Photo, Chris Christodoulou
Friday, July 14, 2023
Royal Albert Hall, London
When the respective presenters of last Saturday’s Record Review and Monday’s In Tune went into Proms-trailer overdrive, I hit the ‘off’ switch and it’s been ‘Radio 3 silence’ until this First Night concert. But at least the music has finally arrived, although it had looked ordinary on paper. Once through the two-presenter intro, Sibelius’s Finlandia was given an initially small-scale account, with a too fast allegro if played with a sense of occasion by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Stephen Bryant, leader) – with the still-surviving if remaining under threat BBC Singers (https://www.colinscolumn.com/bbc-statement-alternative-funding-solution-for-the-bbc-singers/) & BBC Symphony Chorus joining in for the heartfelt hymn section – conducted by Finn Dalia Stasevska (not the BBCSO’s principal conductor as stated but principal guest) who couldn’t quite instil enough fervour into the slightly rushed conclusion. She was however born in Kyiv, so it was a nice fit that Ukrainian Bohdana Frolyak’s eight-minute Let There Be Light (BBC commission: world premiere) should follow, a shadowy, sometimes anxious, if pastoral-expressive piece (seemingly) looking ahead to when Russia has been defeated and Ukraine can rebuild, musically atmospheric and harmonically affecting, written for the awful present and a better tomorrow.
Far less familiar than Finlandia is Sibelius’s Snöfrid, a “supernatural melodrama”, which attracted Lesley Manville to the speaker’s role (she was only announced today) using Edward Kemp’s English translation, the choir sticking with the original Swedish. It’s hardly vintage Sibelius if concise, scheduled for last year’s cancelled Last Night (https://www.colinscolumn.com/the-last-night-of-the-proms-is-cancelled/), if worth the occasional outing. dramatic and vivid, descriptive – including shades of the composed-earlier Kullervo – becoming contemplative, cue narrator, and although there are not many words they were delivered with artistry by Manville.
Paul Lewis was the soloist in Grieg’s Piano Concerto – the one that Eric Morecambe played with all the right notes if not necessarily in the right order, perplexing André Previn in the process – for which Lewis was unaffected, avoiding bombast and exaggeration, appealingly direct, honestly lyrical, with Lewis’s virtuosic technique serving the music so that the first-movement cadenza was integrated and the Finale’s episodes were either leaping along vitally or breathing pure mountain air, the coda dancing and broadening triumphantly, leaving the slow movement as intimately eloquent. Throughout, Stasevska and the BBCSO were admirable partners. Although it’s possible to imagine a performance more vibrant and rhetorical, it would be difficult to find one as fresh. An encore from Lewis would have been welcome. Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra / Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Opus 34, completed the concert, multi-ingenious at every turn, although Stasevska overdid tempo and character contrasts – too fast (piccolo & flute), too slow (oboe), wit suppressed (clarinet)… and so on, with a few glitches, and suggestions that minds were not always meeting, although the Fugue was compelling, Stasevska hurtling through it, and Purcell’s Abdelazer tune resounded to round things off.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001nh6c
Oksana Lytvynenko with Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine/Volodymyr Syvokhip.
That radio 3 should spend all of yesterday previewing the proms was an act of self indulgence that I hope does not signal what to expect from new boy Sam Jackson. I listened fitfully, there being only so much excess and flag waving I can take, and Elizabeth Alker said Rattle’s Mahler ninth symphony would include a choir and then played some Johann Strauss, named the orchestra but not the conductor. Very sloppy.
Totally agree, a waste of air time, and also my time when I did listen. I heard Alker’s mistakes, and some from other presenters. I think the Strauss was conducted by Ferenc Fricsay with the Berlin Radio Orchestra, but I’m not certain.
Fricsay certainly recorded Johann Strauss in Berlin, https://www.discogs.com/release/7067452-Johann-Strauss-Ferenc-Fricsay-RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin-Johann-Strauss-Kl%C3%A4nge-Melodies-By-Joh
Colin
I missed both the Men’s semi finals and the First Night as I was on duty to visit Grange Opera near Winchester. A disaster in every respect.
Appaling weather en route culminating in a last minute arrival due to traffic needing a mad dash in a storm from a sodden car park to the distant auditorium. Sat there like a wet rag. David Matthews’ new opera, Anna, received a private Premier with a near full house. His music is enjoyable but the plot/libretto is not. Roger Scrutton’s attempt at writing a love story falls flat and, indeed is sometimes embarrassing No drama and only 4 characters places a degree of patience on a bemused audience some of whom left in the interval to escape the queue leaving the car park at the end
David’s orchestral interludes deserve being worked into a Suite from this opera.
At least I was spared the nuisance of being heckled at by scoundrels at the First Night. Very annoying I imagine.
…. & what bright sparks out there have worked out why Paul Lewis’s shirt is that colour?
I very briefly tuned into the telecast of Prom 1, just as those ‘popular personalities’ Clare Balding and Clive Myrie were reacting with unrestrained glee (to put it very mildly) to Paul Lewis’s account of the Grieg Piano concerto. You can check it out for yourselves on iPlayer, but I found Myrie’s response utterly embarrassing, obnoxious even – surely provoking a legion of viewers to wonder whether those in charge of BBC Music have taken leave of their senses. But that’s hardly news is it, after events of past months?
What do you expect from Clive Myrie, the man who has ruined Mastermind.
I just now saw the ending of the Men’s Final at Wimbledon (only mildly interested, and recovering from sickness, I hadn’t been following the matches). The commentators were Clare Balding, as I believe, Tim Henman certainly, and a former Australian player as I understand. What they were, was knowledgeable and authoritative – able to speak, very fluently in Tim Henman’s case, from experience. Once upon a time, the commentary from the Proms would have been by people equally authoritative, wouldn’t it? If I watch, as I often do, TV programmes on cosmology/astronomy, the presenters are full of hands-on experience. The fact they they know exactly what they are talking about fills me with enthusiasm and raises my interest. This applies to other subjects also. In fact I find that I am interested and inspired by people who know what they are talking about, and have personal experience in the subject. Why does this not apply, apparently, to programmes about/broadcasts of music. I don’t want to listen to a person who knows vaguely that there is a difference between stars and planets, isn’t sure what, but anyway they’re all up there in the sky aren’t they….
I didn’t listen to the broadcast, on the whole deliberately, as a protest, so can’t really speak about the suitability or otherwise of the commentary, or whether it appeared that the commentators had any idea of what they were talking about. It is quite likely that Peter Jenkin’s remarks hit the nail on the head, though I am an admirer of Clive Myrie as a news journalist and broadcaster (I’ve never watched him on Mastermind). What I fail to understand is the idea that using less than knowledgeable presenters will inspire anyone to get interested in anything. They don’t need to look pretty, wear nice dresses, be politically correct. I had a history teacher at school who was plain, elderly, and cross-eyed, but she loved her subject, and so I was interested in it myself. Perfectly ordinary people can inspire one in the most unlikely subjects – remember Fred Dibnah? But they need to know what they are talking about. ‘I’m a professional presenter and I’m here because I’m paid to do it and can read a teleprompter; also I’m the right colour, gender or any other political consideration’ will never encourage anyone to be interested.
Incidentally I can remember Steve Martland doing the Proms comments, and talking eloquently and enthusiastically about Vaughan Williams. Now he did know his stuff. But having a composer to talk about the music would not now pass with today’s BBC R3.