The Prom on August 10 was presented by The National Youth Orchestra, conducted by Alexandre Bloch and Tess Jackson. The 160 members of the orchestra, who completely filled the stage, were joined by the almost as large cohort of NYO Inspire, who were in various places in the hall, including the gallery, some boxes, the choir seating areas behind the stage, and, eventually, in the aisles of the stalls. The program began with the Overture to The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner, and concluded with the Symphony No. 1 of Gustav Mahler. In between those were two works, Orpheus Undone by Missy Mazzoli and Three, Four, AND… by Dani Howard , which was a BBC co-commission, receiving its first performance.
The Mazzoli, written in 2020, is, of course, concerned with the Orpheus story, which, as Mazzoli said in an interview for the Chicago Symphony, where she was composer-in-residence, “has been told a million times.” The present work was based on material from her earlier (2019) ballet about the Orpheus story, Orpheus Alive. Mazzoli said that Oprheus Undone “focuses on a very specific, small moment of the story, right when Eurydice has died and gone to the underworld, and has left Orpheus.” Steve Smith, in his program note for the Proms concert, speculates that there, in fact, might be more it: he thinks that the piece is concerned with “how, in times of trauma, time comes unstuck; sped up to a frenetic pace and slowed to near stasis seemingly at once.” The beginning of the first part of the piece, entitled ‘Behold the Machine, O Death,’ is marked by a regularly repeating wood block beats against which are strands of other music suggesting varying other tempos. The beats of the wood block disappear and periodically recur, but the pulse it marked seems constant in various ways, playing out against the opposing pulses, suggesting the variability of the perception of time. The second section, entitled ‘We of Violence, We Endure,’ suggest the pondering of an event in its aftermath, and is marked by piano figuration, wandering and eventually melting into the greater orchestral texture, which then fades away. All of this is very effective and moving and was performed with enormous understanding and commitment by the orchestra, conducted by Bloch.
Three, Four, AND… by Dani Howard, who was during the time of its composition the NYO’s resident artist, was written with a fair amount of input and interaction with the orchestra’s members, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of NYO Inspire. Howard wrote a tune called As One, which members were encourage to make their version of and record and upload. During the orchestra’s spring residency members made suggestions as to things they would like to see included in this piece, which was composed specifically for the Proms concert. The original tune and those requests were incorporated into the final work. Three, Four, AND… is an ebulliently optimistic work, offering a kaleidoscopic array of different very effective orchestral textures, some including unusual sound effects, expertly shaped to reveal the next cohort of musicians, leading to the concluding climax. The orchestra was conducted in this work by Jackson.
The concert concluded with a masterful performance of the Mahler First Symphony and a really staggeringly wonderful encore (which can be found at about 2:11:36 in the recording of the concert). It would be hard to oversell the many awesome qualities of the concert, which was brimming with playing that was as accurate and precise as one could ever hope for and at the same time so full of commitment and enthusiasm. The recording of this concert can be found for a limited time at ttps://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0021r1f.
