Friday, August 9, 2024
Royal Albert Hall, London
We were summoned for 18:00, for this early-evening Prom, which culminated in Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, his farewell to the extravagant, large-scale symphonic poem, opening and closing in darkness, daytime activities focussed on climbing a mountain with all the thrills and spills involved, including coming back down. Scored for the largest orchestra Strauss ever used, including a contingent of extra brass (sixteen players), offstage, for only a relative few seconds to introduce a distant hunt.
Sakari Oramo conducted an engrossing fifty-three-minute account that embraced symphonism, onomatopoeia, local detail, and also the deeper reflections – about being alive – that this masterpiece surely distils. The BBCSO was in heroic form, whether dialoguing with Nature, fearless trumpets (top Cs if not higher), a sense of excitement as the summit is reached and emblazoned, the palpable awe when taking in the view, the eerie suspense of an imminent storm on the return journey – a tempest musically aleatoric, or so it seems – and the profound thoughts that follow such a life-changing achievement, lingered over generously, played radiantly as Night and silence take hold.
Opening the concert, the late Kaija Saariaho’s Mirage – intense, of strange invocations, Anssi Karttunen’s cello as shaman and soprano Silja Aalto as a woman, unstinting in their delivery to get the evening off to a dramatic start.
By contrast. the Mozart Piano Concerto that is Number Nine in Ludwig Köchel’s catalogue (entitled ‘Jeunehomme’ if written for a young lady), his breakthrough work in the genre, the piano entering almost immediately, a very stylish performance, soloist, conductor and orchestra as-one, the first movement elegant, Seong-Jin Cho effortlessly trilling himself back following the orchestra’s exposition into the intimacies of the music-making, articulate, affectionate. The slow movement was heavenly, the Finale, with its interpolated Minuet, here gently danced, enjoyed poised outer sections, with delightful oboe detail shining through. First-movement cadenza by the composer. 11/10 on the pleasure scale. Make that 12 with Cho’s exquisite encore, the ‘Minuet’ middle movement from Ravel’s Sonatine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021k0t
Thank you for this great review, Colin. What had been troubling me with so many of this years Proms has been the abysmal standard of the broadcasts. This one was not too bad. The LPO one was ok in parts but with random dynamic compression and some weird wind balances The poor RPO’s Prom very well played was ruined by truly awful balances with the brass where they should have stood tall disappearing j to the distance. As you listen via the broadcasts, it would be a service if you could show up the bad ones which you must have experienced. I was talking to a recording engineer yesterday who said he turned off the RPO prom it sounded so bad. The R3 broadcasts of over 40 years ago were often far beater than almost anything now. The BBC can do it. The LPO prom with Ed Gardner conducting Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius was superb.
HI Laurie, I agree about the sound for the RPO prom, which is the reason I didn’t review it as the relay was obviously doing an injustice to the performances, whereas the BBC Phil’s Turangalila was superb. Colin
https://www.colinscolumn.com/bbc-proms-2024-prom-17-royal-philharmonic-orchestra-ladies-of-philharmonia-chorus-vasily-petrenko-conducts-charles-ivess-three-places-in-new-england-debussys-trois-nocturnes-and-tcha/
https://www.colinscolumn.com/bbc-proms-2024-prom-15-bbc-philharmonic-nicholas-collon-conducts-anna-clynes-the-gorgeous-nothings-the-swingles-messiaens-turangalila-symphonie-steven-osborne-cynthia-mil/
Yes, I agree that the Turangalila was a first class broadcast. That goes to confirming a long held suspicion of mine that the BBC Orchestras get the best engineers they know and usually use and the rest with lucky exceptions take pot lock of the rest many of whom probably include trainees who don’t know the works or how to read a score, or that it is what it sounds like.