United Kingdom PROM 4 – MacMillan, Mahler: Hallé Youngsters’s Choir (refrain grasp: Shirley Courtroom), Hallé Youth Choir (refrain grasp: Stuart Overington), Hallé Choir (refrain grasp: Matthew Hamilton), Hallé / Sir Mark Elder (conductor). Royal Albert Corridor, London, 21.7.2024. (CK)
MacMillan – Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia (first Promenade efficiency)
Mahler – Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
On Sunday night time the Royal Albert Corridor was packed to the rafters – together with banks of singers rising up on each side behind the orchestra, and the Enviornment a sea of bobbing heads, so stuffed with Prommers that it might in all probability have wanted a collective consumption of breath to make room for any extra. We had been all there, after all, for the music; but in addition, and at the least as importantly, to pay tribute to Sir Mark Elder in his final BBC Proms live performance with the Hallé, the place he has been Music Director for one 12 months shy of 1 / 4 of a century.
Sir James MacMillan’s latest Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia – a moderately cumbersomely-titled celebration of the ability of music, to phrases from Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast – was a really perfect and substantial launchpad for this inspiriting live performance. At nearly 20 minutes it’s no mere curtain-raiser; starting with whirrings and tappings within the giant orchestra, the music directly demonstrates MacMillan’s direct and instinctive feeling for drama: ironclad brass fanfares with marauding tuba give option to the affecting sound of an unaccompanied youngsters’s choir, and it isn’t lengthy earlier than the primary, thrilling tutti for the mixed choirs. The choral sound was clear, vibrant and magnificently disciplined; the usage of the youngsters’s choir as a separate, typically declamatory factor of the feel was brilliantly efficient.
The primary part presents Timotheus, musician to Alexander the Nice, depicting the king’s god-like energy that ‘appears to shake the spheres’. After the magnificence of this opening the music darkens for Bacchus: the place Dryden appears content material to rejoice the unruly power of victorious troopers – Sound the trumpets (six of them), beat the drums! – Macmillan suggests different issues, all too acquainted from our Information sources (in his programme observe he references ‘the greed of the looting troopers, who’ve misplaced all management of their thievery, slaughter and destruction’). Chords from deep within the piano’s bass register energy a sinister march; shrill woodwind cries appear freighted with one thing extra determined than Now give the hautboys breath; males’s voices sink down sepulchrally on ‘Candy is pleasure after ache’, grounding on ‘ache’.
Brilliant, passionate violins and woodwind carry us up and into the sunshine once more for Cecilia; there have been ethereal sounds from the choirs in addition to bells, drums and blazing affirmation, and a remaining dramatic stroke: a single, quiet choral chord.
In a efficiency resembling this – excessive, huge and good-looking within the corridor’s huge areas – MacMillan’s piece has an influence corresponding to that which a efficiency of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony can obtain right here. Sir Mark drove his forces splendidly: I doubt if I’ll hear something extra stirring on this Proms season.
Elder is (amongst many different issues) a seasoned Mahlerian: and for his farewell efficiency he had chosen the Fifth Symphony. Per Ardua advert Astra. The opening motion was measured, implacable; within the outbreaks of turbulence the upsurge of ardour boiled like lava. Within the indignant second motion – a pair with the primary – the stress initially appeared just a little decrease; however the transient triumph of the chorale’s first look was performed for all it was price – actually, uniquely in my expertise, its influence was larger than the crashing, gong-dominated chord that’s imagined to crush it.
For the Scherzo, the principal horn (Laurence Rogers) ascended above his colleagues to a vantage level, flanked at a distance by the percussion and the trombones, whence his calls rang across the corridor as they need to. Elder’s method was easy-going (nicht zu schnell, Mahler asks), and there was loads of room for telling woodwind contributions – spiky clarinets, a humorously tentative bassoon; the waltz crept onto the stage sideways moderately like Liz Truss at her Election Rely. The central episode the place horns name to one another in summer season warmth was stuffed with character – eerie, nearly spectral; the quiet taking part in of the principal trumpet (Gareth Small), right here and all through the symphony, was ear-catchingly stunning. Elder saved the feel gentle within the Adagietto, a floating internet of sound: the cellos had me considering of Barbirolli. The return of the opening was magical; and I all the time benefit from the suspension earlier than the double basses lastly contact down on the finish.
Characterful woodwind taking part in was once more to the fore on the opening of the finale; the cellos dug in with a will, although once more there was no unseemly hurry. Let’s all take pleasure in this collectively, Elder gave the impression to be saying: there isn’t any rush. There was no scarcity of pleasure – the trombones snarling on the highest step, the trumpets snapping and crackling beneath them, the horns with their bells aloft – and in Elder’s palms the endgame was correctly jubilant, giocoso to the final observe.
Sir Mark’s influence and affect on music in our nation has been incalculable. He was cheered to the rafters, by the viewers and by the gamers and singers massed behind him. In fact he spoke, paying tribute to the distinctive Proms expertise (‘It should flourish … Reside music brings us all one thing we want, maybe now greater than ever’). There was a mildly political joke: ‘We come from Manchester. A few of you might not know the place that’s.’ And there have been some pleasant reminiscences of his personal Promming days: ‘What occurred to the fountain?’
Nice because the efficiency had been, it was unthinkable that Mahler ought to have the final phrase. Elder and the Hallé gave us music ‘straight from the guts’: Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit. And the cheering continued.
Chris Kettle
