Proms: Mahler's darkest vision

by Andrew Walker BBC News Online

Prom 49: Mahler Symphony No 6/European Union Youth Orchestra/Haitink, 26 August.

Under the watchful eye of the UK's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the European Union Youth Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink, gave a mature rendition of Mahler's striking Sixth Symphony.

With its existentialist heroics and the renowned 'hammer blows of fate', Mahler's Eighth Symphony - The Tragic - is widely-regarded as his finest work.

Tonight, the cream of Europe's young musicians conjured up a feast of suitably epic proportions.

The Proms continues to draw in the crowds

As with much of Mahler's symphonic work, the Sixth opens with a march. The orchestra - many of whose players looked as though they were up past their bedtime - was immediately into its stride, bringing suitable clarity and bounce to the movement.

On the podium, Haitink, a long-standing exponent of Mahler's work, was at his magisterial best: every inflection of baton, arm and eye driving the orchestra on.

Though the delicate, understated, passages which characterise much of the second movement were, perhaps, not best served by too much brightness from both horns and woodwind, this was still a rendition full of both dignity and humanity.

The spiritually-charged slow third movement featured wonderful interplay between harps and flutes: Mahler's cowbells, a homage to his native Austria, providing a moving interlude.

The orchestra captured the initial heroic, brash, optimism of the finale, its sudden souring and tragic denouement.

Mahler's themes - fate, death and the futility of existence - are difficult ones: it is to this young orchestra's great credit that it captured them with confidence, intelligence and panache.

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Prom 44: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, 22 August.

This was a night to inspire and thrill, a night on which the hairs on the back of the neck stood on end.

Barenboim's youthful orchestra thrilled the audience

Daniel Barenboim's groundbreaking West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, composed of young Jewish and Arabic musicians from Israel, Palestine and Egypt, brought the Royal Albert Hall to its feet with a delightfully-executed programme.

Although the symbolism of the performance was lost on no-one in the audience, it was the sheer quality of the ensemble work which made the evening special.

It opened with a spirited rendition of the two completed movements of Schubert's 8th Symphony, the Unfinished, in which poignant cellos provided a perfect counterfoil to the horns and woodwind. The effect was tragic, moving and glorious.

Next up was Mozart's Concerto for Three Pianos. Barenboim was joined by the young Israeli and Palestinian pianists, Shai Wosner and Saleem Abboud-Ashkar, in an intricate, and powerful, rendition.

Mature performance

Barenboim generously allowed his two young colleagues to play the more difficult parts.

It was apt that a night with so many political overtones should include that apotheosis of the symphonic ideal, Beethoven's 3rd Symphony - the Eroica - originally produced as a paean of praise to Napoleon.

The West-East Divan Orchestra belied its youth - its players range in age from 13 to 26 - with a mature, informed, performance.

This was most apparent in the stately final movement, where the orchestra and conductor revelled in a reaffirmation of life, humanity and hope, even in the darkest of times.

The audience's reception left both orchestra and conductor looking delighted, surprised and slightly bemused.

Two encores, of works by Schubert and Rossini, ended this extraordinary occasion.

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Prom 34: The Ulster Orchestra, 13 August.

Thierry Fischer's lively Proms debut, conducting the Ulster orchestra, included works based on Crete, Russia, Ireland and Finland.

Although Mozart's overture to Idomeneo, king of Crete, is not as well-known as his blockbusters - the Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan tutti and the Magic Flute - it still provided a rousing opening.

Fischer's conducting style is one of controlled panache. The effect is much like that of a nodding dog in the rear window of a car.

Prokofiev's alluring, hypnotic cello concerto, played tonight by Radio Three New Generation artist, Li-Wei, is rarely heard on the concert platform.

And more is the pity, as this is a fascinating work.

Unfortunately, despite every effort, tonight's rendition did not really take off until the end; muddy strings and out-of-tune brass conspiring to produce a downbeat mood.

Kevin Volans' Strip-Weave, featuring here for the first time in a revised version, was repetitive and industrial, evoking the spirit of an Irish textile mill.

The evening closed with another revised work, Sibelius' gently heroic Fifth Symphony.

From the depths of the Karelian forest to the country's highest peaks, this unabashed paean to Finland provided a dramatic and moving finale.

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Prom 26: The Scottish Symphony Orchestra, 7 August.

The Scottish Symphony Orchestra led an inspiring performance at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday.

The mercurial Ilan Volkov, still only 26, is the youngest-ever conductor of a BBC orchestra.

Even so, his innate maturity, and the superb artistry of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, brought us a concert of towering proportions.

On Thursday, in the midst of a heatwave, Judith Weir's charming tone poem, The Welcome Arrival of Rain, provided an ironic opening item.

Weir's musical monsoon featured all the usual techniques; drums and brass representing thunder, violins and xylophone for rain.

But, far from being hackneyed, the result was as refreshing as the downpour it symbolised.

The Austrian cellist Heinrich Schiff is a great bear of a man. But there was nothing ursine about his riveting, intimate, rendition of Robert Schumann's cello concerto.

Thrilling

The concerto - a one movement work - presents a daunting prospect. Yet Schiff seemed to relish every moment.

Richness of tone, subtle phrasing and an almost devil-may-care attitude combined to produce some of the most thrilling, yet profound, moments of this Proms season.

Shostakovich's 10th symphony premiered in Leningrad in 1953, mere months after the death of Stalin. Its bumptious second movement is generally believed to be a sound portrait of the late dictator.

Politics and history, though, conspire to render any purely musical view of Shostakovich problematic, to say the least.

Volkov ably captured the essence of the first movement: a spirit of rebirth mutating into tension, fear and abject terror.

The martial dynamism of the second movement presented Stalin as an evil force of nature, emerging to crush all in his path.

The mannered third movement resolved itself into an unhinged waltz, while the baleful strings of the finale were punctuated by the alluring woodwind.

On this sweltering evening, Dimitri Shostakovich, dead nigh on 30 years, returned to chill, thrill and inspire us once again.