Orchestral music’s two “London” symphonies make for a neat and interesting concert pairing. It’s true that, unlike the symphony “by a Londoner” that Vaughan Williams wrote just before the first world war, Haydn’s 1795 symphony has little to do with the capital city beyond having been written and first performed here. But no matter. This was a programme ideally suited to the wide and enthusiastic conducting talents of Andrew Manze, who started out as an early music specialist before building a second career as a symphony orchestra conductor, not least with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has worked extensively on Vaughan Williams.
There was some hesitancy in the slow introduction to the opening of Haydn’s final, 104th, Symphony in D major, and the players seemed to take a few pages before adjusting their Haydn sound to the demands of the Albert Hall acoustic. But they found their stride in the adagio and never looked back thereafter. Here, as in the final two movements, Manze’s expertise as a string player ensured much delicate phrasing and well-contrasted dynamics, and the performance sparkled with Haydn’s wit and invention.
Six years ago, Manze and this orchestra gave an exceptional all-Vaughan Williams Prom of the fourth, fifth and sixth symphonies. Two years later, they followed up with the Third Symphony. Now came the much revised second, performed here in its final (and best) version from 1933. Though Manze was constantly alive to the many episodic and allusive details in the score, in which Big Ben chimes softly and a distant flower-seller’s song comes and goes on the wind, this is emphatically not, in the end, a colouristic or even a folkloric work, but a true symphony. Manze never lost control of the great arc of a musical response to London that wholly lacks bombast or cheap sentiment and which emerges out of silence before ebbing enigmatically back into silence at the close, some 45 minutes later. It was another memorable Manze evening. Let us hope that in future Proms visits, Manze will be encouraged to complete his Vaughan Williams cycle with the remaining symphonies.
- Available on BBC iPlayer.
- The BBC Proms continue until 8 September.
