The Hallé made its London Proms debut 70 years ago this summer – the first regional orchestra to appear. The audience was reportedly “very large” and the reviews warm, although the Daily Mail grumbled about conductor John Barbirolli’s approach to rhythm: “A tighter rein would make all the difference”, the critic sniffed.
No one could make the same complaint about the orchestra’s performance this year. The combined Hallé Choir and BBC Symphony Chorus (massive forces even in the monumental Royal Albert Hall) rose neatly at a single baton-twitch from Mark Elder. A pointed finger temporarily spotlit single instrumental lines; a grin coaxed luxuriously rich sound from the strings; tiny hand movements kept sprawling, rhythmically complex textures absolutely together. Reins don’t come much tighter than this.
Precision isn’t everything, of course. But after more than two decades with Elder as music director, orchestra and conductor seemed last night to think, breathe, feel as one.
Rachmaninov’s choral symphony The Bells began with delicate filigree and blossomed into an easy elegance topped suavely by tenor Dmytro Popov. Its later movements were increasingly dark and raw, Elder serving up a performance devoid of sentimentality. Making Proms debuts, soprano Mané Galoyan and baritone Andrei Kymach offered respectively a ripe, seductive counterpart to the orchestra’s grit and dark vocal heft that blended seamlessly into the chorus. The chorus itself was excellent throughout, their diction clear, their entry in the third movement big-boned and bullish.
After the interval, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony – always a draw – was greeted by a newly palpable concentrated silence from the capacity audience. That silence was crucial. The first movement was precise, cool, even undemonstrative – and exquisitely quiet at times, making the violence of the rhythmic tattoo that eventually emerges from the lower register of the piano all the more brutal. Only gradually did Elder allow musical momentum to accrue and melodic lines to gather weight until they might have been hewn into rock, not air. The closing apotheosis was tremendous, powerful precisely because of the journey travelled to reach it. As the final drum strokes faded, the audience exploded – and no wonder.