Given its world premiere by Chloë Hanslip with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Jac van Steen, Michael Berkeley’s Violin Concerto was written as a memorial to his wife, the literary agent Deborah Rogers, who died suddenly in 2014. A lyrical yet unsparing score, it reworks material from an earlier piece, At a Solemn Wake, for cello and piano, composed shortly after Rogers’ death.
Hanslip plays an electric violin as well as the standard instrument. There’s also a prominent part for tabla, played by Diego Espinosa Cruz González, which acts like a continuo in a Baroque concerto. The intense formal lament that opens the work gives way to a central aria of loss and nostalgia, exquisitely accompanied by rippling harps and celeste. Hanslip takes up the raw electric violin for the finale, a ferocious outpouring of rage and grief, though a quiet coda in which she reverts to the standard instrument brings the work to a close in a mood of resignation. Her performance can only be described as a tour de force.
Van Steen flanked the premiere with two ballet scores. Dukas’s La Péri was admirably sensual, if occasionally more opaque in texture than it need be. Van Steen’s own selection of excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet came after the interval, closely following the ballet’s narrative, though rather surprisingly making a cut in the balcony scene. The energy and commitment of his conducting here were never in doubt, though, and the playing was tremendous.
- The Proms continue until 10 September.
