Last Night of the Proms/ Sakari Oramo
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
The time was when the Last Night of the Proms was an innocent thing. It was a chance to bob up and down to sea-shanties, get all misty-eyed while singing Jerusalem, and laugh affectionately at some brave foreign-born conductor trying to be properly English and jokey. The only problem for the Proms director was how much seriousness he could stir into the mix, before the Prommers lost all self-control and started letting off balloons.
It’s hard to be innocent when there’s a Culture War raging, the Extinction Rebellion movement is gathering steam, and Brexiteers and Remainers are at each other’s throats. This season has shown when it comes to these issues, the Proms is eager – up to a point – to be on the right side of history. We’ve had not one but two Proms in which the threat of environmental catastrophe has loomed. Female composers and conductors have been prominent. The Nina Simone homage was a reminder of the awful heritage of racism in America.
So director David Pickard’s insistence that the Last Night was “not political” was bound to seem implausible, given that it launched with a new piece called Woke. Was it a spoof? No such luck.
“Continued awareness concerning social and racial justice is close to me as a creator,” announced the partEritrean, part-Russian composer Daniel Kidane in his show notes, “and I sought to channel my optimism for the future through my notes.” Thank goodness the piece was much more engaging than the
description. It launched off dancing rhythms; string chords rising and falling under the chirruping winds were not far from Steve Reich’s minimalism, but the harmonies were suggestive of struggle. Towards the end, the music retreated to a lonely place, but revived to end if not in a blaze of glory, at least of hope.
After that there was much to enjoy musically; a burst of Spanish exoticism in the form of Falla’s 2nd ThreeCornered Hat, Laura Mvula’s choral arrangement of Sing to the Moon, and Percy Grainger’s lusty Marching Song of Democracy, sung with fervour by the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus. And there was the star guest, the American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who said that she was “proud to bring my own queer fat femme energy to the Last Night”.
And boy, didn’t she just. She was seductive in the Habanera from Carmen, furious and heartbroken in the great aria O Don Fatale from Verdi’s Don Carlos, and sassy and finger-snapping in Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm. Later, when things had got properly silly, she appeared in the bisexual pride colours of lavender, pink and blue to sing Rule Britannia. At the delirious climax, she brandished the gay pride flag. Everyone went wild. It was proof that the Proms can be thoroughly woke, and still be its own triumphant self.