Amid the winking phone screens, a pervasive fishy aroma in the Royal Albert Hall and general hullaballoo of the First Night of the BBC Proms, a rather fine concert took place. Bliss’s brassy and easy-going Fanfare for Sir Henry Wood led straight into the interior seascape of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra evoked these disparate soundworlds with equal finesse under the baton of Sakari Oramo.
Oramo partnered Lisa Batiashvili on her first recording of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, made almost 20 years ago, so there can be no question of crossed musical wires, even in the context of a one-off concert and no doubt attenuated rehearsal time. And yet, throughout the first movement, her silky negotiation of the solo part felt at odds with his probing exploration of the accompaniment. Even while seamlessly dovetailed, their phrasing spoke different languages, as if in a concerto hybrid of Paganini and Brahms. It may be that they were exposing a quirk of the work itself.
Batiashvili’s chording was so clean, her tonal registers so unified by legato, that her part sang of a violinistic heritage rooted in Bach and Viotti. Meanwhile Oramo and the orchestra brought out the poky dialogues, sudden surges and weightless ostinato figures which make the concerto contemporary with the Third Symphony. These distinct paths drew closer in a raptly sustained slow movement, before merging to exhilarating effect in a finale where Batiashvili threw caution to the wind.
It was probably too much to expect The Elements to emulate the strident modernity of Jean-Féry Rebel’s 300-year-old French ballet of the same name. Instead, Errolyn Wallen has written a punchy occasional piece in celebratory vein, incorporating a funky rhythm section, Satie-esque police whistle and (in the last of its three sections) a Purcellian riff punctuated by finger-clicking audience participation. Eclectic elements indeed, and on a first hearing uneasily fused, beyond an expression of generic ebullience.
A running theme of the season is unsung (or under-sung) British choral works, the pre-eminent example of which is Vaughan Williams’s Sancta Civitas. The extravagance of the forces required for this half-hour setting of verses from the Book of Revelation tells against frequent performances; but then so too does VW’s extreme restraint in using those forces. Dating from the early 1920s, this is no glorious vision of a new Jerusalem (the “holy city” of the title) but a quiet, often muted attempt to lift the gaze of humanity from the mangled world around them.
In that sense, Sancta Civitas takes its place as the central panel of a post-WW1 triptych, alongside Flos campi and the Pastoral Symphony, illuminating deep pain with flickering radiance. The large orchestra, three choirs, organ, solo trumpet, baritone and tenor serve to create a radical piece of sound architecture, often populated by no more than a low pedal or solo violin, like a single worshipper in a cathedral. While there is a precedent here in the form of the Tallis Fantasia, uncannily echoing the proportions of Gloucester Cathedral, the troubled harmony of Sancta Civitas foreshadows the composer’s successors in their mystic vein, such as Michael Tippett’s Vision of Saint Augustine and Julian Anderson’s Heaven is Shy of Earth.
If anyone present remained unconvinced of the work’s stature, it was no fault of the performers. Oramo and Gerald Finley unfolded the opening paragraphs in a flowing recitative (compared to the imposing oratory of Sir Mark Elder’s account a decade ago, at the work’s belated Proms premiere). Every word could be heard from the singers of London Youth Choirs, high up in the Gallery. The climax arrives with an English Sanctus, and as the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and LYC threw around a song of praise, the Royal Albert Hall was transformed for a few seconds into St Mark’s Venice, before the tenor Caspar Singh arrived to bring fleeting redemption with his vestigial phrase and a half. We can count ourselves fortunate if the BBC Proms supplies more such memorable moments over the course of the next two months.
