BBCSO/Storgards

July 28, 2005
Proms

Geoff Brown at the Albert Hall/Radio 3

WHAT makes an audience stay away? Rows of empty red seats for Tuesday’s BBC Symphony Orchestra Prom immediately prompted the question. Even diehard Prommers in the Arena were in short supply.

In part we were witnessing people’s unwillingness to listen to music they don’t know. This was the bill of fare: a world premiere from Detlev Glanert; the least performed of Stravinsky’s ballets, The Fairy’s Kiss; small jewels from his compatriot Lyadov, plus Oliver Knussen, the concert’s guiding spirit (absent as conductor through illness). Little here to galvanise and prod, except for the faithful and curious. No must-see artists, either: even his agent would be hard-pressed to call John Storgards (Knussen’s Finnish replacement) a household name.

We needed a smaller building. Certainly Claire Booth did. When this gifted soprano sings at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with an ensemble, you can usually hear every word. When she launched herself in the Albert Hall’s bowl upon the intricate textures of Knussen’s Whitman Settings we often caught none at all.

Lyadov’s trio of fairytale miniatures, Baba-Yaga, The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora, appeared equally marooned, though the orchestra’s finesse was enjoyable.

With Glanert’s 20-minute BBC commission, Theatrum bestiarum, the music finally began to fill out the spaces, helped by the inclusion of crashing organ chords at a climactic moment. “Dark and wild,” the composer describes it; “an exploration of dangerous dreams and wishes.” I was ready to cower under my seat. In fact, this frontline German composer, now in his mid- forties, has written one of his friendlier pieces, lolloping along for much of its length at a steady pulse.

The key to Glanert’s intentions lies in the work’s dedication to Shostakovich. That composer was a master at using popular forms — the march, the waltz — as vessels for black satire and despair. Hence the dance spirit here, always hovering on the grotesque, in increasingly fractured instrumentation. A polished performance of interesting music, though I wouldn’t vouch for the work’s staying power.

On to The Fairy’s Kiss. Here, apart from a smaller building, we also needed dancers. There is charming material inside this fusion of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, but the ballet wilts without choreography. And it needs loving hands; some gracefully executed solos aside, conductor and orchestra just did their duty. Not a successful concert.