Marking this year’s Shakespeare 400 anniversary is one of the themes of the Proms, and Marc Minkowski’s concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra included a rarely played work that did just that, though at one remove. In 1889, Fauré composed the incidental music for Shylock, a play by Edmond Haraucourt based more or less on The Merchant of Venice. A year later, the composer extracted a concert suite of six numbers from his score, and that is what Minkowski conducted, with the tenor Julien Behr brought in for the two vocal numbers, neither of which has much to do with the original play.
It’s all pleasant enough – the vocal writing has more than a hint of Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Été about it, while, to British ears at least, the march for the Entr’acte movement, intended to accompany the caskets scene, unmistakably prefigures Elgar. But its gentility set the tone for a concert that was refined and certainly well played, but never became genuinely involving.
Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, with the BBC Singers, and Julie Fuchs as the solo soprano in two of the movements, should have provided the real substance at the end of the evening. But even that lacked punch and impact; for all that Minkowski relished the more piquant moments, there was much more of Poulenc the altar boy than Poulenc the bad boy here. And the suite from Stravinsky’s Pulcinella lacked edge and spikiness too, only really coming alive in the celebrated trombone and double-bass duet, and the finale straight after it.
