In the 1980s, when there was a new wave of interest in the music of Alexander Zemlinsky, it seemed as if his Lyric Symphony might become a repertoire piece. That still hasn’t happened, though, and Simone Young’s performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was the work’s first Proms outing since 1988.
Young certainly made the most of the music’s variety, whether it was diaphanously light or rich and sumptuous – though the Lyric Symphony is often likened to Das Lied von der Erde, there’s none of the pared-down restraint of Mahler’s scoring; Schoenberg’s deliciously overripe Gurrelieder is a much more obvious model. An orchestra with a bit more tonal depth to the strings than the BBCSO would have been ideal: there were balance problems and the soprano soloist Siobhan Stagg was sometimes overwhelmed. The settings require a heftier, more dramatic voice than her light coloratura. Baritone Christopher Maltman had no such difficulties, and made every word count, even though that could be a dubious benefit with some of Rabindranath Tagore’s more sickly-sweet poems.
The concert began with the first performance of a BBC commission, Bayan Northcott’s Concerto for Orchestra, which packs a lot of strenuous, multilayered orchestral activity into 18 minutes, in a style that seems more or less mid-Atlantic with a just a hint of neoclassicism. Then there was Mozart’s A major Violin Concerto, K219, with Baiba Skride the unfussy, unfailingly secure soloist. Her choice of cadenzas – wonderfully unidiomatic ones by Joseph Joachim – was a treat in itself..
• On BBC iPlayer until 30 September. The Proms continue until 10 September.
