BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London

By Richard Fairman
Published: September 12 2005 03:00 | Last updated: September 12 2005 03:00

How do they do it? Other concert-hall promoters must be gnashing their teeth as the BBC Proms again clocks up an impressive year of achievement in spite of a summer when it seemed that outside events might for once make the "world's biggest music festival" come a cropper.

Although the London bombs in July were not close to the Royal Albert Hall, their effect was felt further afield. One of the main tube lines to South Kensington was out of action for a month and some potential concert-goers were clearly frightened off. As Nicholas Kenyon, Director of the BBC Proms, explained at the annual press party: "People who had bought tickets in advance still came, but those who prefer to turn up on the night simply didn't appear." For a couple of weeks near the start the hall looked depressingly empty.

Many in the business will have braced themselves for the final attendance figures. But - lo and behold! - the average attendance over the 58 main evening concerts was 86 per cent, the same as last year (and, before making wider comparisons, remember the sheer size of the Royal Albert Hall). Attendance at the lunchtime chamber music series more than doubled. Young audiences were up. Record numbers logged on to the Proms website. New highs were registered for those listening online. So much for a bad year.

As always, the Proms left some of the best till last. In the final two weeks a string of international orchestras is traditionally booked for the grand finale. You can imagine passport control at Heathrow airport coming to a standstill, as musicians from around the world gossip about their fees and upcoming vacancies. Who knows which conductors' futures might have been decided in the Terminal Four baggage hall?

On Wednesday and Thursday the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra came with a pair of guest conductors (one of the luxuries of not having a music director to pander to). The first of their two programmes was the glitzy one, at least on paper. Unfortunately, with Zubin Mehta as conductor, the opening Haydn symphony was no more than a limp aerobics exercise. The three fragments from Berg's Wozzeck (Katarina Dalayman the incisive soprano) were more enjoyable, in fact so gloriously romantic they hardly sounded like Berg at all. But then Stravinsky's Rite of Spring came across impossibly suave and self-satisfied - like watching a pagan ritual as one went purring past in the well- upholstered comfort of a Mercedes. Still, the playing was wonderfully controlled.

Where Mehta likes to wallow in luxurious textures, Christoph Eschenbach on Thursday went for passion and volume. The roof positively shook at the power of the Viennese brass chorales. Maybe other performances of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony probe a deeper religious aura, but this one scaled the heights of symphonic drama with conviction. Eschenbach, his baton slashing left and right, showed all the zeal of a swashbuckling crusader.

The highlight at Friday's penultimate Prom was meant to be one of the big premieres of the season - Mark-Anthony Turnage's From the Wreckage - though it did not quite turn out that way. The piece is a trumpet concerto in all but name, but even with the brilliant Hakan Hardenberger on hand as soloist, its impact was muted. The scoring is too thick and the ideas less gripping than in the best of Turnage's other recent works. Having started the evening floundering in the treacherous waters of Debussy's La Mer, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra rescued its reputation in the nick of time at the end with an exhilarating performance of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suites. How would dancers ever manage in this ballet at Esa-Pekka Salonen's hell-for-leather speeds?

Even the Last Night shindig on Saturday offered a couple of modest "firsts": the first counter-tenor at a Last Night (big deal! - though Andreas Scholl bravely offered unaffected artistic purity) and bugle calls that brought together the Proms audiences in all the outdoor venues around the UK. Now, how about a big ambition for 2006? Let us bring the whole nation to the Royal Albert Hall by relaying the entire season via digital television for the first time.

Finacial Times