United Kingdom PROM 4 – MacMillan, Mahler: Hallé Children’s Choir (chorus master: Shirley Court), Hallé Youth Choir (chorus master: Stuart Overington), Hallé Choir (chorus master: Matthew Hamilton), Hallé / Sir Mark Elder (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London, 21.7.2024. (CK)
MacMillan – Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia (first Prom performance)
Mahler – Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor
On Sunday night the Royal Albert Hall was packed to the rafters – including banks of singers rising up on both sides behind the orchestra, and the Arena a sea of bobbing heads, so full of Prommers that it would probably have needed a collective intake of breath to make room for any more. We were all there, of course, for the music; but also, and at least as importantly, to pay tribute to Sir Mark Elder in his last BBC Proms concert with the Hallé, where he has been Music Director for one year shy of a quarter of a century.
Sir James MacMillan’s recent Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia – a rather cumbersomely-titled celebration of the power of music, to words from Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast – was an ideal and substantial launchpad for this inspiriting concert. At almost 20 minutes it is no mere curtain-raiser; beginning with whirrings and tappings in the large orchestra, the music at once demonstrates MacMillan’s direct and instinctive feeling for drama: ironclad brass fanfares with marauding tuba give way to the affecting sound of an unaccompanied children’s choir, and it isn’t long before the first, thrilling tutti for the combined choirs. The choral sound was clean, bright and magnificently disciplined; the use of the children’s choir as a separate, often declamatory element of the texture was brilliantly effective.
The first section presents Timotheus, musician to Alexander the Great, depicting the king’s god-like power that ‘seems to shake the spheres’. After the magnificence of this opening the music darkens for Bacchus: where Dryden seems content to celebrate the unruly energy of victorious soldiers – Sound the trumpets (six of them), beat the drums! – Macmillan suggests other things, all too familiar from our News sources (in his programme note he references ‘the greed of the looting soldiers, who have lost all control in their thievery, slaughter and destruction’). Chords from deep in the piano’s bass register power a sinister march; shrill woodwind cries seem freighted with something more desperate than Now give the hautboys breath; men’s voices sink down sepulchrally on ‘Sweet is pleasure after pain’, grounding on ‘pain’.
Bright, passionate violins and woodwind bring us up and into the light again for Cecilia; there were ethereal sounds from the choirs as well as bells, drums and blazing affirmation, and a final dramatic stroke: a single, quiet choral chord.
In a performance such as this – high, wide and handsome in the hall’s vast spaces – MacMillan’s piece has an impact comparable to that which a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony can achieve here. Sir Mark drove his forces splendidly: I doubt if I will hear anything more stirring in this Proms season.
Elder is (among many other things) a seasoned Mahlerian: and for his farewell performance he had chosen the Fifth Symphony. Per Ardua ad Astra. The opening movement was measured, implacable; in the outbreaks of turbulence the upsurge of passion boiled like lava. In the angry second movement – a pair with the first – the tension initially seemed a little lower; but the brief triumph of the chorale’s first appearance was played for all it was worth – in fact, uniquely in my experience, its impact was greater than the crashing, gong-dominated chord that is supposed to crush it.
For the Scherzo, the principal horn (Laurence Rogers) ascended above his colleagues to a vantage point, flanked at a distance by the percussion and the trombones, whence his calls rang around the hall as they should. Elder’s approach was easy-going (nicht zu schnell, Mahler asks), and there was plenty of room for telling woodwind contributions – spiky clarinets, a humorously tentative bassoon; the waltz crept onto the stage sideways rather like Liz Truss at her Election Count. The central episode where horns call to each other in summer heat was full of character – eerie, almost spectral; the quiet playing of the principal trumpet (Gareth Small), here and throughout the symphony, was ear-catchingly beautiful. Elder kept the texture light in the Adagietto, a floating web of sound: the cellos had me thinking of Barbirolli. The return of the opening was magical; and I always enjoy the suspension before the double basses finally touch down at the end.
Characterful woodwind playing was again to the fore at the opening of the finale; the cellos dug in with a will, though again there was no unseemly hurry. Let’s all enjoy this together, Elder seemed to be saying: there is no rush. There was no shortage of excitement – the trombones snarling on the top step, the trumpets snapping and crackling beneath them, the horns with their bells aloft – and in Elder’s hands the endgame was properly jubilant, giocoso to the last note.
Sir Mark’s impact and influence on music in our country has been incalculable. He was cheered to the rafters, by the audience and by the players and singers massed behind him. Of course he spoke, paying tribute to the unique Proms experience (‘It must flourish … Live music brings us all something we need, perhaps now more than ever’). There was a mildly political joke: ‘We come from Manchester. Some of you may not know where that is.’ And there were some delightful reminiscences of his own Promming days: ‘What happened to the fountain?’
Great as the performance had been, it was unthinkable that Mahler should have the last word. Elder and the Hallé gave us music ‘straight from the heart’: Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit. And the cheering continued.
Chris Kettle
I watched this Prom on BBC4 television. The presentation was lamentable: not a word was said beforehand to explain the nature of the exciting MacMillan piece. Nor were subtitles provided. Now, thanks to this thorough review, I understand the MacMillan.