BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7
Prom 42 was characterised by a sea of strings, by turns tremulous, frenzied and surging. Newest among the selected pieces was Huw Watkins's Violin Concerto, in a world premiere performance from Alina Ibragimova, the young soloist for whom it was written. This impressive work begins with an angsty but lyrical violin line in the top register, breaking into a slower but highly animated andante before the pressure ratchets up once again, like mercury rising, to the final climax. Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra demonstrated clear understanding, while Ibragimova executed her part with individual style and a powerful platform presence.
Were it not for the most dedicated clappers, the concert's opener, Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, would have run straight into Britten's own "Four Sea Interludes" from his opera Peter Grimes. Gardner won praise for his account of the whole opera at the London Coliseum last year; it is to his credit that his carefully planned crescendo of intensity did not unravel. The danger with isolating the interludes is that their dramatic power can evaporate without a true context, but a razor-sharp reading of the score and immaculate pacing maintained their impact here.
Towering ominously over the whole programme was Shostakovich's canonical Fifth Symphony. This work premiered in November 1937, at the height of Stalin's Great Terror and nearly two years after Pravda newspaper published its "Muddle instead of music" editorial, threatening experimental composers who refused to toe the party line. Shostakovich's own subtitle for the piece, A Soviet Artist's Creative Reply to Just Criticism, suggests conformity, but its political subtext remains an enigma, though many are convinced of its power as a protest piece.
Gardner's interpretation was shaped by self-control, the alternating phases of suffering and reprieve sharply defined. That sense of innocence in the music-box ending of the first movement and the warped waltz at the start of the next was intensified. And although there have been more magnificent finales, the theme of steely determination was in keeping with the wider plan.
