Tim Ashley 

Prom 4: World Orchestra for Peace/Gergiev – review

The orchestra and increasingly controversial conductor's Mahler lost sight of structural tautness in a quest for emotional vividness, writes Tim Ashley
  
  

Valery Gergiev and the World Orchestra for Peace at Royal Albert Hall
World weary … Valery Gergiev and the World Orchestra for Peace at Royal Albert Hall. Photograph: Chris Christodoulou Photograph: Chris Christodoulou/PR

Drawing its players from ensembles worldwide, the World Orchestra for Peace was founded by Georg Solti in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the UN. Valery Gergiev has been the orchestra's conductor since Solti's death in 1997, and their latest Prom took place against the escalating controversy over the conductor's support for Vladimir Putin, which feels incongruous with the WOP's reconciliatory aims and egalitarian ethos. Protests have greeted some of Gergiev's recent appearances with the LSO and at New York's Carnegie Hall. The Prom passed without incident, though the Albert Hall was only three-quarters full, which would have been unthinkable for this concert a few years ago.

The evening opened with the European premiere of Roxanna Panufnik's Three Paths to Peace, commissioned by the WOP in 2008. Panufnik's starting point is the story of Abraham and its importance to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike, and her score emphasises the need for tolerance by depicting the sacrifice of Isaac through the traditional music of all three faiths. The best of it is sensuously appealing: Sufi drum rhythms drive Abraham through his spiritual crisis; a tapestry of string figurations, gradually resolving into a monotone, eventually reasserts calm.

Strauss and Mahler formed the rest of the programme. Gergiev is a good Straussian, but could, perhaps, have opted for something other than the bitty Symphonic Fantasia from Die Frau ohne Schatten, flung awkwardly together in 1947 at a time when appearances of the opera were rare. Gergiev's Mahler, meanwhile, isn't to everyone's taste, and his performance of the Sixth Symphony tended to lose sight of structural tautness in a quest for emotional vividness. The opening march, world-weary rather than brutal, was balanced by a wild finale that came dangerously close to being episodic. The best section was the scherzo, its ironies and bitterness expertly laid bare.

• The Proms continue until 13 September. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*