C.B.S.O. at the Proms

I was amongst the great throng at the Albert Hall in London last night when the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was performing under its Finnish conductor, Sakari Oramo. It was swelteringly hot. The conductor, whose physicality is such that you feel you can hear the music through the eloquent movement of his body as well as from the players themselves, had a red towel near at hand with which he frequently dried his sweating brow! He has an excellent rapport with the orchestra of which he has been Music Director and Chief Conductor since 2003.

I have known the C.B.S.O. for over thirty years and was pleased to recognise some of the same instrumentalists still at work. It has enormous panache and passion, this orchestra, with a superb integral sound and a body of string tone to equal that of any other orchestra. I noticed that Oramo has first and second strings either side of the rostrum, with violas and cellos completing the arc. This seems to be an increasing practice, reverting to what was once the norm.

Other people’s enthusiasms can be boring to people who don’t share them, but being in the Albert Hall as it houses the annual Promenade Concerts, is quite an emotional thing for me. It is of course huge – with room for 6,000 people , its red and gold décor emphasising its imperial origin, with many of the three tiers of boxes still owned by some of the families who, buying them, contributed to the original cost. The giant organ has been reconstructed in recent years and boasts 9,999 pipes. (Couldn’t they have managed an extra one to complete the number?!). In the choir stalls looking down on the orchestra, I was sitting very near to the one of the largest pipes and was glad that it wasn’t in use. Blamed for its poor acoustic over the years,I had no problems last night. The sound was clear and warm, and the balance of the orchestra so good that every note could be heard.

And the programme? Webern’s ‘Passacaglia, which I hadn't heard before and want to hear again, and Shostakovich’s first Violin Concerto played magnificently by the Canadian born violinist Leila Josefowicz. There is an astonishing cadenza in the third movement that seems never to end and held the audience in thrall; that alone merited the ovation she received at the work’s end. She and the conductor walked off arm in arm as they left the platform. They have recently recorded the concerto in a live performance on the Warner label. Brahms fourth Symphony ended the programme in a performance of great power but also with the romantic side of the composer not forgotten. A superb performance, and a great evening.

B.R.

Latin Night

There’s a very Hispanic feel to the Prom on Tuesday July 23rd. The Portuguese pianist Artur Pizarro (who records for Naxos) is playing the gorgeous ‘Nights in the Garden of Spain’ by de Falla whose dances from the ‘Three Cornered Hat Ballet’ are also being performed. The Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez will be singing two Donizetti arias including ‘Ah! Mes amis’, which was one of Pavarotti’s showpieces. But he will also be singing some popular Latin American songs by, amongst others, Carlos Gardel.

Gardel was born in France in 1890, his mother bringing him to Argentina when he was 27 months old. He became an enormously popular tango singer during the inter-war years. His death in an airplane crash in 1935 at the height of his career created an image of a tragic hero in his native Argentina. For many music fans, Gardel embodies the soul of the tango, a musical form and dance which evolved in the barrios of Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century.
Apparently Gardel had a baritone voice of ‘unerring musicality and dramatic phrasing’, creating miniature masterpieces among the hundreds of three-minute tangos which he recorded during his lifetime. Together with his long-term collaborator, lyricist Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel also wrote several classic tangos. One or more of these will no doubt be performed at the Prom.

Gardel began his career singing in bars and at private parties and in 1911 sung with Francisco Martino, and later with José Razzano(which would last until 1925), singing a wide repertory. Gardel appeared in all the Latin American countries as well as Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and New York. He sold 70,000 records in the first three months of a 1928 visit to Paris. As his popularity grew, he made a number of films for Paramount in France and the U.S., which were essentially vehicles for his singing and matinée-idol looks.

Gardel is still revered from Buenos Aires to Tokyo, where people say that "he sings better every day." His fans still like to place a lit cigarette in the fingers of the life-sized statue which adorns his tomb. One of Gardel's favorite phrases, 'Veinte años no es nada' (Twenty years is nothing) became a famous saying across Latin America.

Barry Wordsworth will be conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra at this Prom. It should be very well worth listening to.

B.R.

Henry Wood Promenade Season 2006

The Proms begin their 111th Season on July 14th and I have been looking at the programmes, all of which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and some relayed on BBC TV 2. This is the biggest international festival of music in the world. This year there will be 73 concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall with several other performances in smaller venues, as well as other events including open air concerts in London’s Hyde Park and in Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Swansea to complement the last night of the Proms, an event( if rather a peculiar one) in itself.

Nicholas Kenyon – BBC’s Director of Music – is a great enthusiast for anniversaries. No surprises therefore that Shostakovich’s centenary is being remembered and Mozart’s 250th as well as music by Robert Schumann who died 150 years ago. But living composers are recognised too and as always there are many contemporary works, several of them commissioned by the BBC and being performed for the first time. I am hoping to go to three concerts and will be listening and watching many others.

The first Prom I ever went to was in 1944. It was the last season Henry Wood conducted (‘Old Timbers’, his orchestras called him), but sadly that evening he wasn’t on the rostrum . Wood died the same year after a remarkable career in which he brought classical music to a wide audience but also introduced many works to this country which are now part of the regular orchestral repertoire. In the early days he conducted every concert himself and to save rehearsal time, annotated all the orchestral parts. Now there is a great parade of orchestras, conductors and soloists from around the world, with the five BBC Orchestras the most frequent performers. For the duration of the season the bust of Henry Wood rests on a plinth below the organ at the R.A.H., garlanded on the last night.

I see in today’s Guardian, Kenyon is defending himself against critics who like me have scrutinised his choice of programme and noticed what may be missing. He brushes aside what I regard as a valid criticism, namely that there is a lack of British music. One work only by George Benjamin, William Walton, Jonathan Dove, James MacMillan, Benjamin Britten, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Peter Maxwell-Davies and none by Malcolm Arnold, Alan Rawsthorne, William Alwyn, Vaughan-Williams and Edmund Rubbra. A missed opportunity lost in anniversary mania? Or is it that I am an enthusiast for what others regard as a lost generation of composers?

B.R.