Royal Albert Hall, London. Tier 2 (Box 18, Seat 1, 52 GBP).
Alena Baeva after performing Korngold's Violin Concerto, with Lazarova looking on.
Program
Orpheus Comet (2017) by Tabakova (b. 1980).
Violin Concerto in D minor (1945) by Korngold (1897-1957).
Symphony No. 5 in B flat major (1944) by Prokofiev (1891-1953).
Artists
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Delyana Lazarova, conductor.
Alena Baeva, violin.
We will be in London for four evenings, during a time BBC PROMS 2026 is taking place, so we booked tickets to three evening concerts. This year we have better luck with getting better (by price) seats, whether they are better acoustically is still up for debate. If today's concert is any guide, the price of the seats probably reflect more what views of the musicians they offer rather than how good they are acoustically. Nonetheless, this was an interesting experience.
First, there are many great European musicians and orchestras. Given how western music came into being, this isn't a surprise. This is the first time I heard the BBC Scottish Symphony, and it sounded great. For example, the trumpists had some difficult passages in Orpheus Comet, and they came through beautifully. Bulgarian born Delyana Lazarova led the orchestra with precision, and coaxed from the ensemble lines that span from graceful to majestic, and a respectable dynamic range. Her training was in Switzerland and Indiana, and is now the principal guest conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony and the Utah Symphony. She is a violinist, and performed a duet with Baeva after the Korngold concerto. Baeva was born in Kyrgyzstan (when it was still part of the Soviet Union) and now lives in Luxembourg.
Dobrinka Tabakova was (also) born in Bulgaria, moved to the UK when she was very young, and did most her music education in London. One can find in the web a description of the piece, by the composer herself. My appreciation of the piece would have been much greater if I had read it before hand. People well-versed in the classics know Orpheus is associated with apiculture, so the initial buzzing sound is a reference to that. (I certainly didn't know.) In any case, it is a very fast-paced composition requiring much precision from different sections of the orchestra. They by-and-large came through, although there were some passages that sounded a bit chaotic.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold fled to the US in the late 1930s, and became a composer of film music in Hollywood. He vowed to never write a piece of "real" music (for lack of a better description) until Hitler was out of power. When Hitler died in 1945, Korngold published his violin concerto in a short time. One can conjecture he had a head start as he planned to incorporate a lot of the thematic material from his film music. It was premiered in 1947 by Heifetz, whom Korngold referred to as Caruso and Paganini.
Technically, the piece certainly is worthy of Paganini. The soloist had to display virtuosity in practically all techniques, and the composition seems to live in the high registers. Baeva certainly worked very hard at it, but unfortunately her violin (a Guarneri) was often overwhelmed by the orchestra.
Baeva and Lazarova played a short duet. They were joking with one another, but I didn't get it.
Over the years I have heard quite a few Shostakovich symphonies, including the fifth. The piece thus sounded quite familiar. For today it was mostly a mental exercise to keep track of the forms and themes; that kept me quite occupied.
The Tabakova piece was quite short at 5 minutes. Many percussionists were used in its performance. Sir Henry Wood, a co-founder of the PROMS, looks on (at least his bust does).
For encore Baeva and Lazarova played a duet.
The conductor and the concertmaster shaking hands at the end of the event.
Photo taken at the end of intermission. There were many empty seats in the tiers and the rausing circle.
Anne took this panaromic photo during the intermission.
As it turns out, all three concerts have a violin concerto in the program.
We took an Uber from the hotel to RAH, and the subway to go back.
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