Download BBC Proms classical music brand sure to be a hit

BBC Proms classical music brand sure to be
a hit
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EAMO NN KEL LY
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THE AUSTRALIAN
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APRIL 15, 2 016 1 2 :0 0AM
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Laura van der Heijden embraced pathos and sudden contrasts in the BBC Proms.
Introducing British classical music brand the BBC Proms into Australia is sure to
be a commercial success, not least because the inaugural four-day sampler
includes its own version of the Last Night’s famously rousing patriotic outbursts
and singalong antics.
Artistically, can this 121-year-old British tradition be meaningfully franchised for
global export? Or is presenting Australian orchestras under the Proms banner just
opportune rebranding, pandering to lingering cultural cringe?
Certainly, this opening program with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra — under
British chief conductor and long-time Proms participant Andrew Davis — delivered a
satisfying, well-balanced program, with the MSO in typically fine form.
Opening with Dream of Flying, a stirring new work by Australian composer Nigel
Westlake based on material from his recent score for the film Paper Planes, the
program quickly slipped into 19th-century French repertoire.
Laura van der Heijden, the BBC Young Musician for 2012, embraced the pathos and
sudden contrasts of Saint-Saens’s Cello Concerto No 1 before mild-mannered Davis
turned to the passionate whirl of Berlioz’s lovesick Symphonie fantastique.
A distinctly Australian story about a country kid overcoming the tyranny of
distance, Paper Planes gave Westlake scope to convey youthful optimism, fantasy,
adversity, persistence and triumph. Dream of Flying preserves those threads and the
score’s cinematic qualities: lush orchestration and luminous detail, sustained tension,
heroic percussion and brass builds, dappled wind textures and restless string twittering.
Beginning with an unpitched whoosh of air in the brass, Westlake captures the
exhilaration of flight, twisting and turning from triumphant panoramic vistas to
gossamer ascents, radiant blooms and joyful meditations.
At 19, van der Heijden reveals exceptional maturity. The Saint-Saens often suffers
maltreatment, cellists slashing through tempests, then saturating delicate asides with
ostentatious phrasing. Van der Heijden was having none of that, the beauty and clarity
of her tone, even and sensitively weighted bow contact, and an unlaboured expressive
palette making for an elegant performance. She gave fiendish double stops, harmonics
and upper-register climbs the rare honour of being treated as musical ideas rather than
tricks, making sense of what is generally rendered as acoustic porridge.
In a sturdy account of Symphonie fantastique, Davis luxuriated in Berlioz’s moments of
high drama, while flitting lightly across more nuanced passages.
BBC Proms Australia: Prom 1. Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Hamer Hall, April 13.
BBC Proms Australia continues in Melbourne until Saturday.
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Review: Prom 1 (MSO, BBC Proms Australia)
LIVE REVIEWS - CLASSICAL MUSIC | ORCHESTRAL
Review: Prom 1 (MSO, BBC Proms Australia)
by Maxim Boon on April 14, 2016 (2 days ago) filed under Classical Music | Orchestral | Comment Now
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Berlioz's fantastic passions gets the Australian franchise of the BBC Proms off to a
solid start.
Hamer Hall, Melbourne
April 13, 2016
It may only be a miniature replica, but the first international outing for the UK’s largest and most
celebrated classical music festival, the BBC Proms, is cause for excitement nontheless. This inaugural
season of the BBC Proms Australia, taking place this week in Melbourne, consists of just five concerts, in
stark contrast to the 90-plus that take place in London. With so few dates to deliver proof of concept for
this imported franchise, shrewd programming as had to be front of mind, so in order to draw a respectable
crowd to this pilot year, a leaning towards lighter, more effervescent repertoire, over more earnest works,
has clearly been the strategy.
And who better to helm the first performance in this series than Sir Andrew Davis, one of the Proms’ most
seasoned luminaries. In many respects, not least the conspicuous absence of any promenade area for
low-cost standing tickets, it’s almost impossible to accurately transplant the Proms from its home at the
Royal Albert Hall, but at least with Davis on board, this would a musically authentic experience.
Opening the proceedings of Prom 1, presented by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, was a semi-new
piece by Australian composer Nigel Westlake, who is best known for his film scores, particularly the music
for Babe, the 1995 adaptation of Dick King-Smith’s cherished children’s book, The Sheep-Pig. This newly
commissioned work, Dream of Flying, draws on material from Westlake’s most recent film score, Paper
Planes, which tells the story of a West Australian boy’s hopes of competing in the World Paper Plane
Championships.
While I have no doubt that this music would be touching in conjunction with the film, as a concert piece
Westlake’s score is of a rather generic ilk, employing a trite harmonic vernacular that rarely dared to
reveal a more distinctive voice. Occasionally, colourful moments of innovation, such as the use of a
chattering quartet of violins to create a pocket of activity within the wash of the orchestral canvas, made
small nods to a more inventive language. Overall however, this was a fairly unremarkable, albeit wellconstructed, offering.
Things improved markedly with the second piece of the evening, featuring British-Scandinavian
wunderkind Laura van der Heijden performing Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor. At just 19,
this tremendously charismatic performer displayed a confifidence and artistry far greater than her years,
delivering a rich, treacly tone warmed with a robust vibrato. This relatively short, single-movement work is
not often considered among the greatest cello concerti, but in the hands of musicians of this calibre, it is
most defifinitely worthy of a performance.
It may lack the heft and technical virtuosity of more popular works, such as the cello concerti of Elgar and
Dvořák, but there is an elegance and a bright, buoyant wit in this music, wonderfully illuminated here by
the MSO under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis. One of this maestro’s most incisive qualities is his
understanding of emotional intention, and here the shifting character of this music was astutely observed.
From the strident drama of the opening Allegro to the delicate, heart-warming simplicity of the central
Allegretto and through the fever-pitched fifinale, each section was given its own space to communicate,
thanks to the combination of van der Heijden’s impressive skill and Davis’s attention to detail.
The evening’s second French fancy was the pièce de résistance of this opening Proms performance:
Berlioz’s brilliant and barmy Symphonie Fantastique. Next to the relatively restrained musical language of
Westlake and Saint-Saëns, the verve and audacity of Berlioz’s epic ode to actress Harriet Smithson still
feels astonishingly pivotal: both a celebration of the symphonic legacy of Beethoven and an incubator for
the sumptuous excesses of the late Romantics.
This piece is an expression of passion, explored as both devotion and obsession, and as such its tiniest
details must be realised with the same meticulous rigour as its broadest strokes. Fortunately, Davis is the
ideal conductor for such mercurial music. His keen, sprightly rapport has cemented a connection to this
orchestra with such a fifine-tuned level of communication that every quirky gesture and frisson of
excitement were brought vividly to the fore. Each of this work’s fifive parts, which are narratively individual
and yet inextricably connected through Berlioz’s idée fifixe, were so sharply drawn that they existed as
exquisitely crafted entities in their own right. It’s little wonder that the audience, myself included, were
moved to rapturous applause between each movement. If the BBC Proms Australia is starting as it means
to go on, Melbourne's music lovers are in for a great week.
The BBC Proms Australia continues at the Hamer Hall, Melbourne until Saturday April 16.