Photo, Chris Christodoulou
Friday, July 18, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
Once past the double-voiced and compiled R3 excitement (hype), Arthur Bliss’s Birthday Fanfare (brass and timpani) made for a stirring start (BBC Two viewers receiving it first by a number of seconds), then straight into Mendelssohn’s evocative Scottish overture, given with suitable volatility, tempestuous, and, depicting calmer waters, beauty of phrase. Opening part two – following an interval featuring a comedian (I jest you not), who is also a violinist, who may not know Nielsen’s Symphonies with assurance, but he meant well – the token commission, this one concerning the building blocks of music itself. Pretty and colourful if arbitrarily reminding of other pieces and numerous styles, The Elements proved too long even at twelve minutes.
Leading to the break, the odd slippy moment aside, Lisa Batiashvili gave an unstinting account of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto – confiding yet intense, impassioned yet poised, with a tailor-made accompaniment that was detailed and the equal of the soloist, the first movement taking off emotionally (the cadenza spectacular), the slow one inward and eloquent, with the Finale (depicting polar bars, said Tovey) – an attacca would have prevented another burst of clapping – ideally paced to oblige Sibelius’s tempo qualification and fully bring out the rhythmic profile. Finally, Vaughan Williams’s Sancta civitas (composed during the early-1920s, setting Biblical texts), a wonderfully mystical score contrasted by ecstatic exclamations, which may be heard as a blueprint for his The Pilgrim’s Progress. Rarely programmed, last heard at these concerts under Mark Elder, Sakari Oramo led an inspired performance – gripping and revealing – with excellence from the soloists, the three distinct choirs (I think girls were added to the specified boys’ chorus) and the BBCSO. My single same-space rendition of Sancta was in Guildford, Vernon Handley conducting, Hugh Bean leading, unforgettable in the serene violin solo (“And I saw a new heaven”), no-less fine from Igor Yuzefovich. Following which, no mention of him from the BBC presenters.
Arthur Bliss: Birthday Fanfare for Sir Henry Wood
Felix Mendelssohn: Overture The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave)
Jean Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D-minor
Errollyn Wallen: The Elements (BBC commission: world premiere)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sancta civitas
Lisa Batiashvili, violin
Caspar Singh, tenor
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
London Youth Choirs
BBC Symphony Orchestra