Rachmaninov is safe in the hands of this Russian soloist, bar the nervous start
Prom 10: BBC Philharmonic
Royal Albert Hall, London SW7
It is customary, when the Steinway is wheeled on for a piano concerto at the Proms, for those at the front (a fiver a head, standing room only) to shout "Heave!" at the lifting of the lid, and for those even cheaper ticketholders in the gallery to bellow back, "Ho!" No one tells them to do this. The tradition depends on the perpetual attendance of those romantics who not only know what to do, but are brave enough to do it.
The first unfurling of this amiable ritual this year occurred a week into the season when the young Russian star Yevgeny Sudbin came on to play Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 1 with the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, under Yan Pascal Tortelier. Sudbin seemed a little overawed by the occasion and would not look at the audience, scuffing a note in the opening salvo. The graceful arching theme was slightly pinched: we wanted him to lean back on the stool and visualise romance, but he kept his head down and a tight eye on his fingers.
The slow movement slides a seemingly nonchalant melody over dreamy chords that have become clichés at the hands of smoochy hotel bar pianists, but Sudbin played it straight. The last movement went like a rocket. Here the soloist excelled, his youth confident in its delirious speed, the orchestra panting in the excitement of the chase.
The romanticism of Irish politics inspired the first item on the BBC Phil's bill. The English composer Arnold Bax had, as a teenager, read W B Yeats and developed a passionate interest in Irish affairs. He idolised the teacher-politician Patrick Pearse, who argued that loss of language was loss of identity and almost single-handedly revived Gaelic. It was Pearse who, on behalf of the Provisional Irish Government, read out the declaration of independence on the steps of Dublin's General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, sparked the failed rebellion and was shot by firing squad.
Bax's In Memoriam (1916), written in August that year, opened with a spray of notes from a Guinness harp. Tortelier conducted with the stiff athleticism of an Irish dancer. The harp repeatedly stabbed the conscience of a brief oboe lament before the timpanist flexed his arms and beat an ominous warning of the tragedy ahead. Tortelier smoothed the contours of a long, wistful fiddle theme at the golden heart of the work. It is one of Bax's best. The somewhat extended note-churning in the second half of the work allowed the concentration to drift, though Tortelier tried hard to interpret it as the longed-for peace that today, ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, looks like a reality.
Peace was not the expectation of Vaughan Williams in his Fourth Symphony, which he completed in 1934 and dedicated to Bax. It filled the second half with angry discords and a mean little four-note theme that wanders no further than a semitone from its start point, like a grotesque playground sneer. After the complex weaving of the slow movement and the boozy gallop of the scherzo, Tortelier reddened, faced the audience and rudely pointed at the trombones as their entry cue for a final blast of the sneer motif. The music was then at its impressive climax and the crowd, moments later, could barely contain its roar.
The Proms continue every night until 13 September. One orchestra leaves as another arrives. It colours the London summer. I popped along the following evening to hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales give the first world premiere of the season, Simon Holt's Troubled Light, under the conductor Thierry Fischer, who kept very precise time, turning his hands with the beat, emphasising the angular Stravinsky accents.
It is a work of extreme contrasts: short, punched chords against pure long notes; string against wind; bass trombone against piccolo. The latter was a recurrent soloist, piercing the ensemble with sounds on the edge of pain. The work ended more willing to make friends than when it began, as whipcrack percussion spurred legato strings before a final cheery wave from the twinkling celesta.
Some people walked out noisily before the conclusion. The benefit of a cheap ticket is the minimal loss if you don't like the music. In the past, the cheapskates in the arena were usually impecunious students but nowadays, by the look of many, they are either mature scholars or else ordinary, gainfully employed people enjoying a night out during a recession.
Pick of the week
Prom 26: the King’s Singers
5 August, Royal Albert Hall,
London SW7
A folky Anglo-French programme to mark the Singers' 40th birthday.
Prom 27: BBC Symphony Orchestra
6 August, Royal Albert Hall
Messiaen's 'Ascension, conducted by his former pupil George Benjamin, is the highlight.
Prom 31: BBC Concert Orchestra
9 August, Royal Albert Hall
Gershwin heads up a jazz selection.
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