Primed by an overly precious programme note jewelled with phrases such as “stagnancy of remembering”, I half expected to become stagnant myself during the premiere of the BBC Proms’ latest commission. Happily, Raymond Yiu’s Symphony, probably the world’s first for countertenor and orchestra, made that impossible.
Born in Hong Kong and resident in Britain since he was 17, this composer never seems to write or think following a straight line. Yet this latest cat’s cradle beckoned us inside for 25 minutes with such ear-catching and tinkling sounds that it was a pleasure to be trapped in its maze. No shortage of variety, either: trapped in the maze too were echoes of disco and Domenico Scarlatti. Who could get bored?
The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edward Gardner, certainly relished their busy task. So did our soloist, Andrew Watts, agile and expressive; it was only the laws of physics that caused the words to get covered by clouds when sung at the top of his skyscraper voice.
A pity, that; for despite the seeming spirit of caprice, every word that Yiu set mattered, from the sensuous caress of Cavafy’s Come Back, through the AIDS lament of Thom Gunn’s In Time of Plague, to the loving, emollient lines of John Donne that brought the symphony to rest in the musical equivalent of a heat haze. This was a most impressive new work.
No stagnation elsewhere either. Gardner launched Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem with timpani thwacks probably heard on the Moon, although the chortling fanfares of Janáček’s Sinfonietta, given a blistering performance, probably reached even farther.
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Nor could the ears snooze through Nielsen’s teasing, mercurial Flute Concerto, finally given its Proms premiere after almost 90 years. Emblazoned in red, the excellent soloist Emily Beynon flew through its arabesques bouncing with spirit and shimmering with finesse.