SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD CONCERT REVIEW
 

Prom 60 – Walton, George Butterworth, Arnold, Graham Fitkin, Bernstein, Gershwin, John Williams and Harry Warren: BBC Proms Family Orchestra and Chorus, BBC Concert Orchestra, Keith Lockhart, Graham Fitkin, Lincoln Abbotts and 8 others, Royal Albert Hall, London, 30.8.2010 (BBr)

 

Walton: Prelude and Spitfire Fugue (1942)

George Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow (1913)

Arnold: Four Cornish Dances, op.91 (1966)

Graham Fitkin: PK (BBC commission: world première) (2010)

Bernstein: West Side Story – Symphonic Dances (1957 arr 1960)

Gershwin: Shall We Dance? – Promenade (Walking the Dog) (1936)

John Williams: Hook – Flight to Neverland (1991)

Herman Hupfeld, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, Marvin Hamlisch, Jay Livingston, Allie Wrubel and Harold Arlen: You Must Remember This: A Cinematic Sing–Along, arranged by Don Sebesky (2007)

Harry Warren, arranged by Don Sebesky: 42nd Street (1933)


An ebullient Bank Holiday Monday Prom like this, designed purely for enjoyment, with a special première, and a British one at that, simply couldn’t fail! Graham Fitkin is a Cornishman and his new work celebrates his homeland. In a brief, but very interesting programme note, he tells us that Porthcurno, a tiny village in Cornwall, was once the world’s largest cable station, through which all communications from the Empire travelled, before being sent to the country at large. PK, the title of the work, is the telegraphic code name for Porthcurno. Fitkin said the piece is based on morse code. Scored for the BBC Concert Orchestra and 190 non professional musicians (singers and players), from both Cornwall and London, and employing the talents of eleven conductors (!), this was a brilliant tour de force. Fitkin created a work in his best public style, which was wholly satisfying and didn’t hold back when writing for the non professionals; everybody had music of substance to play. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the forces will preclude many performances but Fitkin told me, after the show, that if he can find the time he will make a scaled down version and that will allow more people to enjoy this marvellously inventive score both as performers and listeners. A dazzling, and most apt, BBC commission for this year’s Proms and a most auspicious debut for Fitkin at the festival.

There is only one other composer who, in my opinion, could have created something as brilliant and that is Malcolm Arnold, an adoptive Cornishman, and it was with a nice touch of programming that Fitkin was preceded by music by the older composer. The Cornish Dances were premièred at the 1966 Proms and it’s astonishing to discover that the whole set hasn’t been heard here since then. Indeed, it’s sixteen years since we heard a Symphony by Arnold at the Proms, and, as one of this country’s leading Symphonists, that is a situation which really needs rectifying. Much better Arnold’s magnificent 4^th Symphony than the insipid concoction offered by Arvo Pärt a couple of weeks ago. To start, and very apt for the 70^th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Walton’s Prelude and Spitfire Fugue was given a fine performance and was followed by a delicate reading of Butterworth’s gentle and atmospheric Banks of Green Willow.

The second half was pure Boston Pops style celebration. Lockhart has been chief conductor of the Boston Pops for 15 years and he was rather more at home here than in the first three works – where, probably due to nerves, this was Lockhart’s first ever Prom and his first appearance since becoming the new chief conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, the tempi were occasionally rushed, but never to the detriment of the music. Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances were as brilliant as ever, the audience shouting Mambo at the appropriate moments – the woman sitting next to me having a shock when I joined in, obviously wondering why I had decided to shout, twice, during the music! Gershwin’s delightful Walking the Dog beguiled and to end one of my favourite composers – Harry Warren. Don Sebesky’s arrangement for full orchestra of Warren’s Broadway anthem 42^nd Street got the full treatment, complete with clever references to his own Lullaby of Broadway, Richard Rodgers’s Manhattan, from the 1925 version of The Garrick Gaieties and Cole Porter’s Another Op'nin', Another Show and Too Darn Hot, from Kiss Me Kate. The BBC Concert Orchestra swung like the great NDO!

There was a marvellous piece of audience participation in You Must Remember This, a quodlibet of seven great Hollywood songs. This was a wonderfully fun show, with the band on top form. For Keith Lockhart it can be counted a triumph and it bodes well for his future with the players. It’s also worth noting that Lockhart told me that in his “real job” as chief conductor of the Utah Symphony, a post he relinquished last year in order to assume the artistic leadership of the Brevard Music Center, of which he is an alumnus, he had programmed and conducted quite a lot of British music, so we can rest assured that the Concert Orchestra’s commitment to British music will continue.

Although I sang the sentence When I was just a little girl, and the whole of Over the Rainbow in the Royal Albert Hall, I am still not a friend of Dorothy’s, but after a couple of choruses of Moon River, you can rest assured that I am, still, your Huckleberry Friend.

 

Bob Briggs

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