United Kingdom BBC PROMS 2025 [14] – Varèse, Thovaldsdottir, Ravel, Stravinsky: Johannes Moser (cello), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Eva Ollikainen (conductor). Royal Albert Corridor, London, 13.8.2025. (CC)
Varèse – Intégales (1924/25)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Earlier than we fall (2024, UK premiere)
Ravel – Boléro (1928)
Stravinsky – Le sacre du printemps (1911-13)
Wha a tempting array of music: for twentieth-century nerds and those that take pleasure in music with the ink nonetheless moist, maybe. And but, this appeared to me like a sold-out Royal Albert Corridor; somebody is doing one thing proper in publicity.
The music of Edgard Varèse (1983-1965) doesn’t get out a lot as of late. A disgrace, as items resembling Octandre, Ionisation and, certainly Intégrales, make an indelible mark on those who dare to listen to them. Varèse’s uncompromising manner doesn’t preclude reference factors, most clearly Stravinsky. The music eschews strings: it does nonetheless embrace woodwind (together with two piccolos), brass (together with a contrabass trombone) and a raft of percussion (together with sleigh bells, lion’s roar and chains). Eva Ollikainen, present Principal Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, has a super-clean beat, which resulted in razor-sharp ensemble. Brass specifically was spectacular, notably once they act as one.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s cello concerto, Earlier than we fall, explores the concept of being on the sting, and the resultant rigidity. Icelandic herself, she enjoys an in depth relationship with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (elsewhere, in 2015, she grew to become the inaugural Kravis Rising Composer award on the New York Philharmonic). It has been instructed (by Nordic skilled Andrew Mellor) that Thorvaldsdottir’s music echoes the huge canvases of fellow Icelander Jón Leifs. Amazingly, her first main work was solely composed in 2010 (Dreaming).
Thorvaldsdottir’s scoring could be particular person, too: the rating asks for dried eucalyptus leaves on a drum, for instance. One factor is for certain: her ear is hyper-keen. There’s each radiance and darkness to Thorvaldsdottir’s rating (maybe the concept of the ’black solar’ subsists right here; consider an eclipse). The soloist was the extraordinary Johannes Moser, a nomadic wanderer in a heady, forbidding orchestral panorama. Thorvaldsdottir is able to making a seething mass of strings (as early on) but additionally actual heat, then (on the opening of the concerto’s second part) a way of Sibelian stasis. Moser’s lyricism was infinitely touching; vibrating, oscillating percussion appeared to hunt to destabilise his musings. Virtually atemporal, ghostly, Thorvaldsdottir’s music can generally suggest a form of distended folks melody; at all times undermined not directly by the orchestral (chthonic double basses have actual half to play right here). Nothing is left to likelihood, the whole lot is fastidiously sculpted, and the efficiency appeared to underline this – the handing over from cello to orchestra of a line, for instance. If Birtwistle wrote about an Earth that dances, Thorvaldsdottir appears to hunt to specific the dimensions and depth of the planet itself. Earlier than we fall is, because the title suggests, music on the sting, and a sense of expectancy, maybe considerably fearful, pervades. Maybe the opening of the cello cadenza makes this clear: because the soloist explores, double basses floor the music, as if ‘pulling’ the soloist in the direction of them by way of gravity.
That is a rare piece, some of the vital (native) premieres on the BBC Proms. Each piece I hear by Thorvaldsdottir solely will increase my respect for her; Earlier than we fall is beautiful. Moser’s efficiency was a tour de pressure backed by supreme confidence by the BBC Symphony Orchestra below Ollikainen.
So why, oh, why, not place the interval there? That’s lots for a primary half: 12 minutes for the Varèse, 26 for Thorvaldsdottir. Together with the stage administration (appreciable), did we actually want Ravel’s Boléro after which a chunk that lasts round 33 minutes alone within the second half? Absolutely put it afterwards? Anyway, it was a superb efficiency of Boléro, vibrant, masterly paced, with the pervading rhythm maintained fantastically all through. And that rhythm was an important factor to this account: it remained fixed however, in a nod in the direction of Ravel’s proximity to jazz and blues, soloists have been allowed (presumably inspired) to ‘trip’ the beat. It labored brilliantly, trombone glisses swooning, sudden wind band coming into focus to convey again the self-discipline. And thru all of this, Ollikainen by no means overlooked the larger image; this was a calibrated crescendo of color culminating in outrageous trombones and a closing graphic collapse in that closing gesture. No marvel the viewers went nuts: it’s not simply that everybody is aware of this one, however that Ravel’s masterpiece (in its personal method simply as fashionable as Varèse) made its full mark.
And so to Le sacre. The leisurely bassoon solo that opened appeared to refer again to the timelessness of Thorvaldsdottir slightly than the wind solos of Intégrales. Ollikainen supplied a captivating, extremely particular person view that appeared to mix an X-ray method to the rating (solely Boulez in my expertise as equalled this efficiency) with a way of dance. The fundamental, the primal, was lessened right here, as texture and line, with that ever-present sense of dance, took priority. Nowhere was this extra apparent than in Ollikainen’s fastidiously crafted crescendos. The bassoon solo (Jonathan Davies) was masterly; no much less so the horn enjoying of Nicholas Korth. Ollikainen introduced out the ritualistic side properly, each within the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ itself and in a number of the quieter moments (muted trumpets).
Maybe probably the most spectacular side was that this Ceremony of Spring was by no means cacophonous. Loud, sure, however the parts of Stravinsky’s scoring, and specifically his layering, have been ever audible. I’ve heard extra thrilling accounts, however not often one so attention-grabbing, so dedicated to Stravinsky’s rating, so conscious that his is a ballet, not a symphonic work. I do marvel if that sense of the dance is a part of Ollikainen, just because she finds a way of dance-like ‘raise’ to rhythms in her tremendous recording of Kalevi Aho’s Piano Concerto No.1 (with Sonja Fräki, piano, and the Turku Philharmonic, on BIS). My very own expertise of Ollikainen beforehand solely got here from one supply: a recording of Molly Kien’s Pyramid on dB Information. Ollikainen additionally presides over a coupling of Kabalevsky and Robert Schumann Cello Concertos with Theodor Lyngstad on OUR Recordings (Copenhagen Philharmonic). Her repertoire is nothing if not large, then, her conducing pedigree of the very best (Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy). She has recorded Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA and AION with the Iceland SO.
I very a lot wish to expertise a live performance led by her once more, and shortly. A most memorable live performance.
Colin Clarke
Featured Picture: Eva Ollikainen conducts the BBC SO © BBC/Andy Paradise
