United Kingdom PROM 27 – Saariaho, Mozart, R. Strauss: Silja Aalto (soprano), Anssi Karttunen (cello), Seong-Jin Cho (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo (conductor), Chris Hopkins (offstage conductor, Alpine Symphony). Royal Albert Hall, London, 9.8.2024. (CC)
Saariaho – Mirage (2007)
Mozart – Piano Concerto No.9 in E-flat, K 271, ‘Jeunehomme’ (1777)
R. Strauss – Eine Alpensinfonie, Op.64 (1911-15)
A fascinating programme here, promising much on paper. Half of those expectations were met: a first half full of beauty and refinement.
The story behind Kaja Saariaho’s 2007 Mirage is fascinating: a shamanic channeler from Mexico, Maria Sabina (1894-1985) is the inspiration. Chant is reflected in the use of microtones; the two soloists are independent voices, but they react to each other in a transcendental conversation. The words are indeed channelled from Spirit by Sabina: ‘I am a woman who flies,’ she sings, ‘I am the sacred eagle woman’; the text includes such phrases as ‘… I am the shooting star woman beneath the water … I am the sacred clown’ are all relevant phrases from the text.’ The text is sung in an English translation by Alvaro Estrada.
It is the cello that prepares the way for the voice, but within a short moment the cello swoops up to joining the vocalist as one. The orchestra acts as a halo around the soloists, garlanding the music with high woodwinds and harp. Both soloists are BBC Proms debut artists (I was surprised about Anssi Karttunen): Finnish soprano Silja Aalto, trained at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, has a voice of great purity (it sounded even more so live than on the broadcast). Her voice is incredibly strong, yet warm of tone; she even projected a whisper to the ends of the Royal Albert Hall. A particular emphasis on the phrase ‘sacred clown’ seemed to be important to both composer and interpreters. Karttunen was every inch the singer’s equal in his technical command, expressivity and resonance with Saariaho’s soundworld. A mesmerising moment of magic: a true Proms highlight.
Seong-Jin Cho has impressed on numerous occasions: an ‘Emperor’ in Basel stands out (review here). This was a performance of Mozart’s Ninth Piano Concerto, the so-called ‘Jeunehomme’ of great freshness (‘Jeunehomme’ is nothing to do with a young man and, if modern scholarship is correct, very little to do with ‘Mademoiselle Jeunehomme’ either: there is a move to correct the nickname to ‘Jenamy’)). Cho plays with tremendous clarity but also terrific invention. The opening exchange (in this concerto, the soloist enters almost immediately) was superbly managed by both orchestra and soloist. As the first movement progressed, Cho added tasteful ornaments. His articulation is miraculously clean, his imagination vast: the piano dialogue with itself (a registral dialogue between treble and bass) was brilliantly done; just the occasional ‘placing’ of a downbeat sounded mannered. Nice to have Mozart’s own cadenza, here full of flights of fantasy, the final scale just so perfect.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra strings were lovely and dark for the central Andantino; they pulsated under Cho’s eloquent line later. Whispered piano lines projected perfectly; this was great Mozart, voice-leading within the soliloquizing perfectly realised, piano/orchestra imitations spot-on. The third movement is marked Rondo but also Presto, and it was a properly scampering presto we received (enabling nice contrast for the slow minuet held within this movement); more registral piano dialogue for the soloist was again a delight. How Cho and Sakari Oramo managed to maintain a sense of style, or intimacy, of scale, within the space of the Albert Hall I do not know, but it was a joy to experience.
Which is more than can be said for the Alpine Symphony. The BBC SO played it in 2016 under Semyon Bychkov (review here) and that was a memorable performance, full of that conductor’s characteristic command of structure and of detail and a magnificent acknowledgement of the grandeur of Richard Strauss’s vast Alpine canvas. Oramo’s was pretty much the obverse. It began as it meant to go on: not together, almost symbolic of a disengaged collective. When the brass entered with their chords a few seconds later, it was also challenged from an ensemble perspective. A shrillness to the violins, absent under Bychkov in all of the concerts I have heard from him, returned. Solo string passages worked well in Oramo’s performance; it was the tutti that was problematical.
Effects, so vital to Strauss’s gestural landscape, were hit and miss. The off-stage brass choir, up in the gallery and conducted by Chris Hopkins, was an unmitigated success; but the cowbells in the mountain pasture (Auf der Alm) sounded like someone was beating metal in a car repair garage next door. Highs met lows regularly: a superb rendition of the big horn melody by Nicholas Korth shortly after the cowbells was met by scratchy strings. Unnecessarily haphazardly diffuse textures later met wonderful pianissimos around a superb bassoon solo from Julie Price. Were we hearing the passages they had rehearsed, and the consequences turning away from others? The thunderstorm only just held together, the organ its rescuer; strings struggled. Towards the end, another crucial brass entrance crumbled. The end felt emotionally stagnant.
The woodwind’s waterfall (Am Wasserfall) was effective, but the point is that there seemed little narrative thread in a piece that is by definition narrative of an Alpine journey, leaving moments such as that, or, frankly, some impressively loud moments, stranded. Lyrical force turned into bombast; Strauss’s story was put through a shredder.
The Bychkov remains a BBC Proms reference for me; sadly I missed Ilan Volkov in 2019 (although my esteemed colleague Alan Sanders found much to enjoy); while Chris Sallon enjoyed Sir Antonio Pappano’s NYO USA performance in 2019 (review here). But for this Oramo Prom, it is the Saariaho and Mozart that bring a smile. Sub-par Alpines are rare, and it is sad to find one here.
Colin Clarke