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The BBC Promenade Concerts 2009: A magnificently fullsome preview by Deputy Editor Bob Briggs (BBr)


Ever since my schooldays there have been two dates in the year which I await with baited breath,  the announcement of the England Test Team and the publication of the Proms prospectus, which is now available for 2009.

It seems incredible that this festival is in its 115^th season this year, that it has survived two world wars, the destruction, by bombing, of its first home the still much missed Queen’s Hall - even by those of us who never attended a concert there - and a Musicians Union strike. All this testifies to the Proms’ importance in this country’s, and  the world’s, musical life  and  the variety of the music offered – not to forget the many foreign visitors the concerts  attract as both performers and listeners – attests to the excitement and continuing relevance of the event.

This is Roger Wright’s second season as director and he’s brought together a fascinating collection of, literally, old music, new music, well -loved music and some largely forgotten music. All of the concerts will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 - and  will also be available for listening for seven days after their live broadcasts o the BBC BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ one of the Corporation’s most important and valuable additions to its music service. Many will also appear on BBC television, both live and recorded and for the first time, eight events will be webcast on the Proms website and will remain available for the whole of the season.

Roger Wright has come in for a lot of criticism since he took over as Controller of BBC Radio 3, and now Director of the Proms, so it pleases me that I can say that this is one of the best planned, and most interesting, Proms seasons I have come across in several years.

There are important anniversaries to be celebrated in 2009 the celebrations of the birth of both Purcell and Mendelssohn – 400^th and 200^th respectively – and commemorations of the deaths of Handel and Haydn – the 250^th and 200^th respectively. There are also the 50^th anniversaries of the death of the much underplayed Bohuslav Martinů and the even more underplayed Albert Ketèlbey. 1934 is also an important date for us this year for it was the year in which Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Peter Dickinson and Alfred Schnittke were born, Delius, Elgar and Holst died and the first MGM musical was made. That’s a lot to cram into 100 concerts but Wright has achieved the miraculous and made it all work, to create a fascinating festival.

Let’s start with a look at the anniversaries. Handel has 16 works to be played – Messiah with Dominique Labelle, Patricia Bardon, John Mark Ainsley and Matthew Rose, members of no less than seven youth choirs and the Northern Sinfonia under the direction of Nicholas McGegan (6th September). With McGegan in charge this promises to be a special occasion. Danish Opera, with Inger Dam-Jensen and Andreas Scholl, will perform the comic parody opera Partenope (19th July) and four Coronation Anthems (including Zadok the Priest), the 4^th Organ Concerto, together with excerpts from Semele will be given by the Sixteen under Harry Christophers (12th August). Susan Gritton, Mark Padmore and Neal Davies join forces with The English Concert and Harry Bicket for a performance of Samson (20thAugust). Riches indeed.

Haydn has 10 works listed for performance, including a well cast The Creation with Rosemary Joshua, Mark Padmore, Neal Davies, Peter Harvey and the Chetham's Chamber Choir and Gabrieli Consort & Players under Paul McCreesh (18th July), three Symphonies (97, 100 and 101), three Quartets (opp.20/4, 50/4 and the magnificent 77/1), the Seven Last Words in its oratorio form (20th July) and the Trumpet Concerto, with Alsion Balsam, on the Last Night (12th September). Mendelssohn has 14 works programmed including all five Symphonies – when were we last offered a chance to hear all these works in such a short time? – the delicious Violin Concerto with Isabelle Faust, both Piano Trios and the Octet.

Henry Purcell has 13 works listed and what a variety of pieces they are. A suite from Abdelazar with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Sir Roger Norrington (25th August), the wonderful Chacony in a Proms Chamber Music concert by the Scottish Ensemble (10th August), a whole evening of vocal and instrumental music by the Academy of Ancient Music (7th September) and what promises to be one of the highlights of the season, a semi–staged performance of The Fairy Queen by Glyndebourne Festival Opera under William Christie, and a cast which includes Lucy Crowe, Claire Debono, Anna Devin, Carolyn Sampson, Robert Burt, Ed Lyon and Andrew Foster-Williams (21st July).

Bohuslav Martinů is represented by the wonderful Concerto for two pianos, given by Jaroslava Pěchočová and Václav Mácha with the BBC SO under Bělohlávek (27th July) as well as the delightful Promenades for flute, violin and harpsichord and the riotous La revue de cuisine, both of which will be given at Proms Chamber Music concerts (30th and 31st August) and Albert Ketèlbey’s In a Monastery Garden gets an airing on the Last Night (12th September).

British music is pretty well served this year – Wright is known to have a love for our home grown composers and he has done admirere of this repertoire proud. Using Elgar, Delius and Holst as his foundations there’s much to admire and enjoy. Nine  works represent Elgar.  Apart from the 1^st and 4^th Pomp and Circumstance Marches – perhaps Wright can be persuaded to give us the complete set of six sometime in the future, for that would really raise some eyebrows when the full quality of the works are revealed – there’s the 2^nd Symphony in what is an unmissable concert by the BBC Philharmonic and Sinaisky which also includes Finzi’s Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra, to be played by Leon McCawley, and E J Moeran’s glorious Symphony in G minor (23rd July) – this is one of my highlights – and the Overture In the South can be heard on the first night – played by BBC SO under its chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek (17th July). Delius can be heard in two performances of On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring in a Darwin-inspired extravaganza for kids which also includes a new work by DJ and drum-and-bass producer Goldie (1st - repeated 2nd - August) and there’s a real Holst rarity in the Free Family concert, A Song of the Night for violin and orchestra (26th July). Very sensibly Wright has organised three concerts of music by all three Englishmen. In the Proms Chamber Music series there’s Delius’s Cello Sonata and Elgar’s Violin Sonata together with Holst songs and with Natalie Clein playing the Delius and Jennifer Pike the Elgar this is too good to miss (29th August). Holst’s ubiquitous Planets Suite joins Delius’s sublime Song of the High Hills and Elgar’s Cockaigne with Mackerras leading the BBC PO (25th July) and the Enigma ends a programme which starts with a rare outing of Holst’s First Choral Symphony with Delius’s glorious Brigg Fair between them (26th July). The Proms is exactly the right venue for this music for it will reach the widest audience possible and should win new friends for all the pieces. Bravo to Wright for this programming.

British music of a slightly earlier period comes courtesy of Arthur Sullivan and W S Gilbert in a welcome return to the Proms of one of their operettas. Patience will be heard with Felicity Palmer, Rebecca Bottone, Pamela Helen Stephen, Donald Maxwell, Graeme Danby and Bonaventura Bottone and Mackerras conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra of which he was chief conductor from 1954 to 1956 –  in music with which he made his name over 50 years ago! (11th August).

For the 75^th birthdays of Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Schnittke and Peter Dickinson we are given some real treats. Birtwistle has a whole late night Prom of his works – Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum, Silbury Air and the magnificent Verses for Ensembles - given by the London Sinfonietta under David Atherton (4th August) as well as Act II of The Mask of Orpheus conducted by Martyn Brabbins and Ryan Wigglesworth with sound projection by Ian Dearden (14th August). Maxwell Davies gets four works oerformed; Daniel Hope with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the composer’s own direction will give the UK première of his Violin Concerto No.2, Fiddler on the Shore, a work composed for Hope which, at the time of writing, has yet to receive its first performance in Leipzig in August (8th September). The palindromically titled Roma amor is a serenade to the capital of Italy where Max spent some of his student days, Gianandrea Noseda paying tribute to his homeland with the BBC PO (6th August) and two smaller pieces – Westerlings and Solstice of Light - will be given by David Goode (organ) and the BBC Singers in a late night Prom (8th September) and are perfect for the end of the day. Peter Dickinson, a composer of whom we hear far too little  these days is represented by his organ work Blue Rose Variations played by David Titterington on the organ of the RAH (25th July) and Alfred Schnittke’s oratorio Nagasaki will receive its UK première under the safe hands of Valery Gergiev (24th August). 1934 also saw the production of the first MGM musical and Kim Criswell, Sarah Fox, Sir Thomas Allen and Curtis Stigers join the Maida Vale Singers with John Wilson conducting his eponymous Orchestra to celebrate 75 years of movie musical magic. Among  others, there will be excerpts from The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, High Society, Gigi and Singin' in the Rain. So put on your dancin’ shoes and get yourself off to see the Wizard John Wilson, and his friends (1st August).

Expanding on the various excursions from the classical repertoire in previous years we will be treated to a day of Indian culture, including a concert of music from Bollywood (16th August), which nicely balances the MGM show and Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble also make a return visit (11th September).

Although there are no American orchestras at the Proms this year there are more than sufficient visitors. The two concerts by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under its dynamic music director Mariss Jansons, are eagerly anticipated especially as their programmes are all firm Jansons favourites - Ravel’s 2^nd Daphnis et Chloé Suite, Symphonies by Haydn (100^th) Sibelius (1^st) and Shostakovich (the mighty 10^th) as well as five Duparc songs, with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená (1st and 2nd September) and competition for tickets is sure to be fierce – book early for these shows cannot be missed. To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the founding of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra there’s two days of very exciting music making, Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz (early evening), Mendelssohn and Berg (late night) and a concert performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio, with Waltraud Meier and Sir John Tomlinson (21st and 22nf August), all under the direction of the orchestra’s founder Daniel Barenboim.

Mention must also be made of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer in Bartók’s 2^nd Violin Concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos, and Dvořák’s 7^th Symphony (18th August), the Staatskapelle Dresden and Fabio Luisi in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2, with Lang Lang, Strauss’s panoramic Alpine Symphony and the UK première of the revised version of Rebecca Saunders’s traces (27the August). David Zinman brings his Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, with Dawn Upshaw, for a delightful programme of Schubert, the UK première of the Schubert/Osvaldo Golijov joint production She Was Here and Mahler’s 4^th Symphony (29th August). Somewhat more challenging is the late night concert from the previous day when the Netherlands Wind Ensemble will unleash Louis Andriessen’s wild and magnificent setting of Plato, De staat, together with works by two of his former students Steve Martland and Cornelis de Bondt including the London première of Doors Closed (28th August). Finally, the Bamberg Symphony and Jonathan Nott bring the UK première of Jorg Widmann’s Con brio as well as Mozart’s 3^rd Violin Concerto, with Arabella Steinbacher and Bruckner’s 3^rd Symphony (29th July).

The Proms are also welcoming back some good friends. In his 80^th year Haitink offers, with the LSO, Mahler’s 9^th Symphony (20th July) – a very special event not to be missed – and Gidon Kremer appears in the first ever Prom devoted entirely to the music of Philip Glass, playing the Violin Concerto, after which the BBC Scottish, under the Glass specialist Dennis Russell Davies, will give the UK première of the 7^th Symphony subtitled A Toltec Symphony (late night 12th August). Stephen Hough appears four times in the season playing all four of Tchaikovsky’s concerted works for piano and orchestra (the three Concertos 8th August, 28th and 17 July, respectively and the Concert Fantasia, 28th August). 

Finally, a few words about some of the premières I haven’t mentioned – we must not forget that Henry Wood was famous for giving his audience what he called novelties. There are world premières of Michael Jarrell’s Sillages (expanded version) (3rd August), as yet untitled works by young British composers Ben Foskett and Anna Meredith (2nd and 9th  August), Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, written for and to be played by Alban Gerhardt (13the August), Michael Nyman’s The Musicologist Scores in a late night Prom devoted entirely to his music, with the Michael Nyman Band (25th August) and John McCabe’s Study No.12 (Sonata) (31st  August) All these works are BBC commissions, and full praise to the Corporation for this, while the Jarrell is a joint BBC/Orchestre de la Suisse Romande commission. There’s also the world première of the orchestral version of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s Lilliburlero Variations, commissioned two years ago by the Dranoff Two Piano Foundation for its 2008 International Competition (26th July).

UK premières include Detlev Glanert’s Shoreless River (19th August), Augusta Read Thomas’s Violin Concerto No.3, (9th September), Heinz Holliger’s (S)irató (4th August) Oliver Knussen’s Cleveland Pictures (7th August) and Louis Andriessen’s The Hague Hacking – a 2 piano Concerto to be played by the Labèque sisters,who make three appearances this season,  (17th August) and Claude Vivier’s Orion (30th August). There is also the London première of John McCabe’s Horn Concerto Rainforest IV, a BBC commission first heard in Cardiff two years ago and played by David Pyatt, for whom it was written, and conducted by Jac van Steen – which brings me back to cricket for I wonder if anyone has noticed the marked resemblance between this conductor and the young Ian Botham? (5th September).

It’s not all new things, of course, for there is a wide range of music from all periods and in all styles, in fact there’s everything you could want from a major music festival. In a particularly nice piece of programming we’ve got Respighi’s Roman trilogy – The Pines of Rome from the BBC Philharmonic and Noseda, The Fountains of Rome, BBC SO under Knussen (the new artist in residence with that orchestra) and Roman Festivals with the National Youth Orchestra of GB and Vasily Petrenko (6th, 7th and 8th August) as well as all eleven of Stravinsky’s ballets.

Ten years of the BBC’s New Generation Artists will be celebrated with a weekend of chamber concerts at the Cadogan Hall (where the Proms Chamber Music concerts are held every Monday lunchtime) (29th, 30th and 31st August). And I mustn’t forget to mention the Young Composers Competition where the chosen composers will be invited to write a Fireworks Fanfare, to be performed before Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks on the Last night (12th September). Bassoonist Karen Geoghegan, one of three finalists on the BBC television programme, Classical Star, will be playing the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with the BBC PO under Noseda (5th August), and here’s a bi t of hot news not connected with the Proms: MusicWeb has just commissioned a Concerto for Karen from Howard Blake.

I simply haven’t had time or space to go into details about the festival within the festival of music for multiple pianos,  or the contributions from the Hallé, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the City of Birmingham  and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras or the sterling work given by the BBC’s own orchestras - especially the BBC SO without which the season would lack a backbone. I apologise to them but their various contributions will go to making this one of the most interesting and varied Proms seasons I have encountered for some years. One final piece of good news – tickets for the Promenade have been kept at last year’s price: £5.00p.

In summary, this season consists of 170 events – including Proms Plus, an introductory event before each evening Prom, which this year takes place in the newly re–opened Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall of the Royal College of Music, just across the road from the Royal Albert Hall – of which 76 will be given in the Royal Albert Hall with the 19 Proms Chamber Music concerts  given in the lovely surroundings of the Cadogan Hall, just off Sloane Square.

Have a good summer of listening. I know that I shall. And thank you, Roger Wright.

Bob Briggs

Full details of every concert, and lots of other information, can be found at the Proms website http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2009/.

Seen and Heard International will feature a special Prom concert review page during the entire season. [Ed]


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