he BBC has had a bit of bother in recent weeks, so let’s find something positive to say: the 2023 Proms season kicked off over the weekend. If you’ve been listening to any of the Beeb’s many radio channels, it’s been hard to avoid the insistent claims that this is “the world’s greatest classical music festival”. Perhaps it is, and if some of the repertoire feels a little bland, there’s plenty that’s inviting, whatever your taste. But do we really need two concerts in the same season featuring Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?
Well, maybe not “need”, but neither concert is a conventional take. Later in the season, Britten Sinfonia offers Max Richter’s post-minimalist recasting, while last night, to round off the opening weekend, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen played a version devised by Finnish conductor and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.
His provocative account interspersed Vivaldi’s movements with “folk music improvisations” by Kuusisto himself and Ale Carr, whose amplified cittern (a Renaissance instrument) had something of the qualities of guitar, mandolin and banjo.
With his leather trousers and stage demeanour, Carr resembled a 1970s guitar hero, but his playing had a wit and flexibility that suited Vivaldi. Carr and Kuusisto not only played as a duo, but wove themselves into the fabric of the orchestra, infecting the whole ensemble with their freewheeling spirit.
This was Vivaldi made fresh, no mean achievement with such well-worn music: the standing ovation was richly deserved. Kuusisto has an attractively spontaneous manner that easily draws listeners in; as an encore, he led musicians and audience through Nico Muhly’s arrangement of a Finnish folk song – the original Nordic noir, he suggested. After a quick rehearsal of its nonsense chorus, we were only too happy to sing along.
The was also choral singing in the Beethoven symphony that preceded the Vivaldi: not his Ninth but his First, which doesn’t have a chorus – except when Kuusisto inserts one. Between the last two movements, he first had his players la-la-la-ing their way through a wordless little ditty, before getting the audience to join in. It didn’t add much to a performance that was otherwise buoyant and rhythmically sturdy, at times even urgent – but the singalong ensured the audience was thoroughly engaged.
The Prom opened with a new-ish piece by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi. Inspired by a David Attenborough documentary, Birds of Paradise II made onomatopoeic use of the orchestra, particularly the woodwinds, to evoke the eponymous creatures, even if at times they sounded more like gulls. Tarrodi’s imaginative use of instrumental timbres sometimes made it difficult to work out what was making the sounds we heard; a seductive piece, it opened our ears for what followed.
The Proms are running until September 9; tickets at royalalberthall.com
