MUSIC / The Proms: Requiem without grief

AS POTENT a marker of the passing years as the New Year, the most famous first night in music has come round again, and an expectant prom audience filled the Albert Hall to capacity on Friday evening, generating great electricity. The tradition is that one of the great choral works opens this renowned series of concerts, and this year it was Verdi's Requiem for which the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Chorus and Singers, and London Symphony Chorus were massed in great phalanxes under the direction of Andrew Davis.

The chorus carries the main weight of expression during the work's initial sections, encountering the most dramatic challenges to their command of dynamics and types of attack, and the present choir carried us forward with the most thrilling address under Davis's lead. The mysterious expression to be obtained from large numbers singing with perfect restraint was marvellously exposed at the outset, and when the full sonority was unleashed in the opening sequences of the 'Dies Irae', with the orchestra's on-and- off stage brass tolling like bells of doom, our blood ran cold. This was tremendous stuff.

As the performance unfolded, however, it became clear that the solo singing was leaving much to be desired. The soprano Susan Dunn was frankly disappointing. Sounding dangerously tired, she suffered constantly from poor intonation, never achieved a truly floating line, and struggled throughout the performance. Mezzo Marjana Lipovsek was the finest of the soloists and drew a firm line, with dramatic presence and a fine sense of style, but even she was sometimes careless of detail, while the tenor Vinson Cole despite touchingly expressive moments relied too heavily on falsetto. Paul Plishka sang decently but seemed more baritone than bass and was injudiciously cast.

As a consequence, the latter part of the work fell a little flat, and despite husbanding his singers carefully Davis was unable to sustain the expressive intensity he had generated earlier.

The following night also brought us one of the repertory's most thrilling choral works, and in a programme which was to have been conducted by the late and sorely missed Sir Charles Groves we heard Walton's overture Scapino, Delius's Double Concerto and Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony. It was Vernon Handley who took over the programme, and one could not imagine a finer substitute in this particular English repertory. Delius's intricately woven solo textures and complex harmonic processes, and Vaughan Williams's hugely expansive choral and orchestral paragraphing both test a conductor's sensitivity and command to the utmost, and Handley emerged triumphant.

Delius's Double Concerto is one of his most difficult works, and it is only too easy for its expressive journey to become obscured in a mass of proliferating detail. On this occasion, however, aided by the most exquisite solo playing from violinist Tasmin Little and cellist Raphael Wallfisch, Handley shaped the work to perfection, achieving an ecstatic calm in the central and closing music which cast a palpable spell.

It is ostensibly easier to hold the listener's attention with Vaughan Williams's bold and dramatically visionary gestures, but the finale's long exposition can lose its way, and Handley again paced the music marvellously well. The superb opening as delivered by the combined Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Brighton Festival Chorus and London Choral Society brought the 'limitless heaving' and the 'dashing spray' vividly before our eyes, and the soloists Joan Rodgers and Simon Keenlyside (not ideally robust but warmly poetic) contributed with spirit and style. Altogether an outstanding performance.

(Photograph omitted)