PAPPANO MORE THAN EARNS HIS MULTIPLE OVATIONS, PLUS THE BEST OF SEPTEMBER’S CLASSICAL CONCERTS
LSO/Antonio Pappano Barbican ★★★★☆
The debut of a new chief conductor is always eagerly awaited. In the case of Antonio Pappano’s debut on Wednesday night with the London Symphony Orchestra, there was an especially sharp tingle in the air. He has just stepped down from leading the Royal Opera after a record-breaking 22 years in which his tenure has been universally praised. Opera houses round the world would give anything to have him, and we should be grateful he hasstayed loyal to London.
But that raises the intriguing question: how would the specific skills of an opera conductor translate to the concert hall? Superbly, was the answer given by a concert that was brimful of colour and passion, emanating from that impatiently coaxing, expressive figure on the podium. The opening piece, Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, showed that the orchestra’s sound has already changed since Simon Rattle’s departure to something more opulent and less prismatic. As for the evening’s final piece, Sibelius’s First Symphony, the LSO and Pappano gave us a tremendous performance which combined two apparently incompatible virtues: colossal dramatic urgency and huge spaciousness. Plus, in the slow movement, a wonderful long-breathed lyricism.
All this was superb, and heartening. The modernist complications of MacMillan’s brand-new Concerto for Orchestra, the filling in the evening’s sandwich, offered a different challenge. Subtitled “Ghosts”, this was full of unruly energy barely contained by the division of its 25-minute length into four continuously played sections, mapping roughly onto the movements of a four-movement symphony. As befits the title, the piece was also a showpiece for the orchestra itself. The virtuoso skills of the players were displayed in enticing duos and trios; celeste and viola here, flute and muted trumpet there, each showing the unerring ear for colour and balance that MacMillan has always had. Pleasure in sheer craftsmanship is an underrated thing, and there was plenty to be had here.
On the level of expression, I was less certain. The opening movement had a wildly insistent energy full of jagged “Balkan” rhythms, cut off with brutal suddenness by tiny silvery sounds of harp and celeste. These presaged a slow movement touched with that Scottish “keening” melodic style that has always been MacMillan’s hallmark. Then came more ideas in bewildering succession: an evocation of American 1970s thriller scores, a queasy waltz, fleeting “ghosts” of Beethoven’s Ghost Trio and Debussy’s Trio for Flute Viola and Harp. The final section was a return to the hectic energy of the opening, giving way eventually to a hymn-like radiance, cushioned in ecstatic string sounds.
The music’s satirical energy and striving for transcendence were riveting, even though as a whole the piece felt undigested, with too many elements pulling against each other. But there was an expressive intensity and seriousness that put most of this year’s Proms commissions in the shade.
So altogether it was a rich, absorbing evening. After the last, tellingly subdued note brought Sibelius’s symphony to an end, the hall erupted in three standing ovations. It showed that Pappano’s directorship is already bearing a richly distinctive fruit, which we’ll savour for years to come. IH
This performance will be broadcast later this year on BBC Radio 3 and Marquee TV
BBC Proms, Florence + The Machine, Albert Hall ★★★★☆
The sheer number of ecstatic teenagers and themed outfits (celestial gold crowns and flowing gowns being the most popular) made it clear from the off that Symphony of Lungs was not going to be your regular Prom.
The debut of British singer-songwriter Florence Welch – and her Machine – at the BBC and Royal Albert Hall’s flagship classical event was evidence, according to some po-faced purists, of the Proms’s descent into pop-fuelled commercialism. Thousands of others, however – including 30,000 people who joined the virtual queue for same-day resale tickets – treated it like a rare opportunity to see their witchy queen of pop perform in the sort of (relatively) intimate, historical venue she was made for.
Released 15 years ago this summer, Florence and the Machine’s debut album, Lungs, was everything a chart-topping pop album shouldn’t be: intense, arty, interspersed with Gothic imagery and anchored by Welch’s howling vocals. Bursting onto the scene like the flame-haired love child of Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux and Nick Cave, Welch became the Brit award-winning poster girl for the messy, hedonistic indie rock scene of the mid Noughties – but, somehow, her star has never faded, and she has now gained a new generation of younger fans both through TikTok and her recent hit collaboration with Taylor Swift, Florida!!!
Taking to the stage in a dramatic red Rodarte gown, the 38-year-old’s anthems of teenage chaos were transformed into a soaring Medieval folk epic by conductor Jules Buckley – himself responsible for bringing a number of diverse genres to the Proms in recent years, from disco, soul and jazz to grime – his orchestra and the terrific singers from the London Contemporary Voices choir. Confessing that the range and incessant high notes were now a slight challenge (“You write songs when you’re young, drunk and thinking you’ll only sing them once, then here you are 15 years later…”), Welch’s nerves soon gave way to a party atmosphere.
Flipping the album’s original track listing on its head, she opened with Drumming Song, its pounding refrain – “Louder than sirens / Louder than bells / Sweeter than heaven / And hotter than hell” – granted an energetic new lease of life by the orchestra’s percussionists. Then came the crowd-pleasers, with her heart-rending hit cover of Candi Staton’s You’ve Got the Love and breakout single Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) provoking foot-stomping so forceful it felt as though the building might crumble beneath your feet.
An artist as radiant and talented as Welch is always going to command attention – which did, at times, make the night seem like a competition between her vocals and the efforts of Buckley’s orchestra (the understated excellence of the harpists and lutists, in particular, being somewhat overshadowed by Welch’s flouncing).
A rare moment of synergy came with the prolonged flute solo ahead of the folksy Kiss with a Fist, Welch’s exhilarating tale of a woman trapped in a toxic relationship, while the penultimate song Dog Days Are Over provided a shot in the arm of singalong-induced euphoria. It wasn’t an evening to completely silence the anti-pop critics, but treated as a career-crowning victory lap for one of Britain’s most reliably exciting singers, it was a joy. PP
Concert is on BBC Sounds now, and will be broadcast on BBC Two, date tbc
BBC Proms/ BBC Symphony Orchestra ★★★★★
Bravery is a quality the Proms audience really warms to. And last night that quality was on jaw-dropping display, from the diminutive, eccentric and madly gifted violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. She’s taken on all the big beasts of the violin concerto repertoire, and in this Prom she together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra tackled Arnold Schoenberg’s, the hardest of them all. “You’ll love it, if you open your hearts and minds” she declared in her pre-performance chat from the podium. That was a tall order. The piece is almost as hard for listeners as it is for the soloist. The harmonies are ear-bendingly strange, the musical discourse splintered into a thousand shards which assail one’s ears all at once.
Schoenberg knew very well his concerto was almost impossible, and was pleased about it. “I want the violinist’s little finger to become longer. I can wait”, he declared. Evolution has clearly obliged, because his concerto, having been vanishingly rare since its 1940 premiere is now finding new champions. Some try to reveal the ghost of romantic, Brahms-like phrases lurking under the showers of notes. Kopatchinskaja took a different route. She turned the piece into a dance, sometimes graceful as in the moments when a waltz seems to flit across the music, sometimes fierce as in the march-like rhythms of the finale, always with a surreal, foot-stamping exaggeration.
In ‘normal’ music Kopatchinskaja’s eccentricities can seem exasperating, and in the two silly encores which followed the concerto they certainly were. But in the moon-struck world of Schoenberg’s piece they felt exactly right. When she made a whirling gesture freeze as if on the edge of a precipice a ripple of amusement passed around the hall. This was refreshing. Laughter is not a feeling one normally associates with the great bogeyman of modern music.
Behind her the orchestra under the deft hand of absurdly young Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski capered and pirouetted almost as gleefully as the soloist. And here and there a gentle, diffident lyricism stole over the music, especially in the dream-like serenade of the slow movement, which seemed to emanate from some other planet.
It was altogether a marvel, and one of the absolute high points of the Proms season. But the other pieces were far from negligible. Peltokoski and the orchestra gave a lovely tranced gentleness to the opening piece, Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves, which seemed more like a dream of the piece than the thing itself. As for Shostakovich’s great Fifth Symphony, it had one or untidy moments which suggested Schoenberg’s concerto had had most of the rehearsal time. Nevertheless Peltokowski showed an unerring sense of timing in the building of the work’s climaxes, and he never made the tyro’s mistake of micro-managing the orchestra. That allowed individual players to shine, especially clarinettist Richard Hosford, who gave an aching sadness to his solo in the slow movement. Overall the performance didn’t have quite the tragic weight one hopes for, but Peltokowski is clearly a talent to watch. IH
Listen again on BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 14 September bbc.co.uk/proms
Lucerne Festival, Switzerland ★★★★★
Spare a thought for the Proms. Britain’s premier music festival, now nearing the end of its 130th season, has through pluck and ingenuity managed to give audiences a varied platter of big rep, experimental new works and some big-name orchestra and soloists. Nevertheless, its outgoing director David Pickard must surely feel a little pang of envy when he looks at Lucerne, housed in a world-class concert hall in a rich country where classical music is a way of life and musicians are unfettered by visa nightmares.
That is not to say that the Proms should copy Lucerne. It operates on a very different model, and at least one of the concerts I attended would be unthinkable in philistinic old Blighty. I am talking about an afternoon of modernist music, with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by George Benjamin, which provided 90 minutes of simmering strings on the edge of psychosis, emotionally opaque moments, and the best bid for the trombone as a serious instrument that I have ever seen.
The opening work, Benjamin’s own Concerto for Orchestra, actually did premier at the Proms in 2021, a musical memorial to his close friend and collaborator Oliver Knussen. It’s a fascinating, frantic display of an orchestra working both in unity and in their own little sound world, heading towards what feels like a peaceful resolution. The second, Berio’s Solo for Trombone and Orchestra, was a revelation, with soloist Jurgen van Rijen convincing me that the inherently comic trombone could be at times soulful, often playful and even menacing. Van Rijen’s masterful slides gave the impression of an instrument out front and utterly alone, at odds with the occasional outbursts of other sections of the orchestra.
The concert ended with Hans Abrahamsen’s Vers le Silence by Hans Abrahamsen, a composer probably best known for Let me tell you, a song cycle told from the perspective of Hamlet’s Ophelia and using only the 480 words afforded her by Shakespeare. This was a similarly difficult work, but dazzling too in its broad canvas taking in bold symphonic moments, and more meditative ones, fitfully punctuated by swerving pauses. This trilogy was a triumph, and if unsuitable for the Albert Hall, you would think that Radio 3 might be brave enough to give something so musically daring a whirl.
The main event at the weekend, though, was the chance to see the world’s greatest orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, under the baton of Christian Thielemann. It began with Schumann’s too-rarely performed Cello Concerto, with the soloist Julia Hagen making the tragedy of the human experience manifest, every expression keenly felt, and her dialogue with Thielemann sometimes feeling like that of a troubled patient with her therapist. Then, in this Bruckner anniversary year, we were treated to his First Symphony, a work unknown to me, and with less of the sturm und drang that characterises his better known symphonies such as the Eighth. Still, you could see where the Austrian was headed, and this was not some jejune work, but one alive to the inherent drama of orchestral playing. It was beautifully modulated, of course, and the playing was faultless.
A brilliant showcase of international talent, then, and one that shows the expansive, evolving nature of the western classical music tradition. BL
The Lucerne Festival continues until Sunday September 15. Details: lucernefestival.ch
BBC Proms, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle, Royal Albert Hall ★★★★★
You may, quite understandably, be unclear as to the exact meaning of Aquifer, the name Thomas Adès has given his stunning new work for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which it brought to the Proms under Simon Rattle. So was I, until by one of those odd coincidences I found it explained just a few yards away from the scene of the Proms, in Kensington Gardens. There, the flowing Diana Memorial Fountain is powered by water drawn upwards from a chalk aquifer 100 metres below ground: the aquifer is an underground layer of stone which suppresses, holds and releases water.
We can feel sure that any thought of Diana was a million miles from Adès’s imagination as he conceived his titanic piece, for what he has drawn here is a massive picture of the earth struggling to unlock its resources, a constant tension of repression and release which is coloured in the most vivid orchestral sounds. It shows Adès as an unrivalled master of large instrumental forces, and especially in the complexity and overlapping of its different elements it grips the attention constantly. In a completely different harmonic idiom, I could think only of Harrison Birtwistle’s superb Earth Dances of 1986 as a comparator, and Adès is the more immediate for listeners.
Here a wind chorale, here haunting unison strings, here blasting brass, here half a melody, veering between extremes of dynamics as you sense the accumulation of intensity and the struggle for movement. From the perfectly paced to-and-fro of tension across 20 minutes, the final section of upward-springing eruption is a tremendous release. But I do not think you necessarily need to hear this as all about water (in the way you surely have to with Debussy’s La mer, for instance): it can equally be a portrait of a deep emotional journey, a cinematic picture of the twists and turns of a life. This is a piece that boldly demonstrates the continued purpose and richness of the symphony orchestra as a creative force, and it will surely be taken up by ensembles around the world.
The score posed no terrors for the Bavarian players and Rattle, who has personally championed Adès’s music since premiering Asyla back in 1997, and who after this performance presented the composer onstage with the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. This was the orchestra’s first appearance here since Rattle took over as chief conductor last year, and the signs are very good: Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony emerged as a gloriously expansive and warm-hearted sound-world, led throughout by a stellar brass section with peerless horns.
The symphony was allowed to unfold without any of the oppressive hectoring that can dominate Bruckner, the interior lament of the Andante perfectly matched by the incisive forward movement of the Scherzo. The sinister tread of the double basses in the finale unleashed a tumult of sound, but one that remained always rounded, sculpted, and deeply humane. NK
The Proms run until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
Orchestre de Paris/Klaus Mäkelä, Royal Albert Hall ★★★★☆
Brave indeed is the orchestra that visits the Proms in this climactic part of the season and appears between the heavy-hitters of the Berlin Philharmonic last weekend and the Bavarian Radio Symphony, to come later this week. But the Orchestre de Paris – Philharmonie (to give it its clumsy full title now that it is a department of the Paris hall where it is resident) has different things to offer. A distinctive orchestral sound, three top-notch musical showpieces, and its not-so-secret weapon in the world’s most fashionable young conductor: all these added up to a concert that had the Proms audience on its feet with unrestrained enthusiasm.
If the verdict here is slightly less than wholehearted, that’s largely down to the oddly mixed impression made by that 28-year-old conductor, Klaus Mäkelä. He is a virtuoso of gesture: loose-limbed, flexible and balletic, in total command of the scores. He is a master of conjuring sounds, or rather perhaps of conjuring the impression he wants those sounds to create. Whether this quite adds up to create fully formed interpretations is another matter, but it certainly makes an impact.
The question of how French this French orchestra still sounds in a time of musical internationalism is fascinatingly open: the web woven by Debussy’s Prelude à l’après-midi d’un faune with the atmospheric solo flute of Anaïs Benoit was wholly idiomatic, but while the oboes still maintain a reedy French twang, the bassoons use German rather than French instruments, and the strings are comparatively anonymous. The raucous clarinet of Philippe Berrod and brilliant solo trumpet of Philippe Dalmasso excelled in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, along with the dashing piano solo of Jean-Baptiste Doulcet, but here the orchestral sound entirely lacked Russian depth and grit, with Mäkelä glossing over the surface of this characterful score.
In the second half, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a gold-plated orchestral show-off that rarely fails to thrill, dazzled and bewitched us with its range of sonorities, powerfully rounded brass and percussion driving forward the march to the scaffold of Berlioz’s tortured artist. If the third movement’s scene in the countryside did not quite sustain interest, with Gildas Prado’s soulful cor anglais solo echoed from high in the gallery, that highlighted the comparatively weak sound in this orchestra of the large body of strings; doubts were soon swept aside by the compelling momentum of the final exhilarating witch’s sabbath, managed with total flair by Mäkelä.
In the end, this fine Paris orchestra is not an ultimate virtuoso machine like some in this outstanding Proms season, and Mäkelä will look elsewhere for that. Orchestras are in fevered competition for his skills: having guided Paris since 2021 and Oslo since 2020, later this decade in 2027 he will take on the leadership of two of the world’s very finest ensembles, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Chicago Symphony. It is a sobering thought that this may determine the direction of international orchestral sound for a generation to come. NK
The Proms run until Sept 14; bbc.co.uk/proms
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