BBC Proms Concert #1: a Strange Hodgepodge of Late Romanticism with a bit of Modern Thrown In

Stephen Hough

BBC Proms Concert #1

Stravinsky, Fireworks
Chabrier, Ode à la musique
Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No.3 in E flat major
Poulenc, Concerto for two pianos
Elgar, In the South (Alassio)
Brahms, Alto Rhapsody
Bruckner, Psalm 150

Ailish Tynan soprano
Alice Coote mezzo-soprano
Stephen Hough piano
Katia and Marielle Labèque pianos
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek, conductor

The venerable BBC Proms, savior of summer music in London, began last night at Royal Albert Hall and was broadcast to the planet on radio and television. Rather than launching into the affair immediately, let me quote an apropos remark from Sir Thomas Beecham, himself a savior of London music at various times. Late in life he married a lady pianist much his junior, and one night she performed a concerto in not so sterling a fashion. When the movers came on stage to take away the piano, Beecham said, "Don't bother, boys. It will slink off on its own."  I get more smiles from that quip that I did all last night at a concert where not just the piano  but almost everyone concerned should have slinked off.

The Proms exist to satisfy two blocs of listeners, the casual and the serious . It's more or less a given that the opening night should be jolly good fun. But this time things went too far. A nice frothy program can be centered around the music of Chabrier and Poulenc. A very different sort of program can be based on Brahms and Bruckner. Tossing them together, however, is not so much chalk and cheese as roast venison and cotton candy. (England is still a land of bracing invective, and I was heartened  to receive an e-mail from a music enthusiast who had been listening on the BBC. He  described Proms 1 as "a load of old tosh played by a bunch of self-indulgent luvvies.") The audience roared with delight after each number, but pained smiles from the musicians of the BBC Symphony told another story. They knew they had been frog-marched through a bog.

My incited correspondent complained that the program was ill thought out if thought out at all. It's true. Stravinsky's youthful Fireworks would have made a fizzy start to a Russo-Franco evening. If only Jiri Bělohlávek's lackluster conducting hadn't turned it into wet squibs, with the orchestra barely paying attention, missing lots of chances for bright virtuosity.  Chabrier's Ode à la Musique is a rarity, to say the least, and probably should have been left in the archives. A short effusion for chorus and soprano, the idiom was bland and lightweight. Although Ailish Tynan had a pleasant light voice, her solo part could have been sung by any skilled amateur and showed off few of her gifts.

When in pops mode, the Proms like to trot out a bake shop window of treats, this evening bringing no less than three pianists, two vocal soloists, chorus, and of course the orchestra.  The first pianist was a British star, Stephen Hough, who amiably takes on knuckle-crunchers from the nineteenth century,  In this case the dubious, unfinished Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 3. The orchestral part is sub-Lisztian, the piano part a jumbled series of technical hurdles interspersed with throwaway tunes. Hough did his best, but who cared? Hard on his heels came the first jarring juxtaposition,  Out scampered the Labèque sisters, the world's most famous piano duo on the pops circuit.  They looked Mary Quantish in  purple and red pants suits, ripping their way through Poulenc's zippy, circus-inspired Concerto for Two Pianos. If you aren't in the right mood, this piece can sound like "stupid, disconnected jingles," to quote my dyspeptic correspondent.  The Labèques got the audience to cheer lustily, which was the whole point.

In a sensible world we would have ended with a capper from Paris or Moscow. Instead,  Bělohlávek lurched us into alien territory with Elgar's sunny tone poem inspired by Italy, In the South. There's a good deal of Dvořak suffusing this melodic romp, a composer that Bělohlávek does well with,  But I got the feeling that he was on autopilot by now. If only I had known.  The Brahms Alto Rhapsody is set to a somber poem of Goethe's, and suddenly the cheery audience acted as if the archbishop had arrived for tea. Solemnity greeted a performance of this masterpiece that couldn't have been more flat and uninvolved.  The mezzo soloist, Alice Coote, is gaining renown in Britain, but on this night she was loud and coarse in her interpretation, barely indicating the depth of religious feeling intended by both poet and composer.  I suspect she was simply trying to fill the far corners of the vast hall. Even the men of the usually exemplary BBC Symphony Chorus seemed dispirited. I apologize to the doughty couple who occupied Section G, Row 5, Seats 2 and 3, because sitting next to me and my growing scowl mustn't have been much fun.  To spare them and myself, I left before the concluding number, Bruckner's setting of Psalm 150. Church is one thing, but I don't frequent funeral parlors. By the time I exited on to the street, which was wet and chilly after a long rain, my taste for music was dead for the time being.