Concert photo to follow
Friday, July 19, 2024
Royal Albert Hall, London
BBC Proms 2024 have arrived. Some of Handel’s Royal Fireworks music, in Anthony Baines & Charles Mackerras’s augmented scoring, got this early-evening concert off to a vibrant start. Elim Chan avoided pomp if not exuberance through nippy tempos requiring nimble playing and some rattling timpani (Antoine Bedewi I assume). ‘Bruckner 200’ cued his late-in-life setting of Psalm 150, stirring and beatific music that is a first cousin to his thunderous and contemplative Te Deum – however, although Sophie Bevan was a trifle squealy (luxury casting though for relatively few bars), the drawback was the choral singing, not in quality but in numbers, the ensemble straining to fill the venue and rather thin-toned in the process. One wonders why the BBC Symphony Chorus was not mentioned; yet the deferred BBC Two broadcast detailed a much larger group than the BBC Singers normally field. Both choral collectives were hooked into Ben Nobuto’s Hallelujah Sim. (simulation), for pre-recorded tutorial-giving speaker and instruction-responsive chorus and orchestra. Computer- and video-game in derivation, quite inventive as well as brilliantly performed; yet, although one appreciates Nobuto’s imagination and slickness…
The Piano Concerto by Clara Schuman (née Wieck), written before her betrothal to Robert, is pleasant-enough, at its best in the romance of the slow music, including a here a lovely cello solo (the excellent player not credited by either of the R3 presenters). Stylishly accompanied, Isata Kanneh-Mason played with dexterity and sympathy, the piano itself losing some tone in louder passages, and then overshadowed herself with a diverting encore, George Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ in Percy Grainger’s transcription. As for Beethoven Five, Chan led a quick-paced but not rushed account, rhythmically vital and lyrically inveigling, yet its dark-to-light trajectory was ultimately undermined by haste and glibness despite observed repeats. Good to report no between-movement clapping.
Handel arr. Mackerras: Music for the Royal Fireworks – overture
Bruckner: Psalm 150
Clara Schumann: Piano Concerto in A-minor
Ben Nobuto: Hallelujah Sim. (BBC commission: world premiere)
Beethoven: Symphony No.5 in C-minor
Sophie Bevan soprano
Isata Kanneh-Mason piano
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Elim Chan
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0020xfb
The cello solo in the Clara Schumann concerto was played by Louisa Tuck, principal cello of the Oslo Philharmonic. The BBCSO are still in the hunt for a new principal cello, as is the Philharmonia, with whom Tuck has also guested as principal on a number of occasions.
Classic FM combines with R3 to offer……..what exactly?
Well the finance dept will be delighted with receipts from 6000 punters.