Prom 1 (17.07.20): First Night of the Proms

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

First Night of the Proms 2020 17.07.20 at 7.30 p.m.


Tonight sees the launch of six weeks of highlights from the past three decades of the Proms, featuring memorable performances from an array of the world’s greatest soloists, orchestras and conductors.

Marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, we open with a mash-up of Beethoven’s nine symphonies – a First Night commission by Iain Farrington recorded in lockdown by a Grand Virtual Orchestra formed of around 350 players from across the BBC Performing Groups. The Beethoven celebrations continue with the dramatic Piano Concerto No. 3 performed at the 2017 First Night by Igor Levit, who has more recently reached a new audience through his live Twitter concerts streamed direct from his Berlin apartment during the coronavirus lockdown.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s riotous, hard-hitting Panic – for saxophone, drums and orchestra – won instant notoriety following its premiere at the Last Night of the 100th-anniversary Proms season in 1995.

Tonight’s selection concludes with Claudio Abbado’s final Proms appearance, in 2007, conducting the 127 players of his Lucerne Festival Orchestra in a rapturous performance of Mahler’s epic hymn to nature, his Third Symphony.

Ian Farrington: Genius Never Dies (BBC commission: world premiere)
Grand Virtual Orchestra (BBC Performing Groups)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor
Igor Levit, piano
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor
(From the First Night of the BBC Proms 2017, 14 July)

Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Panic
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor
(From the Last Night of the BBC Proms 1995, 16 September)

Mahler: Symphony no 3
Anna Larsson, mezzo-soprano
Trinity Boys Choir
London Symphony Chorus
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor
(From BBC Proms 2007, 22 August)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

With just a week to go, this opening concert is a mush-mash of several concerts, but the rest of the season is mostly repeats of complete Prom concert from the last few decades.

I expressed reservations elsewhere about the Beethoven Symphony mashup, but I suppose if it’s the only concert that does it...
And I have great respect for Ian Farrington.

[Ein Heldenleben]

With just a week to go, this opening concert is a mush-mash of several concerts, but the rest of the season is mostly repeats of complete Prom concert from the last few decades.

I expressed reservations elsewhere about the Beethoven Symphony mashup, but I suppose if it’s the only concert that does it...
And I have great respect for Ian Farrington.

Very clever and witty piece - made me chuckle and Lord knows we could do with that. No wonder he has gained your respect...some lovely transistions . I think the great man might have enjoyed it .....and asked for royalties. A remarkable technical feat to pull all those seperate musicians together - bravo to the technicians.

[kernelbogey]

Very clever and witty piece - made me chuckle and Lord knows we could do with that. No wonder he has gained your respect...some lovely transistions . I think the great man might have enjoyed it .....and asked for royalties. A remarkable technical feat to pull all those seperate musicians together - bravo to the technicians.

I enjoyed it too, and had the same thought about LvB enjoying it...! Agreed about the extraordinary engineering.

I had missed the Abbado first time round: what a wonderful Mahler 3.

I also enjoyed Igor Levit's delicious Piano Concerto 3. Shame about the Ode to Joy transcription encore being elided: BBC playing it safe at the moment...?

What a joyful experience to have the Proms back, albeit in this radical form.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I missed the Mahler having decided to give over the rest of the evening to the Glyndebourne Billy Budd which expires tomorrow (the stream I mean !) .I did catch the Levit Beethoven 3 which I would agree was absolutely wonderful - his command and variety of touch is extraordinary - he never knocks off a scale passage (which this piece abounds in - it's almost a stream of technical exercises in places). Levit's scales always say something.In contrast a wonderful singing slow movement. I remember his post Brexit encore proved somewhat controversial at the time.

[antongould]

Just listened on Sounds ...... very enjoyable and, IMVVHO, a wonderful Mahler 3, which I missed back in the day ........

[DracoM]

Erm.........well...............

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/17/opening-night-of-the-virtual-proms-bbc-radio-3

[Serial_Apologist]

Harrington’s Beethoveniana was unashamedly light fayre - over its mere 6 minutes not really venturing beyond a succession of Beethoven themes other than the odd bit of overlapping from different LvB works (not particularly difficult given the brevity of so many famous Beethoven motifs). As such, for me it came across as a sort of Beethoven-centric ‘Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers’ mash-up, making Andrew Clements’ assessment as “ultimately trite and trivial” perhaps harsh but not inaccurate.

I suspect that for the 2027 Proms (when we’ll get lashings of Beethoven for the death bicentennial) this piece will get a much-delayed ‘live performance’ resurrection. Maybe on the Last Night?

Good to hear Birtwistle’s Panic again. I doubt if percussionist Paul Clarvis was ever in receipt of a more fiendish percussion part!

You should hear how he plays jazz then! But I'll save the thread any links to illustrate.

[NatBalance]

WOW, I've just listened to the start of the First Night concert and have been blown away by Ian Farrington's Beethoveniana. That was superb, it was just what I was hoping it would sound like from the introduction (very often they don't). A bit suspect the volume of the jazz bit (i.e. sounding nearer than orchestra) but I really enjoyed that, and the way he brought in the choir at the end doing Ode to Joy! Perfect, absolutely perfect. I've listened to it three times already. I'll have to keep my eyes and ears out for this guy Farrington. Top marks.

[bluestateprommer]

Good to hear Birtwistle’s Panic again. I doubt if percussionist Paul Clarvis was ever in receipt of a more fiendish percussion part!

In my case, this was my first-ever listen in any form of HB's Panic, or 'Birtwistle meets acid jazz', to put it another way. The work actually put me in mind of saxophonist James Carter, from the one time that I've heard him live. In other words, nothing of the many gritty moments of Panic would have been out of place from someone like James Carter. Given also the reputation of that 1995 Last Night and all the hoo-hah that I've read about it, the work actually had its fair share of 'quieter', or 'relaxed' moments, and wasn't all wailing and gnashing, which was what I was expecting, given the name of Harrison Birtwistle. It was also nice to hear Richard Baker's comments right afterwards, if for no other reason that I've only heard Richard Baker in one other context, from Monty Python's Flying Circus (i.e. "Lemon curry?"). I only know about Richard Baker's status in UK culture from reading his obit, rather than hearing him on the radio first-hand.

I also knew from past reading about that 1995 Last Night that John Drummond hadn't originally intended to instigate such a ruckus, because his original intent was to put Panic on the first half of that Last Night. It was only after he realized what HB was giving him, in terms of how different the instrumental set-up was compared to everything else on the first half, that he judged that the only way to make it work (so he thought then) was to put Panic at the start of the second half, i.e. to allow the set-up of the different instrumentation to be done during the interval. In pointless hindsight, however, if Drummond wanted to avoid the BBC switchboards going off the rails the next morning, what he should have done was to put Panic at the very start of that Last Night, and to move the Berlioz overture and The Lark Ascending that did start that 1995 Last Night to the start of the second half. But that's obviously not what happened, so there we are. Birtwistle admittedly didn't "help" Drummond when, after Drummond had asked about an alternative instrumental setup, HB replied:

"Well, it's the only idea I've got, and the only one you're going to get."

I too enjoyed hearing the 2007 Mahler 3 with Abbado and the LFO. Maybe a few moments were a touch perfunctory and more in the 'get on with it' mode, but not too many. Nice touch to contact one of the past musicians to reminisce about this performance. And as much of an aural pill as Tom Service can be, he was quite correct to catch the intellectual pun of pairing Panic with Mahler 3, because of the past movement title 'Pan Awakes' of Mahler's own earlier devising.

For Iain Farrington's Beethoveniana, this is certainly in the past tradition of works like Rossiniana (Respighi) or Paganiniana (Casella), albeit with dollops more in the Peter Schickele / P.D.Q. Bach style with the American hoe-down treatment of some of the themes. I can see Bolik's point about the work getting an eventual live outing at a future Last Night (as long as it starts the second half ).