost as soon as the Gothic, given the stellar soloists (including Marina Poplavskaya and Joseph Calleja, two of the really hot opera stars of the moment) plus the BBC Symphony Orchestra and three enor- mous choirs conducted by Semyon Bychkov. Mozart’s Requiem (21 August) has fewer
performers, but the choir Polyphony (with the City of London Sinfonia and soloists including tenor Ian Bostridge) are conducted by their founder Stephen Layton, the finest choral conductor in the country. Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem (14 August) is not actu- ally a choral work and was written to express the composer’s horror at the onset of war. The movements are named according to the Mass (Lacrymosa, Dies Irae and so on), and the music is so explicit that words are unnecessary. The choir stands only to sing the composer’s Cantata Misericordium which tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Jirí Belohlávek con- ducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Singers plus Trinity Boys Choir. Mendelssohn’s Elijah (28 August) is per- formed by youth choirs and an orchestra of period instruments, the Gabrieli Players, con- ducted by Paul McCreesh. Authenticists tend to be swallowed up by the vast cavern of the Royal Albert Hall, as the world they imitate knew no such performing space. This would be best heard on radio, which is interested only in the acoustics between the sound and the microphone. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (4 September) concludes the Choral Sundays with Colin Davis conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with a solo line-up including mezzo Sarah Connolly and bass Matthew Rose. The chorus is one of the eight choirs singing Brian’s Gothic, but in Beethoven performs alone. Most choirs resent sharing. Pity then the poor BBC Symphony Chorus which was recently told to make room for the Philharmonia Chorus when the two perform Beethoven’s Choral Symphony (31 August) in a mid-week Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson. The BBC performs the Ode to Joy from mem- ory, but the Philharmonia, alas, does not. All men may not be brothers. The secular choral highlight is Mahler’s early work Das klagende Lied (7 August), which tells the story of a murderer tormented by a tune played by a pipe hollowed from the bone of one of his victims. It is performed by BBC forces under Edward Gardner, musical director of English National Opera, who will conduct the Last Night (10 September). “It’s
Edward Gardner, who will be conducting the Last Night of the Proms
the one classical concert which is completely in the nation’s consciousness and it’s wonderful to be involved in it. I’m looking forward to it enormously,” he said. For his part, Gardner has earmarked the
two Brahms concerts played by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink (19, 20 August). Each contains a symphony (Nos 3 and 4 respectively) and piano concerto (Nos 1 and 2 likewise) with soloist Emanuel Ax. At 82, Haitink is one of the world’s most respected conductors. Many will have gone straight for Gustavo Dudamel’s concert with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra (5 August), as their pre- vious visit, when they donned their national colours and jived, has become known as “the greatest Prom of all time”. They perform Mahler’s ResurrectionSymphony with Nordic soloists Miah Persson and Anna Larsson plus the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. I ask Gardner if he was ever a prommer.
“Ye-ah,” he says. I’ve asked a silly question. “I like to stand because that’s definitely the best sound. But what I really used to love is the late night Proms when they weren’t completely packed and you could just lie on the floor.” The pick of late-night concerts is the com-
memoration of Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria 400 years after his death (4 August). The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips perform his Officium defunctorum of 1605, written for the funeral of his employer the Dowager Empress Maria, sister of Philip II of Spain.
“I love conducting at the Proms,” Edward Gardner enthuses. “A full Albert Hall – 5,000 people – can turn it into the most epic or most intimate event. It’s just the most fantastic atmosphere you ever get as a classical musician.”
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