The BBC Prom on August 7 was presented by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by John Storgårds. It featured Stefan Dohr as soloist in the Horn Concerto by Hans Abrahamsen, written between 2018 and 2019. The work is mostly a monologue by the soloist which is provided with a luminous and quite beautiful backdrop, sometimes reactive and interactive, and sometimes just a background, but always aurally compelling. Although the movements are designated by tempo, they are really differentiated more by the density of the, as it were, accompaniment than by the actually speed of the music. At the end of the work, the orchestra joins the soloist in the argument of the piece, before everything recedes into the glowing distance. The performance of the concerto was on the level that it deserved. It was all quite beautiful and effective.
The Abrahamsen was proceeded on the concert by Schumann’s Genoveva Overture and Pohjola’s Daughter by Sibelius, and was followed by an absolutely barn-burning and unforgettable performance of Tschaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.
The Prom on August 9, which was presented by The BBC Symphony and their chief conductor Sakari Oramo, began with a performance of Mirage by Kaiji Saariaho, with Silja Aalto, soprano, and Anssi Karttunen, ‘cellist, as soloists. Mirage sets a poem by the Mexican shaman and poet Maria Sabina. (1894-1985). Sabina’s “poems” were actually trans-like utterances from her healing sacred mushroom ceremonies, called veladas. She is generally regarded as a masterful oral poet due to her presentation of traditional native Mexican themes in a uniquely person voice. For Saariaho, Sabina was an example of an exceptional female artist whose work was a powerful proclamation of her existence as a uniquely powerful creator. Mirage features the soprano voice singing Sabina’s text (in English, in a translation by Alvaro Estrada), but its way is prepared by the ‘cello part, which then intertwines with it, supported and amplified by the orchestra. In a way the work is a sort of recreation of the trance which produced the poem. The effect of the whole, with more forceful and less diaphanous and ethereal music than one usually expects from Saaariaho, emphasizes the concept, as articulated in the program notes by Pirkko Moisala, of “the identity of a mature woman and artist who has found her voice and accepted her calling.” It was completely compelling. The Saariaho was followed by performances of Mozart’s K. 271 Piano Concerto, with soloist Seong-Jin Cho, and Strauss’s Alpine Symphony.
The Prom on August 8, presented by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Anja Bilhmaler, was originally to have contained the first performance of beyond the beyond, by Sarah Gibson, which was a BBC Commission. At the time of her death from cancer in July of this year, the piece was incomplete. It is to be finished by her associate Thomas Kotcheff and will be performed at a later date. In its place, the program contained an earlier orchestral work of Gibson’s, warp and weft, of 2021. warp and weft is a tribute to the artist Miram Schapiro, whose work emphasizes what she called “femmage,” which is to say artistic work formerly practiced mainly by women, for instance decoupage and weaving, which were formerly considered “cafts” or “decorative art,” as opposed to the “high” arts, which were supposedly practiced mainly by men, and were, therefore, considered superior. In warp and weft, the weft, the horizontal axis of the loom, is associated with more melodic elements, and the warp, the vertical axis of the loom, deals with more harmonic aspects, and these two aspects basically alternate, finally, at the end of the piece, coalesce in a lively and appealing music. Gibson’s program note says that she imagined the piece as a sort of representation of Schapiro’s studio, “…a place full of color, with various materials and ideas, swirling around…” That is a fairly accurate description of the qualities of the work. In the concert the Gibson was preceded by the Beethoven Violin Concerto, with the admirable Tobias Feldman, as soloist, and followed by a compelling performance of the Brahms Fourth Symphony.
All of the proms are available for about sixty days after the date of the concert, on the BBC Sounds site, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b007v097.
