United Kingdom PROM 21 – Various: Steven Osborne (piano), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London, 4.8.2024. (CK)
Marsalis – Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! (UK premiere)
Copland – Suite, Billy the Kid
Barber – Adagio for Strings
Gershwin (orch. Ferde Grofe) – Rhapsody in Blue
Ives – The Unanswered Question
Adams – Harmonielehre
There was a queue for returns for last Sunday’s Prom with John Wilson and his crack pick-up band, the Sinfonia of London, serving up a crowd-pleasing mix of American music: and it proved to be a humdinger. All the biggest names among American composers were there: there was no attempt to introduce us to the music of someone we didn’t know. When these familiar pieces are played as well as this, though, it would be churlish to complain.
Probably the least-known music (only because it is the most recent) was the six-minute opener, Wynton Marsalis’s Herald, Holler and Hallelujah! It is hard to realise that the great jazzman has been part of our musical landscape for forty years. In this piece he seems less interested in expressing his own personality than in paying homage to others: admirably unselfish, though it robs the music of memorability. It alternates between the wide perspectives of Coplandesque prairie and the busy, brassy City: there are quiet reminiscences of the Fanfare for the Common Man, and Marsalis even finds room for the anvil from Copland’s Third Symphony. Then for the final furlong the orchestra settles into big-band swing: six horns raise their bells, but – surprisingly – the music winds down like a clock at the end. An effective concert-opener, though it leaves nothing behind.
Next, the genuine Copland article: the Suite from Billy the Kid. Less often played, perhaps, than Rodeo or Appalachian Spring: but prime Copland nevertheless. The Open Prairie cast an immediate and recognisable spell; sprightly woodwind brought Street in a Frontier Town to life – really sharp, characterful playing, with every player light on his feet. Woodblock and guero added colour and rhythm to Mexican Dance before Prairie Night brought quieter, at times almost hymnic sounds, with unvarnished simplicity from the cellos and a beautiful, extended trumpet solo (the London Symphony Orchestra’s James Fountain). Gun Battle reverberated splendidly around the hall: Billy’s Capture and Death brought perky woodwind and shining strings before we were returned to the calm grandeur and wide-open spaces of the Prairie. Twenty minutes, all of a piece, beautifully and sympathetically played.
With Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue just around the corner, Barber’s Adagio for Strings might have seemed an interlude, an opportunity to relax before the impending excitement: but it too was beautifully played, Wilson shaping and pointing the approach to the climactic cry of raw agony – left unanswered, hanging in the air – and its aftermath with tact as well as skill: as the music faded away to nothing, it was nigh impossible to mark the moment when the playing of the Sinfonia’s strings ceased. The performance was fervently received.
And so to Rhapsody in Blue: Chris Richards’s clarinet glissando was characterfully taken, though it was his exaggerated wail in the next phrase that brought audience laughter. The performance made a fizzing end to the first half: the orchestra was on it to a man, so much so that at the end Steven Osborne, the brilliantly deft pianist, turned to the orchestra, raised his arms and bowed to them as if they were superior beings before his jazzy encore of Duke Ellington’s Things Ain’t What They Used To Be.
I am probably in a minority of one here, but Ives’s The Unanswered Question seems to me an example of a piece valued for its significance, its philosophical freight, rather than for its musical interest. It is partly the fault of Bernstein and his Harvard Lectures. I remember him conducting the piece with the New York Philharmonic in this hall, in a pair of concerts marking the bicentenary of American Independence: some time before the music’s end he walked smartly off the stage, like a Deist God who sets the universe in motion and then disappears, leaving it to function on its own. There are other Ives pieces I would rather hear: but I must admit it worked well, with the sound of the strings coming down from one side of the top gallery, the trumpet solo from the other, and the flutes onstage.
When John Adams conducted his Harmonielehre in the Barbican more than twenty years ago, critical reaction was guarded: one wrote that he wasn’t sure whether it was music or manipulation. Now that perspectives have lengthened on the twentieth-century dominance of Modernism – the Boulez doctrine, if you like – we can listen to it and enjoy it without guilt. And enjoy it we did: Wilson and his hundred virtuosi gave a magnificent performance, all the inner parts clear, all those myriads of notes that make up the Adams universe, from booming tubas to glistening piccolos, banks of keyboards and tuned percussion, drums, bells, gongs – as sonic and visual spectacle it yielded little to last Tuesday’s performance of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony (review here). It is a barnstormer, but also a piece of great beauty.
There have been performances where I have been tempted to zone out in the middle of the first movement, but that wasn’t possible here. Nor did I find myself reflecting on the springs of Adams’s inspiration – dreams of supertankers and medieval mystics, Parsifal, Schoenberg, Sibelius, Mahler and the rest: I was too much in the music, in the moment. And as if this marathon programme hadn’t been enough, we were treated to an encore: Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle Faddle. Pure showbiz: but also an extraordinary demonstration of orchestral discipline and rhythmic precision. Quite a night.
Chris Kettle