Collaboration, innovation and defiance: Chineke! at the BBC Proms

There’s nothing like a change of plan to keep everyone on their toes and test everyone’s mettle. Friday night’s Chineke! Orchestra Prom was to be a thrilling first for Sir Simon Rattle and Europe’s first minority black and ethnically diverse orchestra, celebrating their first decade of shaking up the classical music world with a performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. Unfortunately, Sir Simon has had to withdraw from his Proms appearances as he undergoes surgery, so Chineke’s Interim Artistic Director, Jonathon Heyward (also Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) sprung into the breach. Happily, the consequent change in the first-half programming afforded the opportunity of not one but two UK premieres: James Lee III’s Visions of Cahokia (2022) and Valerie Coleman’s Fanfare for Uncommon Times (2021).

Composed at the height of the Covid pandemic and in response to events precipitated by the death of George Floyd, Coleman’s commanding Fanfare begins with the laying down of warm and generous bands of colour in the horns before a low tune asserts itself from the trombones and a declarative trumpet gives rise to a discursive section followed by a call to action. As does the originally programmed Sinfonia no. 5 “Visions” by George Walker to which this piece is very much a complement, Fanfare for Uncommon Times echoes Shostakovich in its portrayal of the martial and the sardonic, and its sense of determination in the face of adversity. Coleman’s masterful mise-en-scène requires absolute precision, and Heyward delivered, not so much keeping as being the beat, with his vigorous, dance-like style.

Inspired by the ancient city of Mississippian culture, James Lee III’s Visions of Cahokia deployed the full orchestra with three movements in which a succession of textures depict various aspects of tribal life, from fluttering flutes heralding the dawn to sleigh bell ostinato to suggest a journey.

A maelstrom of life under Stalin, Shostakovich’s rip-roaring Tenth Symphony, with its vignettes and ciphers, demanded all Chineke’s switchback dexterity. In the first movement, a breathy quality in the strings bloomed gradually into a steely, martial detaché as the brass took hold of the texture. The orchestra's characteristic generosity of tone is matched by its intimacy of ensemble, particularly in this work. The whirlwind second movement proved a masterclass in control on the brink while the horn and bassoon solos particularly in the third and fourth movements expressed all the profundity of emotion that make this such a compelling work. Heyward’s resolute control might have felt a little too didactic earlier in the evening, but his proved a benign regime  within which collaboration, expression, innovation and defiance flourished.