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Barry Millington's rating
, Mysterious journey in Brabbins' prom
By
Barry Millington
11 Sep 2008
With the beginning and possible ending of the world very much in the news yesterday, last night’s Prom was the ideal opportunity for a journey into the unknown. Thanks to the powers of divination of the new Proms director, Roger Wright, that is precisely what was on offer.
Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antarctica has suffered over the years for its association with the film Scott of the Antarctic. It has been heard only once at the Proms since the 1950s.
Martyn Brabbins and the BBCSO demonstrated in a penetrating account that it stands very well on its own. The strength of the music was revealed here to lie less in its pictorial representation than in its exploration of the realm of the metaphysical.
The aspirational nobility of the Prelude and Epilogue were particularly well captured and the voice of Elizabeth Watts floated down ethereally from a balcony, backed by the women of the Holst Singers and a somewhat fierce wind-machine.
Xenakis’s Pleiades on one level evokes the hazy cloud of dust that characterises the star cluster. On another level, it explores the mythologies and rituals associated with the constellation by deploying an array of percussion, including drums, vibraphones, marimbas and a newly invented instrument, the “sixxen”, consisting of metal plates tuned in unconventional ways.
The result, in Metaux (Metals), is a timbral quality that admittedly grates on the ear and which started a mass exodus from the hall. Those who left missed not only a work of fascinating rhythmic complexity, but also a thrilling display of pulse-quickening virtuosity by the six players of 4‑Mality and O Duo.
Holst’s Planets might have proved a tired warhorse after all this but Brabbins delivered an exceptional performance that proved once again what a modernist phenomenon this score of the First World War years was. After an implacable, explosive Mars, Venus was more full-toned, more sensual than ever.
The big tune of Jupiter was surprisingly short-breathed, perhaps to avoid unwelcome overtones of sentimentality and patriotism. All three scherzo movements were impressively executed and in Neptune the women of the Holst Singers (who better?) initiated a steady if unduly prominent vocal drift into the cosmos.
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Reader views (3)
thats my uncle 
- Sophie Brabbins, wakefield, uk, 22/04/2009 14:10
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So, the result in Metaux is a sound which admittedly grates on the ear, is it? A bit of an understatement for those sitting within a few feet of the players. Harsh timbres are not objectionable of themselves - there is much harshness in the woodwind writing of Shostakovich's 4th Symphony played on Monday, a great work, enthusiastically received by a capacity audience none of whom walked out - but the ear piercing quality of the sixxen used in Metaux when played at full volume is just that, ear-piercing and so potentially damaging to hearing that the players all wore ear protection for this piece - and similar protection was, I am told offered to prommers. But not to me, or, I would guess, to any of those who walked out. My ears are still ringing - and perhaps the deadening effect of the sixxen had something to do with the lacklustre impression created by Brabbins's traversal of The Planets. Were the percussionists grinning conspiratorially at each other as they watched the audience drifting out of the auditorium during and after Metaux, or am I mistaken?
- Michael, London UK, 11/09/2008 13:01
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It was an excellent prom, but programming the Xenakis piece between VW and Holst was almost bound to end in tears! The behaviour of the geriatric conservatives in the seats (talking loudly, walking out in droves and one loud boo) was completely adolescent and disrespectful to the rest of the audience. If I see the man in Stalls Row 7 seat 34 at a concert ever again, I'll demand to be re-seated or leave before it starts!
- Gareth James, London UK, 11/09/2008 11:57
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