Prom 61: Wednesday 31st August at 7.30 p.m. (Fitkin, Beethoven)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Featured artist Yo-Yo Ma takes centre stage with a new work conceived especially for him by British composer Graham Fitkin. After the interval, the BBC SO's Principal Guest Conductor, David Robertson, directs the traditional annual Proms performance of Beethoven's Ninth, perhaps the richest, most provocative statement in the symphonic canon. An impressive team of soloists joins the BBC Symphony Chorus to project the finale's optimistic vision of hard-won triumph over adversity.

Graham Fitkin: Cello Concerto
Beethoven: Symphony no. 9

Christine Brewer (soprano)
Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano)
Toby Spence (tenor)
Iain Paterson (bass-baritone)

BBC Symphony Chorus
Philharmonia Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson (conductor)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A good one for tonight.

[Chris Newman]

I liked that new Fitkin work. Great stuff, shouldn't frighten the natives and it was given a beautifully played premiere.

[pilamenon]

I liked that new Fitkin work. Great stuff, shouldn't frighten the natives and it was given a beautifully played premiere.

Definitely lots to chew over here. Sounded as thought the audience went for it, too.

[Roehre]

I liked the Fitkin Cello concerto very much.
I must admit that after the first 5 minutes or so I thought it was a boring piece, as hardly anything was happening melodically and even less harmonically, but from then owards it developed in a way we haven't heard for a long time in a new work.

It developed tension, IMO passion, is well proportioned (perhaps the intro is a tad too long, but soit...), showed a unity of style, a very nicely shaped arch form.
Sometimes it was harmonically rather static (as in the beginning), especially where the Louis-Andriessen/minimalist-like repetitive stretches were developed and thereby compensating for the lack of harmonic tension, or vice versa where the melodic material created tension by speedy motives combined with harmonic development.

Whatever: this concerto might be the most important completely new work of this proms season (I am awaiting eagerly Birtwistle's violin concerto which is still to come, but that's not a premiere...)

And I think it got a brilliant performance on top of that.

[amac4165]

No one has mentioned the Beethoven yet

[Bryn]

Too busy listening to yet more Fitkin?

[pilamenon]

this concerto might be the most important completely new work of this proms season ...
And I think it got a brilliant performance on top of that.

I couldn't agree more, Roehre. Like you, I started out unsure (another Protecting Veil?) and whilst the colours and patterns were gorgeous, I found the initial transitions unconvincing. However, the structure of the work came into focus, and each turn/shift was ever more dazzling - moreover they said it wasn't a virtuoso piece, but surely it was!

I'll stick my neck out and say this was not only the most important completely new work of the 2011 Proms, but one of the most significant new works of our time.

[Serial_Apologist]

I couldn't agree more, Roehre. Like you, I started out unsure (another Protecting Veil?) and whilst the colours and patterns were gorgeous, I found the initial transitions unconvincing. However, the structure of the work came into focus, and each turn/shift was ever more dazzling - moreover they said it wasn't a virtuoso piece, but surely it was!

I'll stick my neck out and say this was not only the most important completely new work of the 2011 Proms, but one of the most significant new works of our time.

This is trememdous to hear. I only caught the unexpectedly drawn out conclusion to this work, as I was watching something on 3 about the work/life balance, and it sounded fascinatingly new; but I shall give this piece a go tomorrow morning. I've been waiting a long time for something innovative to come out of directions pioneered in the 80s and 80s that had so far disappointed me - Adams, Martland etc. Fitkin would have once seemed the unlikeliest candidate.

S-A

[Roehre]

II'll stick my neck out and say this was not only the most important completely new work of the 2011 Proms, but one of the most significant new works of our time.

I join you Pilamenon

[Tony Halstead]

No one has mentioned the Beethoven yet

For good reason.
It was - well ... worthy, safe, OK, mundane, a bit BORING.
It was nice to hear some of the 'human element' creeping in via a somewhat 'struggling' solo by the 4th horn in the 'slow' movement ( probably very authentic - can you even begin to imagine how it might have sounded at the 1st performance?)

[Roehre]

It was nice to hear some of the 'human element' creeping in via a somewhat 'struggling' solo by the 4th horn in the 'slow' movement ( probably very authentic - can you even begin to imagine how it might have sounded at the 1st performance?)

Until Hornspieler explained the "why" of it to me on the old R3 boards, I always struggled to understand why it had got to be the 4th horn playing this "impossible" solo.
I haven't listened to this Ninth, but I can imagine what Waldhorn means.

[BudgieJane]

No one has mentioned the Beethoven yet

That's because it was bloody awful.

[Lord Mersey]

Jane the Beethoven was not that good!

[jayne lee wilson]

The Beethoven? Oh dear...

For the first 2 movements, the slackest, dullest, untidiest performance I've heard this year. Improved a little in the adagio, then Chorus & soloists decided to make a go of it in the finale, or perhaps they'd rehearsed it more. I've said before that I try to be generous to performers, but what on earth went wrong here I wonder... it mostly sounded, at best, like a first-rehearsal run-through with orchestra & conductor not of the same mind.

Fitkin, yes, best new work of a poor season for premieres, a real sense of emotional narrative, tension and release, journey and arrival with those dramatic brass outbursts in the last part, and "in my end is my beginning". Perhaps lacking a distinctive "voice", Gorecki & Andriessen there somewhere, tad overstretched, but with the space - and the nerve - to be bold and compelling. AT last.