Movie music in focus at the BBC Proms — review

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The cross-fertilisation of film, stage and classical music has become mutually beneficial over the years. For a neatly balanced exposition of the various influences, Sunday’s BBC Proms concert could hardly have done better — even though it was never planned that way.

It was a shame that the first UK performance of Mason Bates’s new Piano Concerto had to be cancelled when Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov was unable to secure a UK visa in time. To take its place, in came music by Korngold, renowned as a Hollywood film composer after his enforced move to the US in the 1930s and a link between the other two composers on the programme.

The concert opened with the suite from Bernard Herrmann’s film score for Vertigo, one of his finest collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock. The film’s fusion of music and images cannot be replicated in the concert hall, but the suite rises to a heady conclusion with the “Scène d’amour”, sounding suitably lush in this performance. Who knew that the suite includes a part for Hammond organ, performed here on the Royal Albert Hall’s monster Victorian instrument?

The lyricism and seductive sound of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, written a decade earlier, are cut from the same cloth. Soloist Vadim Gluzman shaped the melodies with an unfussy sweep and showed nimble agility in the finale.

Like the other two composers, Prokofiev wrote some important film scores, notably for director Sergei Eisenstein, but it was one of his operas in focus here. The Symphony No 3 uses music from The Fiery Angel, creating from it a demonic symphony laced with black magic. This rather rough-and-ready performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Gimeno, had pace and attack on its side, aided by the thunderous acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall.

★★★☆☆

On the next night the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its principal conductor Ryan Bancroft brought an American-themed programme. This time the new work did happen: Nova Plexus, a BBC commission from Derrick Skye, was getting its premiere and proved a lively Proms showpiece. Skye, who had ambitions to be an astronaut as a child, is said to have conceived “a sonic world illuminated by the sun’s resplendent elegance”, but what comes across is a high-energy, rhythm-based piece. He is known for his interest in world music and the influences here take in west African drumming, Balinese gamelan, Persian classical music, and more.

That gave the orchestra a good workout, so the players were probably glad to move on to Copland’s understated Clarinet Concerto. Soloist Annelien Van Wauwe judged well how strongly to project in this vast hall.

The main event was John Adams’s imposing choral work Harmonium, setting poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson. This was another performance with rough edges, though the BBC National Chorus of Wales and Crouch End Festival Chorus gave their all in the Bacchic frenzy of Dickinson’s “Wild Nights”. The minimalist Harmonium, now on its fourth Prom performance, dates back to 1980. How far music in general, and Adams’s music in particular, have come since then.

★★★☆☆

bbc.co.uk/proms