Prom 49: Chopin & Tchaikovsky - 19.08.18

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

11:00
Royal Albert Hall

Agata Zubel: Fireworks - UK première
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 5 in E minor


Seong-Jin Cho piano
European Union Youth Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda conductor

The UK premiere of Agata Zubel's Fireworks is a celebration of freedom and of the present moment, written to mark the 100th anniversary of Polish independence.

The Polish theme continues in Chopin's lyrical and much-loved Second Piano Concerto, with the winner of the 2015 International Chopin Competition, Seong-Jin Cho, making his Proms debut.

In the second half, Gianandrea Noseda and the European Union Youth Orchestra turn up the intensity with one of the great Romantic symphonies, Tchaikovsky's stirring Fifth.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Re the new work -

https://www.eamdc.com/news/three-more-world-premieres-for-agata-zubel/

[BBMmk2]

I’m very surprised there’s not been much talk about this Prom. Always very good hearing this Orchestra, no matter who is conducting.

[edashtav]

I’m very surprised there’s not been much talk about this Prom. Always very good hearing this Orchestra, no matter who is conducting.

I enjoyed their concert.
The new Fireworks by Agatha Zubel came and went without erasing memories of Stravinsky, Knussen, Handel et al.

I’m not enamoured of the Chopin concerti and asking a Youth orchestra to play it must be to improve its fortitude and capacity to stay awake. Seong Jin-Cho played the solo part with panache and sensitivity and his efforts were rewarding to hear.

The Tchaikovsky was awfully accurate and neat. Its many solos were received as manna from heaven by the youthful players after the greyness of Chopin’s dire orchestration. The wind department was superb. Hornspieler could not have played the second movement’s solo better! Was it all a bit slick and span? Occasionally, I longed for more Russian gruffness and despair. But, overall, the sheer musicality of the young players was admirable and compared well with what is on offer from most senior European orchestras. Will they return after Brexit? I do hope so.

[Demetrius]

Will they return after Brexit? I do hope so.

If Brexit results in that much bad blood to prevent the EUYO from coming to the Proms, we might as well hang ourselfs, regardless on which side of the channel we live.

Their funding might be the bigger problem, there were some worries in the past if I remember correctly.

Marvelous concert in the hall, with the small personal caveat that I struggle with piano concertos.

Did Radio 3 stay pn long enough for the second impromptu encore?

[bluestateprommer]

Did Radio 3 stay [on] long enough for the second impromptu encore?

No, R3 cut back to Broadcasting House immediately after the Berlioz encore. However, given that the concert ran to 1:18 PM your time there that day, not a surprise that things had to move on. For anyone who wants to catch a taste of that spontaneous 2nd encore, it's available on Twitter (pictures also of Sir Henry festooned with 28 flags are visible from the EUYO's Twitter feed):

https://twitter.com/rickwray/status/1032033516345847808 (not sure if this was from the Gallery, or a seat just below it)

https://twitter.com/grahamsalisbury/...67086620930048 (the end of the encore, taken from the Arena)

This was a good, solid Prom. This year's version of the EUYO sounds in excellent condition, and Noseda led a pretty straight-up performance of the Tchaikovsky, no weird twists or turns. He did take modest pauses between the movements, not quite the full-on continuation that Barenboim has done with the WEDO, but more like a bar's pause between each of the movements. The Agata Zubel work was OK, if nothing special at least for me. S-JC was good with the Chopin concerto, fairly refined with it. His encore was quite generous, which made for the long running time (and inadvertently led to the cutoff from broadcast of the 2nd spontaneous encore, not that Ian Skelly or anyone else with the BBC knew that the 3rd encore overall was coming).