Why the Proms may yet save British classical music
Conductor Semyon Bychkov
The British do seem to have a peculiar problem about praising their nation’s most valued assets for what they are. I like to call it the “James Anderson problem”: imagine the universal adulation which would be accorded to England’s most successful fast bowler if he were to come from any other cricketing nation. The reaction to the BBC Proms is another symptom of this strange malaise of collective self-deprecation.
Classical music in Britain has reached a low point, certainly if you ask a very great many of its most famous figures from this country. Large cuts to funding and a plainly self-destructive commitment to “levelling-up” — for example by moving the English National Opera to Manchester — have put the financial futures of some London ensembles in jeopardy. The Arts Council’s funding for the four main London Orchestras — the Symphony, the Philharmonic, Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic — has not decreased substantially, while the BBC Orchestras have seen programmes of cuts and voluntary redundancy. Provincial Orchestras — those the Arts Council is keen to promote on government demands — have seen a welcome standstill in their share of the pot.
The place to look is where the supposedly cash-strapped Arts Council have placed their best bets: with the Manchester Collective and the Aurora Orchestra. The former received a new grant of £120,000 last year to promote the “radical human experiences” it purports to give audiences. The Collective’s list of concerts is almost tailor-made for the obsessive desire of state bureaucrats to be all so down with the kids: Steve Reich, the famous bits of Samuel Barber and reimagined Bach fill their tour schedules.
The Aurora Orchestra (actually founded and directed by an Old Etonian, Nicholas Collon) may well instead be the group that does stand a chance of keeping the flame alive with its radical programming. Its success lies in its off-by-heart performances, which started with a few Mozart and Beethoven symphonies and has now spread to more adventurous repertoire: none more so than its Proms double-bill of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring last Saturday.
Few concerts could show better what British classical music needs. The first half consisted of a potentially tendentious “dramatic exploration” of the Rite with actors, moving musicians and the charismatic Collon conducting impromptu excerpts from the front. It was in fact very well planned, with effective segments not only from Stravinsky, but Diaghilev and the whole gang which led up to the supposed riot at the piece’s famous premiere in 1913. It was engaging, dramatically well managed and musically useful for the audience of Stravinsky diehards and newbies both. When the Orchestra returned in the second half to play the whole thing without copies, mostly standing and moving to the interminable metre changes and myriad complexities of Stravinsky’s notorious score, the effect was electric.
Most of all, the Aurora was clearly reaching a huge number of people who would not usually turn up for the staple diet of a symphony orchestra. That is the aim of the Arts Council, who gave the Orchestra a 53% increase in cash last year, and it is clearly working. Almost filling the Albert Hall, with a relatively young audience twice in a day with what is still an unashamedly challenging piece, is a stunning achievement. The band may not quite sound like the LSO yet (the strings did not have the punch of their more established rivals), but the sheer energy and enthusiasm for this music, now over a century old, is something the classical world could do far worse than to copy.
A very different spirit was inevitable at Monday night’s Prom, the penultimate outing for the BBC Symphony Orchestra before being conducted by Marin Alsop at the Last Night. Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony is perhaps the epitome of the worshipful, slow-burning and magisterial symphonic repertoire of the late nineteenth century. As Stephen Johnson wrote in his as-ever wonderful programme notes, Bruckner’s music is often described merely as “cathedrals in sound”, disguising the intense logic and inventiveness of his harmony and rhythm.
The Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov fled the Soviet Union aged 22 in 1974 and has since made himself a staple name in the concert and opera houses of Europe and America. Now 70, Bychkov’s conducting was all one would expect from a figure of his stature. It stood comparison with Serge Celibidache and Bernard Haitink, the two figures most associated with the almost devout playing of Bruckner’s symphonies in the later years of the last century. It’s fair to say, however, that the average age of the audience for Monday’s Prom was quite a few decades older than that for Saturday’s Rite.
Yet Bychkov did not let his players stray into self-indulgent Romantic schmalz. The speed was fairly quick, although the highlight of the evening — the luscious third movement Adagio that seems written for a space like the Albert Hall — was given all the requisite mix of tentativeness and grandeur. The large brass section was largely excellent, particularly in the beautiful passages of that movement and in heralding the transfiguration of the last. Some rather wonky flute playing obscured the otherwise brilliant winds, particularly of the oboist Alison Teale. The string sound — this is the largest orchestra Bruckner ever used — possessed a uniquely British reticence despite its size. This was no bad thing at all: not for the BBC Symphony the all-or-nothing vibrato associated with some continental bands, but an unpretentious, committed sound that was brilliantly led by Igor Yuzefovich.
Bychkov’s loose gestures were occasionally unconvincing, losing some of the piercing clarity needed in the first movement, but he got all the right sense of colour and tone from the third. It was not a perfect performance, but it was one through which Bruckner’s original genius at creating a huge musical narrative, one that is often based on the smallest of details, was visible. By the majestic end, we were in a different world from the terror of the beginning, and that sense of journey and development is something that only the big symphony orchestras of really high calibre, such as the BBC SO, can deliver, under the baton of a great conductor.
That home truth is what the Arts Council should have in mind when they next reallocate funding. The BBC have found a perfect balance this Proms season between the innovative and the traditional, even though they have missed out on the big-hitters among the continental orchestras. No Berlin or Vienna Philharmonics have turned up this year.
Some might say they aren’t needed, as Britain’s orchestras can play as well as any. That is a fact we should continue to cherish, along with the world-class conductors and soloists of British origin who grace the most prestigious concert platforms in the world. It doesn’t necessarily need “life-changing”, “innovative” or “radical” programming, or the vast streams of cash for obscure education projects. It requires decent investment in the very best. That’s what the Aurora and the BBC SO share. This year’s BBC Proms have shown what the very best sounds like, and it’s been heard by a new audience which is likely to come back for more.
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