Saturday August 17th was a marathon as there were two Proms to go to. We arrived earlier than we needed to and found ourselves near the head of the queue, which put us among some of the hard-core queuers. This provided some entertaining conversations to overhear, such as the one between an unreconstructed Marxist and an unimpressed Eastern European.
The first Prom was the CBSO under Andris Nelsons with Nelsons’ wife Kristīne Opolais as soloist. The opening work was Dvořák’s 8th Symphony, which is curiously unfamiliar to me. I was surprised at how relatively unmelodic it was for a piece by this composer, especially in the first two movements. Nelsons’ conducting style is extravagant, with his occasional vocalising audible to us near the front of the Arena! After the interval we enjoyed the operatic scenas of Desdemona’s Willow Song and Ave Maria and Tatyana’s Letter Scene (preceded by the Onegin Polonaise). Opolais was particularly good at floated quiet high notes. I am enough of a theatre person to miss at least having some props, though. Finally came Strauss’ Emperor Waltz and Thunder and Lightning Polka and for a moment I was able to imagine the Arena transformed into a ballroom and full of whirling couples.
After a break for food we returned for the second concert (the cloakroom ticket system ensures that those who were at the first Prom are first in the queue for the second one). This was Marin Alsop (whose conducting style is the polar opposite of Andris Nelsons’) and the OAE performing Brahms and Schumann. The Tragic Overture passed rather uneventfully as a curtain-raiser, but things really came alight for Schumann’s Fourth Symphony which was full of drama and beautifully played.
The main work, however was the German Requiem, with OAE’s own choir of youngish singers and soloists Rachel Harnisch and Hank Neven. This was another fine performance, but I had a couple of reservations about the choir. One was that the ATB sang with a full tone but the soprano sound was rather white by comparison. A consequence of the age of the singers, no doubt. The other was that the choir never sang really quietly (the exception being Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, when they were sitting down), so the full dynamic range of the work wasn’t explored.
Reviews were not numerous – the papers seem to have given up reviewing all Promenade concerts.
Prom 46:
Prom 47: