Photo, Mark Allan
Friday, August 8, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
This early-evening Prom opened with Paul Dukas’s La Péri, a ‘Poème dansé’, but without the stirring preceding Fanfare, a grievous loss, although this impressionistic and sultry score is one of very few the self-critical composer allowed out (it is believed he destroyed his Second Symphony; the First, in C, is a gem). Anyway, Fanfare surprise and disappointment aside, Josep Pons led a flexible performance of La Péri itself (contemporary with Petrushka, Daphnis, and The Rite), scrupulous regarding details and dynamics, played with refinement, yet retaining atmosphere, suggestion and narrative. Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin (given complete, the BBC Singers briefly appearing for the ad lib vocalise that accompanies the Mandarin finally dying). The thugs have done their best to murder him, to no avail, he lured by a prostitute so that her accomplices can rob him, and only intimacy with her allows him to give-in to his injuries. Bartók’s masterpiece of a score is as lurid as the story it depicts (which fell foul of the censor initially), painting danger, sleaze and seduction, which Pons and the BBCSO captured graphically, unholy evocations, although the ‘chase’ music was a little restrained. In between, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Beatrice Rana deft and demonstrative, scintillating yet shapely, sensitive, romantic (Var.XVIII), the final lap driven impassionedly, vivid orchestra throughout, complementary rather than competing, if no mistaking the ‘Dies irae’, yet overall the rendition was curiously uninvolving, and there have been wittier endings than here. For an encore she offered Pletnev’s transcription of the ‘March’ from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, more playful than Rana revealed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gf22
January 13, 2023.