United Kingdom BBC Proms 2025 [10] – Boulez, Mahler: Natalya Romaniw (soprano), Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano), Russell Thomas (tenor), James Newby (baritone), Carlos González Nápoles (treble), Malakai Bayoh (alto), Constanza Refrain, BBC Symphony Refrain and Orchestra / Hannu Lintu (conductor). Royal Albert Corridor, London, 4.8.2025. (CK)
Boulez – Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Mahler – Das klagende Lied
Boulez’s Rituel is probably his least typical work, and maybe essentially the most usually carried out. Least typical as a result of this compulsive tinkerer along with his personal scores – he maintained {that a} piece of music isn’t completed – wrote it, premiered it and despatched it on its manner. It’s a funeral march of types, however we pay attention in useless for emotional undertow: its hieratic and extremely organised objectivity aligns it with Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, and maybe with Birtwistle’s huge contemporaneous processional The Triumph of Time (which I bear in mind Boulez conducting on the BBC Proms), although with out that work’s crushing weight.
Boulez’s orchestra is, after all, deconstructed, the composition of his eight teams of gamers and the period of their music organised incrementally on what one would possibly name the Partridge in a Pear Tree Precept (which additionally goes into reverse). As so usually occurs, the corridor’s large areas lent the work a robust ingredient of theatre, not least within the platform’s mise en scène: a phalanx of 15 brass within the centre, a colony of gongs and tam-tams above it, a woodwind septet high left, a reed quintet high proper, and so forth.
The percussion (one participant for every group, two for the brass) nags away desultorily, usually in a brief, steadily weakening sequence of strokes, suggestive of a procession in gradual retreat, or a mechanism winding down. On the rostrum Hannu Lintu’s gestures had been as clear and decisive as Boulez’s would have been, although his fingers had been extra expressive (I’m not certain I ever noticed Boulez splay his fingers). I discovered the efficiency oddly transferring, stunning me even, right into a momentary nostalgia for the Glock period.
The efficiency of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied is perhaps seen as a continuation of this live performance’s homage to Boulez: I bear in mind him performing the whole work with this orchestra on the Southbank and giving the primary Proms efficiency, and I imagine he was the primary to file Waldmärchen. It’s an astonishing work for a 20-year-old to have written: one can level to Wagnerisms and no matter, nevertheless it actually got here from nowhere. The primacy of wind over strings; the startling vividness of musical imagery: how can we account for these, and far else moreover? If somebody requested me to introduce him to Mahler’s soundworld, I might play him the opening of Half 2, Der Spielmann (ideally in Wyn Morris’s recording, nonetheless essentially the most graphic and unsettling).
Additionally it is an extravagant piece, notably within the authentic model. The one financial system on this efficiency was the discount of six harps to 4 (they had been enough, each sonically and visually). With six soloists, two choirs and a band of 19 wind and percussion up within the Gallery, I think about that by way of the numbers of performers this yielded little or nothing to the massed Mancunian forces that carried out the Resurrection Symphony simply two days earlier.
Mahler minimize Waldmärchen, the primary of the work’s three elements, for the work’s premiere. Was he proper to take action? Because it begins, I settle gratefully into its Mahlerian soundworld; when it winds down, virtually half an hour later, I’m much less certain. It’s diffuse: the second and third elements present a tauter musical and dramatic expertise. After all, it’s good that we’ve got the prospect to listen to the work full; but when I had been to listen to a live performance efficiency of the second and third elements solely, I don’t assume I might really feel short-changed.
The second half, Der Spielmann, opened ominously, the music finely targeted over the remorseless tramping of the double basses. Pressure was not maintained all through, although the ultimate refrain was correctly engulfing. The concluding Hochzeitsstück was very good, expertly managed and stage-managed by Lintu, the Gallery band making a powerful and completely synchronised racket (there have been 4 flügelhorns and a pair of cornets up there, together with shrieking E-flat clarinets and far else). We had been gripped all the best way to the ultimate, slamming A minor chord (prophetic of the Sixth, as the start of Half 2 is prophetic of the Second). The 2 choruses outdid themselves: they had been incisive and conscious of the drama all through, elevating the neck-hairs with celebratory swagger or whispering horror. They and their chorus-masters – Joanna Tomlinson for the Constanza Refrain and Neil Ferris for the BBC Symphony Refrain – totally deserved the viewers’s roars of approval on the finish.
The music is taxing, with many uncovered strains: the BBC SO had been a shade under their disciplined finest, although there was positive work from the ever-reliable Philip Cobb (trumpet) and Martin Owen (horn). The soloists all performed their half; mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, to whom a lot of the narration is entrusted, offering the work’s nonetheless centre. Better of all, Mahler’s hopeful plea within the rating (Womöglich durch eine Knabenstimme auszuführen!) was honoured – two boys’ voices, in reality, each from the Schola Cantorum on the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial Faculty: first, alto Malakai Bayoh, then treble Carlos Gonzáles Nápoles – small of stature, however not of voice, talent or braveness as he despatched these spinechilling fortissimo leaps of greater than an octave – a tenth – ringing into the corridor.
Chris Kettle
