Prom 62: OAE/Brahms (1.09.15)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30
Royal Albert Hall


Brahms: Academic Festival Overture
Brahms: Alto Rhapsody
Brahms: Triumphlied
Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor

Jamie Barton (mezzo-soprano)
Benjamin Appl (baritone)
Choir of the Enlightenment
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Marin Alsop (conductor)

Proms favourite Marin Alsop returns prior to her second Last Night appearance for an all-Brahms evening. The Academic Festival Overture is an ebullient work the composer himself described as 'a very boisterous pot-pourri of student songs', and there's also a rare opportunity to hear the epic Triumphlied - celebrating German victories in the Franco-Prussian War in choral settings of striking power and vividness. American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, winner of the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, is the soloist in Brahms's glorious Alto Rhapsody, and completing the concert is Brahms's First Symphony - a work nicknamed 'Beethoven's 10th' for its obvious debt to the elder composer.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The "Choir of the Enlightenment".

I haven't heard this group sing before.

[David Underdown]

It's the OAE's own choir (I suspect there's a bit of overlap of personnel with other freelance groups)

[seabright]

I wonder if they'll take the opportunity to feature Sargent's rousing choral addition of "Gaudeamus Igitur" to the end of the 'Academic Festival' Overture, as Andrew Davis did at the 1992 Last Night? ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjIGaL9HsDI

[Roehre]

I wonder if they'll take the opportunity to feature Sargent's rousing choral addition of "Gaudeamus Igitur" to the end of the 'Academic Festival' Overture, as Andrew Davis did at the 1992 Last Night? ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjIGaL9HsDI

And in the 2011 proms

[seabright]

And in the 2011 proms

Ah ...Thanks! ... The Proms Archive entry needs up-dating, as only the 1992 performance is shown. Does anyone know who needs to be told in the archive section about the 2011 performance? ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/composers/9/works

[David Underdown]

Interestingly, the RAH archive does list it as arr Sargent for the 2011 First Night performance http://catalogue.royalalberthall.com...chad_Pcn&pos=3

[Barbirollians]

I am looking forward to this Prom. Alsop is a fine Brahms conductor as her excellent Naxos series showed and it will be interesting to hear her Brahms with the OAE

[verismissimo]

I am looking forward to this Prom. Alsop is a fine Brahms conductor as her excellent Naxos series showed and it will be interesting to hear her Brahms with the OAE

Seconded.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Seconded.

Thirded.

[verismissimo]

Ah, those valveless horns in the finale of the first. Worth waiting for.

[Keraulophone]

Worth waiting for.

No it wasn't.

Reminiscent of the Portsmouth Sinfonia at times.

Is this really how Brahms 1 ought to sound? Oh dear... reaching for the Staatskspelle Dresden...

We've just been informed that Marin Alsop knows the score backwards - perhaps that was the problem!

[verismissimo]

And lovely solo violin - Matthew Truscott!

[Petrushka]

No it wasn't.

Reminiscent of the Portsmouth Sinfonia at times.

Is this really how Brahms 1 ought to sound? Oh dear... reaching for the Staatskspelle Dresden...

We've just been informed that Marin Alsop knows the score backwards - perhaps that was the problem!

I have to agree. Good bold start with strong timps but thereafter it sounded terribly emaciated. It must have sounded pretty feeble in the vast spaces of the Albert Hall.

[jayne lee wilson]

REFLECTIONS ON PROM 62...

If not perhaps my favourite among period orchestras, I've enjoyed a lot of the OAE's performances live and on disc. I still recall their Proms Rheingold with Rattle in 2004, and Bruggen's set of Haydn's Sturm und Drang symphonies is something of an icon here. I don't normally find their lower pitch difficult, but if it seemed uncomfortably obvious tonight in their Brahms 1st with Marin Alsop, perhaps that was because, in the woodwinds especially, their pitch was too often wavering in its delivery. Too many entries sounded hesitant or uncertain, the winds sounding poorly integrated into the larger ensemble. In general, the OAE sounded far more confident when playing loud (or louder); lower-level passages sounded ill-defined; delicate and more lyrical passages often seemed awkward, or over-obvious in their shaping of the phrase - which latter could also apply to some of Alsop's interpretative manoeuvres (eg. that sudden tempo-shift from 1st movement development into recap). Was too much rehearsal time spent on the Triumphlied?

Good points included a very weighty intro and a briskly-paced exposition repeat in the 1st movement; and the splendidly sonorous ending, seeming well matched to the RAH and vividly apparent over HDs (though I wasn't convinced by Alsop's great leap forward from the largamente into the finale's main allegro - exciting, yes, but again a little telegraphed).

My general discomfort with their Brahms 1st was the more disappointing, because the Academic Festival Overture opened the concert brilliantly - more wind-band than string-drenched, the OAE's weighty, mellow character, the rich, dark and ruminative brass sonorities, their wonderfully perky rhythms and terrific dynamic range brought life to a work I had thought myself bored with.
Despite one or two slips and the strings not always coming through against brass and winds, this was Brahms made truly new and really thrilling.