Prom 37: The Childhood of Christ - 14.08.19

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:00 Wednesday 14 August 2019
Royal Albert Hall

Hector Berlioz: The Childhood of Christ

Dame Sarah Connolly - mezzo-soprano
Allan Clayton - tenor
Roderick Williams - baritone
Neal Davies - bass
Britten Sinfonia Voices
Genesis Sixteen
Hallé Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder conductor



Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé continue our series marking 150 years since the death of Hector Berlioz with the composer’s vividly dramatic oratorio The Childhood of Christ.

Simple and often disarmingly direct, with emotions that unfold in some of the composer’s most beautiful melodies (including the much-loved ‘Shepherds’ Farewell’), the oratorio follows the Holy Family as they flee from Bethlehem into Egypt, where they find safety and welcome.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Genesis Sixteen seems to be a very good project, but it all sounds a bit complicated for my little brain.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lovely work - but one of the very few concerts I've ever walked out of (during the interval) was Elder conducting a Proms performance of Berlioz. I fear - and hope to be eating my words with lashings of custard - that this might well turn out to be very disappointing.

[Darkbloom]

Lovely work - but one of the very few concerts I've ever walked out of (during the interval) was Elder conducting a Proms performance of Berlioz. I fear - and hope to be eating my words with lashings of custard - that this might well turn out to be very disappointing.

What was he conducting? I can't remember Elder doing much Berlioz, but I imagine (for no good reason) that it would be of the Colin Davis school. Elder does tend to focus on detail at the expense of the whole sometimes. His Proms Parsifal was incredibly long.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It was Damnation of Faust, in c 1985 - ju s t ,,, s.. o.... s...... l...... o........ w......... w



(I still can't credit it - a dull Faust !!!!)

[Darkbloom]

Elder isn't conducting this now. Maxime Pascal is doing it, which is a new name for me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Elder isn't conducting this now. Maxime Pascal is doing it, which is a new name for me.

Elder's many admirers will be disappointed, of course - and I hope that it is a minor inconvenience that has led to his withdrawal and nothing unpleasant - but Maxime Pascal is a superb conductor (Music Director and co-founder of Le Balcon and in charge of the ongoing productions of Stockhausen's Licht cycle - so Berlioz should be right up his street!)

[alywin]

Yet another withdrawal? Is anyone keeping count? And are the BBC actually announcing any of the replacements anywhere where you can see them all in one go (I'm assuming they at least have the courtesy to put them on Twitter)?

[Darkbloom]

Yet another withdrawal? Is anyone keeping count? And are the BBC actually announcing any of the replacements anywhere where you can see them all in one go (I'm assuming they at least have the courtesy to put them on Twitter)?

Highlighting the change on the Proms schedule page would be something but we don't even get that. Last-minute substitutions can't be helped, but I have thought for a long time that other changes are conducted with a slightly casual air and they ought to do better.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maxime Pascal ... a new name for me.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxime_Pascal&prev=search

I knew I'd heard the name before - forgotten it was in connection with Donnerstag in April

[Maclintick]

This came over well, if a little oddly-misplaced temporally -- bit of a strange choice for mid-August, the piece being rather associated with the Festive Season, as it were. Berlioz a Marmite composer AFAIK, but "L'Enfance" second only to "Romeo et Juliette" in my esteem.

[edashtav]

This came over well, if a little oddly-misplaced temporally -- bit of a strange choice for mid-August, the piece being rather associated with the Festive Season, as it were. Berlioz a Marmite composer AFAIK, but "L'Enfance" second only to "Romeo et Juliette" in my esteem.

This was a true Christmas present uniting the best of France ( M.Pascal) with the best baritone in GB: Roderick Williams in a characterful performance that presented Hector Berlioz, warts and all. By 'eck was it good. The rasping timbre of Southern French bands from Berlioz's youth was there in full and the soloists had been encouraged to get into character. I have sung in performances and heard the work live on a number of occasions, but never have I heard it shaped in such a pictorial and gripping fashion. It was close to Opera. Many thanks to one and all and best wishes to Sir Mark Elder.

[BBMmk2]

Found it quite strange listening to this in August. I thought very strange programming, but I listened and what a performance, with a replacement conductor as well.

[bluestateprommer]

Found it quite strange listening to this in August. I thought very strange programming, but I listened and what a performance, with a replacement conductor as well.

If thought of strictly in terms of Christmas and JC's birth, then the timing of the program in August would seem out of place. However, looked at from a more secular viewpoint, with the dramatic storyline dealing with a cruel, delusional ruler out to keep power at all costs, which includes the infliction of terrible harm (essentially mass murder) to his own people, as well as a refugee family in flight and being denied assistance, asylum, and help from multiple people.....well, enough said.

This was indeed an excellent performance of L'enfance du Christ on all levels, a highlight of this Proms season so far. It suddenly hit me that I'd never heard the work complete, never on a recording, and certainly not live. The main theme of "The Flight into Egypt" did ring a bell, but that was it, at least for my own recognition. I do see the point of various commenters here where Berlioz can divide opinion as a composer, and perhaps some bits he did drag out. But I can also see why this work was so popular in his own lifetime, apparently one of the relatively few occasions of compositional success that he enjoyed. (The two-volume bio of HB by David Cairns is sitting on the shelf, waiting to be read, so that I can get a fuller picture.)

One wonders how much advance notice Maxime Pascal got for this appearance, and how much input he had in the overall interpretation. I detected extremely trimmed vibrato in the string-sound, a very suitably austere sound for the story. I don't know how much of this to attribute to MP, or to SME prior to the latter withdrawing from the concert. Whoever had that sound picture in mind at the outset, it worked wonders. The instrumental trio in Part 3 well deserved their applause after their solo, one case where the "happy clappers" did good. Good also on the audience for the long silence after the close of the work, nearly 40 seconds' worth.

(PS: On the theme of artist withdrawals, per post # 8, the request there almost sounds like a call for a virtual "wall of shame" of this season's artists who unfortunately had to cancel their scheduled Proms appearances this summer. To which I, for one, respond: NO. What's the point of that? That is, unless the wish is to inflict further electronic humiliation on those artists. It's not as if any of them wanted to cancel, or were in a mood to the effect of "I'm not in the giving vein today", as Martha Argerich has often done and been worldwide in the past (and she kept her Proms date with WEDO this year, in fairness). For one, Sarah Connolly received a cancer diagnosis earlier in the year, and she herself posted about it on Twitter. But that is her choice to share her private life details via social media at her discretion.)

[Darkbloom]

I don't think the intent was to create a 'wall of shame', but somewhere that information of that kind could be gathered in one place. Otherwise you end up stumbling across it by accident.