and soloists (l-r) Camilla Nyland, Birgit Remmert, Stuart Skelton and Hanno Müller-Brachmann in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Royal Albert Hall. Photograph: Mark Allan/BBC
Amid the stifling heat and shifts of political meltdown, the new season of BBC Proms sounded a note, several million notes, of constancy. As ever it was Beethoven who summed up our most fervent hopes. “Prayer for inner and outer peace”, he wrote on the score of his Missa Solemnis (Prom 5), a work that wrestles with human frailty and divine intent, punching this way and that in vain search of answers. A performance by the joint forces of the Hallé Choir, the Manchester Chamber Choir and the BBC Philharmonic – thus joining so many excellent Manchester-based musicians in joyful concord – was a highlight of the first week.
The increasingly impressive Gianandrea Noseda, who was chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic for nearly a decade, was at the helm. His former orchestral colleagues, as well as the 160-strong chorus, responded deftly to his electrifying mix of clarity and enigma. The music bursts with ruptures and extremes: from the massive fugal dynamism of the Gloria to the ferocious outbursts of the Credo to the mysterious murk of violas and cellos at the start of the Benedictus, before the solo violin (Gordan Trajković) soars to heavenly heights. Noseda leaps up and sinks – or shrinks, down – rather as Beethoven himself appears to have done, from descriptions – living each moment.
The four soloists – soprano Camilla Nylund, mezzo-soprano Birgit Remmert, tenor Stuart Skelton and bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann – made a secure quartet, but it was Skelton, fresh from Tristan and in peak voice, who really brought the text to life. His Crucifixus, fierce, mighty and urgent, was only one of many unforgettable moments. Nylund easily negotiated her high cry for mercy in the Agnus dei, less desolate than in some readings, but a troubling foil – as Beethoven intended – to the choral pleas for peace: Dona nobis pacem.
The Proms had opened, after an impromptu account by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Sakari Oramo of the Marseillaise in tribute to events in Nice 24 hours earlier, with a signalling of various themes. Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture Romeo and Juliet, a slightly plodding, middle-aged affair here, marked the first of many Shakespeare 400 commemorations. Sol Gabetta was a poetic soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto (the instrument is being celebrated this season). She transfixed the audience yet further with her encore, Pēteris Vasks’s hushed Dolcissimo, which requires the soloist to hum along. It was as inspiring to witness the capacity audience stock still, straining to hear every note.
With another massed choir – the BBC National Chorus of Wales and BBC Symphony Chorus – in tremendous voice, the First Night ended with Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky, mostly written for Eisenstein’s first sound film. Accordingly it is brassy and illustrative, intended as anti-Nazi propaganda, with a brutal text and no concept of subtlety. It gives the singers a chance to project raw feeling, which they did. If reading the words – “We scythed down the Swedish invaders like grass on parched soil” or “In our native Russia no enemy shall survive” – felt uncomfortable, how much more disturbing to find that, in the hours since we entered the Albert Hall, Turkey had battled an attempted coup.
Monday’s Prom 4 played host to the first of several visiting orchestras. The Munich Philharmonic, with music director Valery Gergiev, gave a distinctly odd programme, opening with Ravel’s Boléro, followed by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3 – with the young Uzbekistan pianist Behzod Abduraimov (b1990), in his Proms debut, as a mercurial, enthralling soloist. Then, as if in provocation, since it had no logical place in what became a long programme, they gave the Proms premiere of Galina Ustvolskaya’s Symphony No 3, “Jesus Messiah, Save Us!” (1983), a dour work with a Russian narrator, which needed a friendlier context than this to show its undoubted worth. Putting new(ish) works in the middle of old is fine, as long as the choice makes sense. Alienation crackled in the hot air during its 14-minute duration.
The evening jolted back to familiarity with the suite from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. This overblown concoction, unloved by Strauss scholars, which squashes all the opera’s extensive, waltzing glories into 25 luscious minutes, gave these fabled Bavarian players scope for schmaltzy pleasures: rampant music by one born in their home city. Not to press a point, only to record the dissonant echoes of the week, as they played, a teenager with an axe attacked passengers on a train not far from the orchestra’s home city. The nearby town of Würzburg has a street named after Richard Strauss. By the end of the week, Munich itself had become a target.
With some relief, Prom 7, conducted by Marc Minkowski, passed off without global incident. Reduced forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, on spry form, showed the humour and ingenuity of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite, with notably fruity playing from the two bassoons and trombone. Fauré’s Shylock, incidental music having its first (last?) Proms performance, was interesting but not a revelation, though Julien Behr, tenor, sang stylishly. The draw was Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, with the BBC Singers controlled and precise, soprano Julie Fuchs velvety-toned but with edge, and the BBCSO sounding fresh and, oui, French too. They are a versatile bunch, as the next seven weeks of Proms – they play a dozen concerts in all – will test, and attest.
