BBC Proms 2019 – 14: Dunedin Consort, Vienna Philharmonic and Aurora’s Symphonie fantastique

   

My final listening instalment has got me closer to the experience I recall of the Proms from my ‘olden days’. A mixture of live, audio catch-up and TV broadcast has, in the final week, finally made good on the season.

Dunedin Consort first. Full disclosure: school pal was on stage playing so my usual objectivity ran the risk of compromise. But this was a riveting performance colliding four Bach orchestral suites with contemporary composers responses to it. It was a shame the audience hadn’t seen the programme request to avoid applause in between each segue, though better that than have someone on stage issuing instructions. I liked the contemporary responses, all of them giving an architectural and historical context by the use of vaguely recognisable ideas conveyed in a modern day language and framework. Very NLP.

The playing was captivating. Woodwind warbled and chuntered with effervescent charisma. Kudos to the oboes throughout the first suite and the flutes during the fourth. Efficient, thorough and brimming with personality.

The real star of the show for me was the principal cellist who seemed to drive the bounce, spirit and all round joyfulness with a graceful balletic bow on the string which was, as the evening progressed, utterly compelling.

My Vienna Philharmonic experience is at yet incomplete having only got to the end of Emmanuel Ax’s breathtaking rendition of Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto with Bernard Haitink. I’ve listened to it four times solely because of one section which stood out as I was multitasking through emails and invoices. Ax’s finger work in the first movement was what prompted to stop what I was doing and gasp. Such control, such storytelling, and such lightness of touch even for a work so explosively rich. It has laid the ground for next year’s Beethoven anniversary. Maybe it won’t be quite such a drag as I’d originally thought.

And so onto the last. Aurora‘s Berlioz on TV first thing this morning. “They look like they’re at a cocktail party but there aren’t any drinks,” said the OH when he caught sight of the screen. I can see how the playing from memory ‘look’ can take someone by surprise – devoid of the usual furniture the players do look exposed. But what worked so splendidly was the modest stage moves and direction, engagement between actor Matthew Baynton playing Berlioz and players (especially during the second movement intro), and the breathtaking storytelling brought about by combining masks and lighting during the witches sabbath final movement. Strangely enough, conductor Nicholas Collon’s annotated introductions had a whiff of the Bernstein Sunday afternoon shows from yesteryear about it. I appreciated the detailed introduction and visual illustrations.

In this way I’m surprised Jan Younghusband (BBC Music Commissioning Editor) said in the podcast to me at the top of the season that it would be difficult to show Bernstein’s groundbreaking TV series again. Aurora’s presentation of SF proves the format works and, judging by a couple of friends who went and the comments I’ve seen on Twitter, that it was phenomenally well received. Collon is, for my money, a natural TV presenter in waiting for the Proms too.

But the concert also showed for me a strange contradiction. The core content here was a concert which sought to make classical music accessible by revealing what’s going on under the bonnet and making that part of the concert. And yet, classical music TV programmes as evidenced in this year’s coverage shy away from detail because it’s perceived that new audiences will be put off. Doesn’t Aurora’s obvious success prove that audiences do actually have an interest in the detail?