Doutside everything is as usual. The same woman is sitting on the lawn opposite the Royal Albert Hall, as she has been doing every day of the BBC’s Proms season for years. Next to her are the scores of the works that will be performed that evening. She offers these goods to the arriving passers-by almost in a whisper, so as not to attract too much attention. Meanwhile, a misanthropic-looking bootlegger lurks around the arena, a deck of cards discreetly in hand but visible enough to let even those who haven’t been familiar with his ploy signal that he’s looking for buyers. Indoors, the Proms, hailed as the world’s largest classical music festival, is trying to regain its footing in its first full season since the pandemic began.
The bad news about the effects of Corona and the raging inflation on the cultural sector is mixed with the rumor that the huge Albert Hall, with its capacity for more than five thousand spectators, is hardly more than ten percent occupied on some Proms evenings, the income from the Ticket sales so far, two and a half weeks before the ritual finale with the famous Last Night, are twenty percent below those of the 2019 season, the last before the pandemic. But at this year’s first Proms performance of the WDR Symphony Orchestra with its Romanian chief conductor Cristian Măcelaru, none of this can be felt. The hall is well filled, the mood is full of expectation, the applause is partly enthusiastic.
Although the Cologne orchestra is associated with its commitment to new music, it performs in London, the first stop on a short European tour that will take it to Amsterdam, the Beethoven Festival in Bonn and the Carl Nielson Festival in Odense, among other places, before moving to the returns home at the start of the season celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary with a pleasing romantic program of: Mendelssohn’s Hebrides and Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor with the German-American virtuoso Augustin Hagelich as the soloist and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 – two works in other words , which premiered three weeks apart in 1883. In the current business climate, David Pickard, the director of the Proms, apparently didn’t want to take too many risks. In any case, he has a reputation among grumpy traditionalists for promoting the zeitgeist at the expense of high culture with an increasingly simple offer.
Was everything really better at the Proms before?
The lament that everything would have been better before is also part of the annual Proms ritual; it’s just a heavier burden given the political and economic pressures the BBC is facing in its centenary. As in Germany, the bean counters at the top of the broadcaster measure its success by the ratings and push for accessible content.
Cristian Măcelaru is at the beginning of his fourth season as chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, but due to the pandemic he considers this his first real season. Making the debut at the Proms, where the orchestra was last heard in 2012 under the baton of its then chief conductor Semyon Bychkov, is a “wonderful statement,” says Măcelaru. He makes no secret of his feeling that the ensemble’s international work has been neglected in the decade since Bychkov’s departure. Touring is not a luxury, but an indispensable drive for striving for something higher without the danger of complacency. An orchestra that does not travel is like a chef who only cooks at home. According to Măcelaru, despite increasing streaming, radio orchestras also have to show up in the concert hall, not least because they have a responsibility to the fee payers. Streaming can never replace a live performance, especially since the development of sound technology is far from advanced enough.
What matters is being on the podium
Before the concert, Măcelaru speaks of the challenge of creating a tour program that satisfies the organizers, who are looking for revenue. However, he challenges what he believes to be the more prevalent view in Europe than in the United States that high culture must involve suffering, otherwise it would not be sophisticated enough. The key is to educate the audience about the background and content so that they become familiar with the composers, recognize the relevance of the music being performed and learn to understand what is new. This is exactly what Măcelaru did with “Miniaturen der Zeit” last year, a series of thirteen short works that the WDR Symphony Orchestra commissioned on current topics. And that’s how the conductor does it at the Cabrillo Festival for contemporary music in Santa Fe, for whose artistic program he is just as responsible as, more recently, for that of the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. New music is not the problem, but the way it is performed. Măcelaru Is convinced that teaching classical music requires the fanaticism of a Billy Graham.
Măcelaru’s observation that every radio orchestra has to develop its own identity and that, like a Tesla or an old Rolls Royce, everything has its value and its place, the question arises as to what distinguishes the WDR Symphony Orchestra. He mentions the deep, velvety sound of the strings and the possibly underestimated ability of the wind instruments, which is then also amply demonstrated at the concert. Augustin Hadelich conquers the heart of the audience with his unmannered, extremely virtuosic and rousing performance of the violin concerto, so that under the loud pounding of the Prommers he feels compelled to play two encores: Coleridge-Taylor Parkinson’s sparkling “Louisiana Blues Strut” and Carlos Gardel’s Tango ” Por una cabeza”. They confirm Măcelaru’s motto of enjoying classical music.
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