All very nice but possibly a bit of a damp squib. Or maybe the BBC Proms was the dry run for Edinburgh on Friday.
Programme
Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major
Gabriela Ortiz Revolución diamantina (UK premiere)
Los Angeles Master Chorale (upper voices)
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel
Wednesday 12 August 2026 · 7pm–c9pm
Royal Albert Hall
Listen on BBC Radio 3 / BBC Sounds
Preview
The finest of Beethoven’s symphonies (yes, better than Symphony No. 5 – much much better) opens tonight’s programme, the second from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Symphony No. 7 feels as though it has more meat on the bone in comparison to the pastoral beauty of the preceding symphony. Listen out for riveting string writing (which might get overlooked in the melee of the ensemble though be more discernible on the radio broadcast), in particular in the final sequence of the fourth movement where the double basses saw and growl right at the bottom of the instrument. A haunting funeral march is treated to characteristic Beethovenian scale variations in the second movement. There’s a nod to the countryside in the third with a galloping race which will see your hair need firmly tying down if it’s long. The concluding fourth movement is a riotous uplifting celebration of some kind of battle won, a roller-coaster ride with rapid-fire trumpets and thunderous timpani bringing Beethoven’s finest symphony to a resolute end.*
If you still can’t get enough of Beethoven’s symphonies and number seven in particular, then you may be interested in hearing the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s take on it (far more pared back in sound compared to the LA Phil’s) on Sunday 16 August. Quite why its being played twice in the Proms season is anyone’s guess.
Dudamel surely will be back at the Proms in some guise at some point in the future. Still, his outgoing status as a music director at LA Phil is sure to be an emotional moment tonight, not least because he first came to the attention of UK audiences when he conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at the Proms nearly twenty years before.
Review
A curious read of Beethoven 7 from Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic. It begins with a robust feel, something edgy, maybe even a little rawer compared to the Beethoven 6 the night before, but come the Vivace in the first movement, the more romantic expression that dominated last night denies the raw, urgent, and uncompromising I’ve come to demand from the work. Fortissimos have a heaviness to the movement that changes the skittering feel established in the opening bars. When the declarative chords arrive, there’s a reassuring return to something bolder and more assertive, helped by thunderous hard-sticked timpani rolls. Proceedings muddy towards the end of the movement. I can’t work out whether the horns being held back is the producer fiddling with the controls, or the conductor insisting on something.
A full minute and fifteen seconds to reset feels like a lifetime for the funeral march to follow, which ends up feeling (again) more romantic than sombre. The fugue feels mathematical – it’s all very nice, but I’m not feeling anything. Indeed, come the end of the second movement, I am feeling something I didn’t really expect: boredom.
The timpani assumes its critical role across the entire symphony by pumping life into a brisk third movement. The strings are responsive and the articulation is sharp. The movement almost reasserts it’s credibility until the trio, when the rubatos applied at the end of every statement feel unearned, unexplainable, and weird.
The last movement reclaims something, but not everything. The strings are favoured whilst the timpani again does the heavy lifting, compensating for heart with percussive lines. There’s an odd loss of definition at 37:58, before things are finally opened up around 38:40. There’s spirit at the end, but by that time it’s all a little too late.
Look, it was all very nice but possibly a bit of a damp squib. Or maybe the BBC Proms was the dry run for Edinburgh on Friday. I’d prefer to think the former. If it was the latter, it was an expensive rehearsal fee.
This review will be updated in due course.
