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Prom 33: BBC Scottish SO/Volkov

Robert Maycock
Thursday 12 August 2004 00:00 BST
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Finally, the full potential of the Albert Hall's revamped organ came into play when, in a late-night Prom, Naji Hakim delivered some of the most spectacular performances it can have been treated to.

Finally, the full potential of the Albert Hall's revamped organ came into play when, in a late-night Prom, Naji Hakim delivered some of the most spectacular performances it can have been treated to.

Hakim is known as the successor to Olivier Messiaen as organist at the Trinité church in Paris. As a composer and improviser he's quite different - more in the tradition of his teacher Jean Langlais, which stretches back to Vierne and Franck. All these musicians refined their skills on the monster 19th-century French organs, capable of an astonishing range of colour and nuance.

The Albert Hall organ was meant to rival them, though its evolution left it slightly short of the brilliant high register and sweet lyrical stops the French repertoire thrives on. Still, Hakim did a better job than anybody I've heard here, especially in his own pieces, which roared and blazed with breathtaking pace and flair.

In organo, chordis et choro was a sustained bout of virtuosity, with harp-like swooshes and ominous rumbles. His Ouverture Libanaise was one of those pieces for which the marvellous term "auto-exotic" must have been coined - Hakim is Lebanese, but his style is so thoroughly Westernised that using traditional material sounds like musical tourism. Fun, though. Hakim also played four of Messiaen's works with equal commitment, but not quite the sonic authenticity.

The concert featured two appearances by London Winds, in serenades by Strauss and Dvorak that had no apparent link with Hakim's programme. Directed by Michael Collins, they made a fat central-European sound, holding interest in Strauss's lazy offering and responding brightly to Dvorak's dance rhythms.

For the earlier Prom, the BBC Scottish played a French first half and a German second, with honours going to France. That's in spite of Ravel's Shéhérazade overture, his least played orchestral work and understandably so. Still, it's wonderfully scored, and the orchestra made the most of it. They found the same sensuous tone for Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi, a song cycle to his own words that uses sex as a religious metaphor. Susan Bullock sang with power and sensitivity, good in the numbers that bask, a bit short on terror and ecstasy.

If all Beethoven's Symphony No 7 had gone as well as its rousing finale, it would have been quite a performance, but it never threw off its inhibitions. Ilan Volkov delivered it with clarity: best when lyrical, but reluctant to ease up or push on.

Booking: 020-7589 8212; www.bbc.co.uk/proms. Proms 33 and 34 available online until Monday

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