Music
Promises ...
John Bridcut Orl Friday, with the solemn D major chord Which opens Beethoven's Mass, the Proms begin their third season of the post-Glock era. During his time as BBC Controller of Music, Sir William transformed them into an international festival ; at the same time he not only expanded the repertoire but fully revamped it, so that old chestnuts were offered afresh, roasted but unpeeled. He discouraged concentration on a single comPoser or period within an evening; one of his early successes was to secure the largest audience of the 1961 season for Schoenberg's Violin Concerto—by sandwiching it between Debussy's La Mer and Beethoven's Seventh. He also introduced full-scale Operas, chamber music and Proms away from the Albert Hall.
In many ways, the 1976 season is more Glockian than ever.Admittedly, it is without foreign orchestras—a sign of the economic tiMes—but there are plenty of individual artists from abroad. The external events have now settled comfortably into three homes—the Round House, Westminster Cathedral and St Augustine's, Kilburn. This year's operas include Falstaff, Pelleas Melisande, Patience and Bluebeard's Castle; there is still some Albert Hall chamber music (fortunately, only twice—it just does not work there). But it is the intelligent and highly imaginative planning of each l?rogramme which promises to make this season the most exciting for a long while. Glock searched for 'something unobvious or a little antiseptic' to provide relief, and this Year such a search has been amply fruitful. There are no horrible hotch-potches as there used to be (for example, Ravel's Alborada del gracioso, Chopin's Second Piano Concerto, Mozart's Oboe Concerto and Tchaixovsky's Fourth—that was in 1972, under Glock himself). Instead the great works are juxtaposed with a cunning that many concert promoters would do well to imitate. c,4en Viennese night is affected : the s'traussian connection of Berg's Seven Early Lungs is scarcely Johannine. Perhaps the 'est-arranged orchestral evening is the Hungarian one on 30 July, ranging from Haydn at the end of his time at Esterhazy to Ligeti urgan music, via Liszt's Second Piano Coneberto and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. 'la close runners-up are the two Boulez e°11certs, as one would expect : Debussy ith BartOk's Bluebeard, and Stravinsky's „YeaPhony of Psalms with the complete ver'31011 of Das Klagende Lied by Mahler (1 and September). h tieethoven tops the bill, with over nine ,c)urs all told; Mozart has five, Bach three
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tud a I. The decline of the Mahler cult is effected in the absence of any of his number
ed symphonies, and there is less Elgar, Tippett, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams and Stravinsky than last year. Ravel and Schoenberg disappear now that their centenaries are over, and Handel and Messiaen are hard done by : when are we going to get another of Handel's oratorios ? Schubert manages a scant half-hour, while the recent rekindling of the Schumann flame is ignored. Nielsen, Prokofiev, Stockhausen and Franck are other absentees. But, to be more positive, Shostakovich, Debussy and Haydn are on the increase, while Bartelk's growth is uncommonly healthy five years before his centenary.
In his preface to the prospectus, Robert Ponsonby says that the increased proportion of early music has compelled a more rigorous scrutiny of the classical-romantic core of the repertoire; many popular favourites now have to be omitted if they are not 'indisputably great'. I sympathise over his predicament, but 'indisputably' is asking for trouble, since few works avoid scorn or neglect from one generation or another. In the 1896 season Haydn was represented only by one song (`My mother bids me bind my hair') and Mozart by one duet, while Brahms didn't feature at all the year before his death. Indeed there are few Prom certainties in the 1970s—Jerusalem and Hope and Glory apart. Only ten works have been played in all the last five seasons: symphonies 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 of Beethoven, his fourth and fifth piano concertos, Brahms's Second Symphony, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Britten's Young Person's Guide. Except for the Ninth, the Beethoven. items appeared in 1896 too.
The deaths of Rudolf Kempe and David Munrow have caused more upsets than the Prom schedule is used to, but all is not lost : John Eliot Gardiner's conducting of The Creation should be stimulating (22 July), while Nicholas Cleobury will take over what was the Early Music Consort in a choral programme of Josquin and Brume! on 20 August. The best fortnight of the season, to my mind, is 21 July to 6 August : an intriguing mid-European bonanza with operatic excerpts of Smetana, Dvorak and other more obscure writers comes on 24 July, very much in the Henry Wood tradition; Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King are staged at the Round House (26th). New works by Richard Meale and David Lumsdaine are being replaced by Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto (28th) and Fricker's Fifth Symphony, premiered in May (11 August). The National Youth Orchestra has an enticing programme ofJanacek, Walton and Sibelius (31 July), and Elisabeth Lutyens's seventieth birthday is remembered (4 and 9 August). I had hoped that the revival of Britten's Paul Bunyan might find its way to the Proms: no such luck, but we have some of his other American works (Canadian Carnival, Les Illuminations, Sinionia da Requiem and his piano Diversions). Boult, now eighty-seven, conducts the first symphonies of Elgar and Brahms, and Beethoven's Sixth, and Haitink repeats his dramatic reading of Britten's War Requiem (15 August). Riccardo Muti makes his Prom debut on one of the more conservative evenings: Mendelssohn, Mozart and Dvorak (4 September).
These are just some of the events to savour, apart, of course, from the unknown qualities of new works—five this time. Forty years ago, the prospectus spoke of the Proms ranging 'from Bach to the day before yesterday'. It surprised me to reflect that Bach is now two-thirds of the way along to the present day; the Proms may now boast of their range from anonymity in the thirteenth century to the day after tomorrow.
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