An enduring pleasure of the BBC Proms is the opportunity it gives British audiences to see foreign orchestras which might otherwise remain strangers to our shores. This Prom saw a visit from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under their principal conductor, Fabio Luisi, in a programme that blended modern works with one of the most famous symphonies in the repertoire.
The Danish composer Bent Sørensen’s Evening Land isn’t far off its tenth anniversary, but was here making its first appearance at the Proms. Alas, the Royal Albert Hall is not the optimum venue for a piece that begins with a gossamer-fine solo from the leader. Evening Land is a work that blends two pictures – that of an evening view from the composer’s childhood home in Denmark and that of a New York cityscape, seen from an apartment balcony. It’s an impressive work, but not a particularly enjoyable one. The orchestra showed a pallor to its string section as they quested ruminatively below snarky brass (particular credit to the trombones for some polished playing). Towards the work’s end, we again had a sense of chamber music – the leader against the flutes; a moment of ruminative intensity, but weakened by the venue.
A far more suitable work for the Royal Albert Hall, Anna Clyne’s The Years gave the Danish National Concert Choir a workout ahead of the Beethoven. The Years was written during the pandemic and has at its heart six verses of poetry by Stephanie Fleischmann. It’s a strange, slightly unsettling work, but is beautiful in an understated fashion. For the first two verses, the chorus takes the lead, the orchestra barely registering as an accompaniment. Tonal purity from the sopranos soaring over gentle contributions from the brass conjured the rain of Fleischmann’s text. And then, after the second verse, trumpet flurries announced a change in tone. Pulsing strings and throbbing timpani, forceful, but unaggressive, marked a more dynamic shift in the orchestra, from background to equal musical partner.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is meat and drink for any professional orchestra, and the DNSO performed it with the technical skill that one would expect from one of Denmark’s leading ensembles. Yet Luisi’s interpretation seemed anaemic; the first movement ebbed and flowed, but lacked heft, while the second was pleasant and had some rhythmic thrust behind it, but failed to compel. Perhaps Luisi was deliberately holding his players back, because the fourth movement had that sense of urgency that the symphony demands, amply driven by both chorus and soloists. Bass Adam Palka particularly impressed with an attractive gleam to the top of the voice, while the chorus sang with precision and clarity of tone. A rewarding finale that compensated for deficiencies in the first half of the symphony.
