Photo, Mark Allan
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
In the course of any one musical year (the full twelve months) there will be many Deaths and Transfigurations, and Symphonie fantastiques – possibly too many – and the Proms offers no guarantee of greatness (its promulgators will try hard to persuade otherwise): a concert is a concert, good, bad or indifferent. This one had so-so Strauss, lacking impact and intensity, if not activity and reflection, if without distinctive features that make performances memorable (such as LSO and Abbado, circa forty-five years ago, at the Proms, note, or recordings, Celibidache in Munich, Kempe in Dresden). From the BBC Phil and Anja Bihlmaier, it was a perfectly fine account, if short on earthly/afterlife struggle, and therefore transcendence.
The Berlioz was more engaging, nicely dreamy from the off, purposeful and flexible going forward (no room for the repeat) – to a suave waltz, a spacious poetic ‘country scene’ (cor anglais and oboe in convincing perspectives), passions brewing, ominous timpani thunder, a prelude to meeting the Scaffold (repeat observed), excitingly quick, brilliant brass, then a Witches’ gathering (the opening bars covered by clapping), albeit bells not doom-laden enough but a fine old whoopee-do was unleashed. On a par with last year’s fantastique.
As for Mark Simpson’s BBC commission for Sean Shibe’s electric guitar, a large orchestra is employed (including eight percussionists, piano, organ, synthesizer, harp, pre-recorded AI voice, plenty of everything) for a kaleidoscopic score of imagination, with much for the virtuosic Shibe to encompass … but the screeching sound of his instrument does not appeal, and I found nothing to hang my hat on musically, which is not a criticism, it’s simply not for me, nor Shibe’s contemplative encore, apparently an arrangement of Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_three