United Kingdom PROM 4 – MacMillan, Mahler: Hallé Kids’s Choir (refrain grasp: Shirley Courtroom), Hallé Youth Choir (refrain grasp: Stuart Overington), Hallé Choir (refrain grasp: Matthew Hamilton), Hallé / Sir Mark Elder (conductor). Royal Albert Corridor, London, 21.7.2024. (CK)

MacMillan – Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia (first Promenade efficiency)
Mahler – Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor

On Sunday night time the Royal Albert Corridor was packed to the rafters – together with banks of singers rising up on either side behind the orchestra, and the Area a sea of bobbing heads, so filled with Prommers that it might in all probability have wanted a collective consumption of breath to make room for any extra. We have been all there, after all, for the music; but in addition, and at the least as importantly, to pay tribute to Sir Mark Elder in his final BBC Proms live performance with the Hallé, the place he has been Music Director for one 12 months shy of 1 / 4 of a century.

Sir James MacMillan’s current Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia – a reasonably cumbersomely-titled celebration of the facility of music, to phrases from Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast – was a really perfect and substantial launchpad for this inspiriting live performance. At nearly 20 minutes it’s no mere curtain-raiser; starting with whirrings and tappings within the massive orchestra, the music without delay demonstrates MacMillan’s direct and instinctive feeling for drama: ironclad brass fanfares with marauding tuba give option to the affecting sound of an unaccompanied kids’s choir, and it isn’t lengthy earlier than the primary, thrilling tutti for the mixed choirs. The choral sound was clear, vivid and magnificently disciplined; using the kids’s choir as a separate, typically declamatory ingredient of the feel was brilliantly efficient.

The primary part presents Timotheus, musician to Alexander the Nice, depicting the king’s god-like energy that ‘appears to shake the spheres’. After the magnificence of this opening the music darkens for Bacchus: the place Dryden appears content material to have a good time the unruly vitality of victorious troopers – Sound the trumpets (six of them), beat the drums! – Macmillan suggests different issues, all too acquainted from our Information sources (in his programme observe he references ‘the greed of the looting troopers, who’ve misplaced all management of their thievery, slaughter and destruction’). Chords from deep within the piano’s bass register energy a sinister march; shrill woodwind cries appear freighted with one thing extra determined than Now give the hautboys breath; males’s voices sink down sepulchrally on ‘Candy is pleasure after ache’, grounding on ‘ache’.

Brilliant, passionate violins and woodwind carry us up and into the sunshine once more for Cecilia; there have been ethereal sounds from the choirs in addition to bells, drums and blazing affirmation, and a ultimate dramatic stroke: a single, quiet choral chord.

In a efficiency akin to this – excessive, huge and good-looking within the corridor’s huge areas – MacMillan’s piece has an impression similar to that which a efficiency of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony can obtain right here. Sir Mark drove his forces splendidly: I doubt if I’ll hear something extra stirring on this Proms season.

Elder is (amongst many different issues) a seasoned Mahlerian: and for his farewell efficiency he had chosen the Fifth Symphony. Per Ardua advert Astra. The opening motion was measured, implacable; within the outbreaks of turbulence the upsurge of ardour boiled like lava. Within the offended second motion – a pair with the primary – the strain initially appeared a little bit decrease; however the transient triumph of the chorale’s first look was performed for all it was price – actually, uniquely in my expertise, its impression was better than the crashing, gong-dominated chord that’s presupposed to crush it.

For the Scherzo, the principal horn (Laurence Rogers) ascended above his colleagues to a vantage level, flanked at a distance by the percussion and the trombones, whence his calls rang across the corridor as they need to. Elder’s method was easy-going (nicht zu schnell, Mahler asks), and there was loads of room for telling woodwind contributions – spiky clarinets, a humorously tentative bassoon; the waltz crept onto the stage sideways reasonably like Liz Truss at her Election Depend. The central episode the place horns name to one another in summer season warmth was filled with character – eerie, nearly spectral; the quiet taking part in of the principal trumpet (Gareth Small), right here and all through the symphony, was ear-catchingly lovely. Elder saved the feel mild within the Adagietto, a floating internet of sound: the cellos had me pondering of Barbirolli. The return of the opening was magical; and I at all times benefit from the suspension earlier than the double basses lastly contact down on the finish.

Characterful woodwind taking part in was once more to the fore on the opening of the finale; the cellos dug in with a will, although once more there was no unseemly hurry. Let’s all get pleasure from this collectively, Elder appeared to be saying: there isn’t a rush. There was no scarcity of pleasure – the trombones snarling on the highest step, the trumpets snapping and crackling beneath them, the horns with their bells aloft – and in Elder’s palms the endgame was correctly jubilant, giocoso to the final observe.

Sir Mark’s impression and affect on music in our nation has been incalculable. He was cheered to the rafters, by the viewers and by the gamers and singers massed behind him. After all he spoke, paying tribute to the distinctive Proms expertise (‘It should flourish … Dwell music brings us all one thing we want, maybe now greater than ever’). There was a mildly political joke: ‘We come from Manchester. A few of you could not know the place that’s.’ And there have been some pleasant reminiscences of his personal Promming days: ‘What occurred to the fountain?’

Nice because the efficiency had been, it was unthinkable that Mahler ought to have the final phrase. Elder and the Hallé gave us music ‘straight from the center’: Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit. And the cheering continued.

Chris Kettle