The Prom on August 20, presented by The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, opened with the first UK performance of Dérives by Gérard Grisey. It’s hard to believe that it’s taken 42 years for the piece to have been played in the UK, and that it was only the second work of Grisey’s to be played on the Proms. Dérive is scored for two orchestras, one smaller and amplified; the size of the Albert Hall stage made separation and a very clear distinction between the two groups more or less impossible. The work starts with the conceit that the orchestra is tuning (the program notes by Julian Anderson states that Grissey’s intention was to “effect a subtle bridge between what he terms ‘everyday time’ and ‘musical time.’”), but staging it so that it really works seems as though it would also be impossible, since it coincides, as it did on this concert, with the conductor’s arrival on the stage and the attendant applause. Possibly all of that clumsiness was also part of the conception, although that somewhat lessens the subtlety of it . In any case once things get under way there is a prolongation of the tuning A until a loud tutti chord shifts things to Eb, and onto the main agenda of the piece which is the setting up of the overtones of Eb as a base sonority and the glacial slow drifting of the music away from and back to that referent over the almost half hour of its duration. The mesmerizing quality of the piece was faithfully realized with striking concentration and beauty of sound.
A few days later at the Café Otto, Volkov, as a violinist, joined about a half dozen string players and two percussionist for an evening of improvisation. I heard the second half of the evening, which consisted of two blocks, the shaping and pacing of each of which was compelling and satisfying.
The Prom concert on August 24 was presented by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Marin Alsop. It opened with Kabbalah by Brazilian composer Marlos Nobre. The title, the program note said, “refers to the ancient tradition of Judaic mystical thought and its interpretation through symbols and ciphers, described as a revelation of God’s wisdom to his creations.” The work is a very colorfully orchestrated and rhythmic, with lots and lots of percussion, evocative and, I suppose, mystical, in a way that its title might lead one to expect. The concert also included only the four minute long Prelude of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 4. It was too bad they didn’t play the whole piece, since it left the impression that if was felt that a Brazilian orchestra just had to play a piece by the most famous Brazilian composer, but they’d do as little as possible to get by with satisfying that mandate. In fact the piece was quite attractive and I would have been happy to hear more, maybe the entire piece rather than the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances, which ended the concert.
The Prom on August 21 by the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by Rafael Payare, was as much as anything a celebration of and for the orchestra itself. The only professional orchestra in Northern Ireland, it recently survived a near-death financial crisis which almost brought about its dissolution. The assured, alert, and very beautiful playing throughout the concert was a very eloquent demonstration of how much would have been lost in the avoided demise of the orchestra.
The concert included, along with the Haydn C major Cello Concerto, with Narek Hakhnazaryan, soloist, and the Tschaikovsky Fifth Symphony, the first performance of Wild Flow, a BBC commission, from Piers Hellawell, the English composer who has for quite a while taught at Queen’s University Belfast. As a resident who observed the difficulties of what he called in his program note, “the darkest period” of the Ulster Orchestra’s history close hand, he dedicated Wild Flow to the orchestra and its champions. The work consists of five movements, with a central slow movement, a continually expanding and intensifying chorale inlaid with soloistic wind writing, preceded and followed by two fast movements, all of those with a somewhat aphoristic character. Hellawell described the work in his notes, as offering a zigzag progression of mood and events, and that mercurial quality is what lingers strongly in the memory. The music is admirably distinctive and personal, somewhat quirky, brilliantly and colorfully orchestrated, highly rhythmic, and always engaging and appealing. The performance had a liveliness and verve matching that of the music.
Hakhnazaryan played as an encore to his performance of the Haydn, Lamentatio by Giovanni Sollima, which combined singing, folky dance music, and high class pyrotechnics, all of it impressive as display and interesting to listen to.
All of the Proms concerts are available online for listening at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0741yk1/episodes/player.