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Forces of nature (Proms 20-31 August 1999) London
Royal Albert Hall
08/20/1999 -
20 August 1999
György Kurtág Messages
Martin Brabbins (conductor)
BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra
21 August 1999
David Matthews Symphony No. 5, Benjamin Britten
Les illuminations
Ian Bostridge
Nicholas Cleobury (conductor)
Britten Sinfonia
23 August 1999
Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 3
Michelle DeYoung
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony
Orchestra
26 August 1999
Antoine Brumel Missa 'Et ecce terra motus
Bo Holten (conductor)
BBC Singers, His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts
Louis Andriessen Trilogy of the Last Day
Oliver Knussen (conductor)
London Sinfonietta Voices, New London Children's Choir, London Sinfonietta
31 August 1999
Igor Stravinsky Circus Polka, Judith Weir Natural
History, Frederick Delius Brigg Fair, Richard Strauss
Symphonia domestica
Dawn Upshaw
Mark Elder (conductor)
BBC Philharmonic
David Lang Cheating, Lying, Stealing, Julia Wolf
Believing, Steve Martland Horses of Instruction, Glen Branca
Movement Within, Brian Eno/Robert Wyatt, Rhett Davies Music for
Airports 1:1
Bang on a Can All-Stars
August at the Proms, after the initial showpieces that start the season,
and before the major orchestras arrive in September, is an opportunity for
imaginative programming and a showcase for the BBC's own orchestras. This
year some of the themed programmes seem not to have paid off in terms of
audience popularity, while the presence of a lollipop (or at least a
familiar symphony) on a high-risk programme has lured an appreciative
audience for the whole lot.
The UK premiere of Kurtág's Messages on 20 August wasn't,
perhaps, particularly risky. The work is only twelve minutes long including
five cough-and-shuffle breaks between six four-phrase messages. Each
message is interesting in texture, suggesting a personal relationship
between the composer and the addressee, and the text from a Cornish
gravestone is powerfully allusive in itself and strikingly set. In the vast
space of the Albert Hall, and framed by Rakhmaninov, Bartót's
near-romantic Piano Concerto No. 3 and Petrushka, the messages were
movinginly human in scale.
Mozart ran cover for another new work the next evening, with the overture
to The marriage of Figaro and the Prague Symphony framing the
world premiere of David Matthews' Symphony No. 5. The Britten
Sinfonia under Nicholas Cleobury made this sound mechanically energetic,
but not radically innovative. Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin also
found a charming performance that was not likely to frighten the horses.
But any horse with sense would be frightened by Ian Bostridge's Les
illuminations, a felinely sinister version. Bostridge is highly
theatrical, with spider-like gestures, but in a much more inward way than
Peter Pears. This is true of his singing as well.He doesn't go out to
ingratiate himself with the audience, but offers his voice as an opaque
symbol to be read like the rest of the text and music. His voice is in much
better shape than Pears's ever was, and extremely beautiful in itself,
though getting broader and darker.
Also on 21 August, a late-night prom by the BBC Symphony Chorus under
Stephen Jackson, with the organist David Goode, offered the slightly
pregant combination of Strauss's Die Göaut;ttin im Putzzimmer
and a selection of choral works dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Thoroughly
enjoyable in itself, it provided a gentle introduction (for those that
could stay awake) to das Ewig-Weibliche in John Eliot Gardiner's
performance of Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust the following
Saturday. Goethe, born 250 years ago, and the idealization of the feminine
might have been a productive theme for this year.
Bernard Haitink and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave a beautifully lucid
account of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 on 23 August. Haitink somehow
revealed a sense of wonder in a populated landscape constructed from German
musical traditions. The repetitive marches of the first movement really
sounded geological, and the scampering tunes of the third movement were not
entirely cute, or totally undermined by the movement's use in naff wildlife
documentaries. The second three movements moved strikingly from existential
despair through cheerful conventional religion to spiritual ecstasy that
mirrored the massive feel of the first movement.
Interestingly, the same ground (as it were) was covered in a much bolder,
and more sparsely attended, concert on 26 August. Brummel's Missa 'Et
ecce terra motus', composed at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
takes its title from the Gospel text (for Good Friday) which provides the
seven notes of the ground bass. The text alludes to the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem, but it is a cathedral of a mass, building twelve
voices into pillars linked by less solid elements, with a complex texture
that is both structural and decorative. Bo Holten dedicated the performance
to the victims of the Turkish earthquake.
The second part of the concert, performed by the London Sinfonietta, also
claimed to deal with destruction, the end of the world itself, but actually
delivered artifice and a surprising amount of entertainment. Andriessen's
version of the last day has a lot to do with the Breughels and Bosch,
eclectic, surreal and grimly humourous. The first movement (previously
heard in London ealier in the year) combines a dense setting for male
voices of a poem by the Dutch poet Lucebert, who died in 1994, which evokes
a post-AIDS last supper, with a grimly humourous setting of a mediaeval
poem about a talking skull, sung by a treble. Gwylim Bowen sang with
amazing professionalism, and looked terrifyingly vulnerable under the hot
lights and empty space of the hall. But, in spite of his blond curls, he
seemed to enjoy the monstrosity of what he was singing. The second movement
"Tao" set a philosophical poem about death by Lao Tzu against an early
twentieth-century Japanese vignette about a sinister knife grinder,
impressively spoken by the pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, who also played the
koto. The final movement was an even more sinister rework of Saint
Saëaut;ns's Danse macabre.
Another odd prom on 31 August returned to more positive themes of nature.
It began with Stravinsky's Circus Polka, for elephants, who hated
it, and included the European premiere of Judith Weir's Natural
History. This song cycle for soprano and orchestra set Taoist poems by
Chaung-Tzu, adapted in English by the composer, in a straightforward,
reflective way which suited Dawn Upshaw perfectly. In the second part,
Strauss's Symphonia domestica returned to the idea of a landscape
build from German music, though this time it includes a very familiar
household. (This concert was recorded for television. The audience was so
small that those in the circle were moved to the stalls, but they still
didn't exactly look packed.)
The proms in August ended close to midnight on 31 August with a concert
that probably should have been on earlier. Bang on a Can All-Stars
presented an programme which resulted from late changes but worked
splendidly. David Lang's Cheating, Lying, Stealing, put a sinister
spin on the generally feel-good idiom of minimalism in a negative self
portrait which also made an interesting counter-weight to Strauss's
self-congratulatory domesticity. Julia Wolf's Believing had the
players use extreme vibrato and other weird techniques to pull a similar
idiom apart, so that it seemed to reach its formal conclusion only by an
act of faith from the performers. And Steve Martland's Horses of
invention offered a heroic transformation of the classical minimalist
idiom. In the second part, Glen Branca's Movement within was almost
literally mind-blowing, using accumulated microtones to evoke hallucinatory
effects, after which Michael Gordon's realization of Music for airports
1:1 was a refreshing wind-down. Unfortunately, many people must have
felt like chilling out then going to sleep afterwards instead of struggling
with the last underground trains and buses to get home.
H.E. Elsom
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