Review

Sceptics may roll their eyes at John Williams’ iconic score turning up in the NYO’s annual Proms slot, decrying it as another sign of dumbing down. They’d be wrong.

This 25-minute immersion is no easy crowd-pleaser to execute: it’s rich, complex, and a satisfying test for musicians still in training. The brass are fearless from the opening bars, the strings taut and glowing, the whole band playing with the kind of conviction that blurs the line between youth and professional orchestra.

This is music they clearly relish, and it’s thrilling to hear them claim it as their own — bringing Williams’ writing to the Proms with the energy of a generation for whom it stirs the same enthusiasm as the first timers nearly fifty years before them.

Like Williams’ score, the immediacy and ubiquity of Holst’s much-loved orchestral suite The Planets belies the technical demands his writing makes of musicians. It’s a brutal ask the composer makes of the trumpet section in the opening Mars, yet the combined players articulated with clarity and, in places, with attack. When the strings join later, the sound is rich, expansive, and vast. Sometimes the percussive articulation dips in the tutti sections. Though the movement is undeniably strong and on point, there are moments when the sudden surges lack power.

In Venus there was real character, the lyricism in the strings particularly striking given the immense size of the section. Though the woodwind struggle a little with intonation at the beginning of the movement, what is more impressive is the way in which the listening in the woodwind adapts, the intonation becoming stable. Here we get a first feel of some exquisite woodwind textures and colours.

This continues in Mercury where the woodwind are front and centre, shining in their mastery of Holst’s complex counterpoints. The brass maintain a discreet distance. String responses are industrious with reliable precision. The concluding harmonic floated, suspended far above the rest of the sound, widening the sense of space to the horizon. The movement wrapped up with a contrabassoon cue that was deliciously tidy and throwaway.

If what went before was good, what followed in Jupiter was spectacular. The woodwind attention to detail doesn’t falter. The woodwinds’ bridge before the rousing hymn demonstrates fearless articulation. In the central section conductor Dalia Stasevska’s direction maintains an understated, defiant and resilient narrative line that triggers goosebumps and kickstarts the tear ducts. A remarkable achievement for a movement that might have been in danger of being unsuccessful simply because of over-familiarity.

A subdued Saturn provided an unexpectedly steely emotional reset, an otherworldly vibe created by an army of basses and the addition of the Royal Albert Hall organ. A thunderous timpani cue opened the penultimate movement Uranus, in which woodwind and brass flourish with impressive clarity. Muscular strings join. The climactic chords reduce in intensity with collective measure that creates a grand artistic statement. Especially appreciated the prominence given to the alto flute line in the concluding sequence.

The woodwind don’t demonstrate the same cohesiveness they’ve achieved earlier in the programme, at the beginning of Neptune, though this again corrects itself as the movement progresses. The concluding chorus had a pleasing sparseness to the sound which reinforced the notion that this was not simply a triumphant demonstration of young talent, but one that made a distinctive artistic statement too. It’s rare that The Planets engages my attention quite so readily.

An updated review of this concert will be published in due course.