:00:43. > :00:49.Tonight at the Proms, one of the world's finest forecasters --
:00:49. > :00:59.orchestras celebrating one of them titans of the Romantic period,
:00:59. > :01:01.
:01:01. > :01:05.Johannes Brahms. Two concertos to with into, that capsule late
:01:05. > :01:09.perfectly the imaginative and sensitive assets of his personality.
:01:09. > :01:12.Who better to give voice is to these works than the wonderful
:01:12. > :01:17.Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Bernard Haitink? This
:01:17. > :01:22.is surely as good as it gets. Joining as backstage throughout the
:01:22. > :01:26.evening, Ritula Shah. Since its foundation 30 years ago, the
:01:26. > :01:31.Chamber Orchestra of Europe has become one of the world's most
:01:31. > :01:34.exciting performing ensembles. It is a real event. Drawn from
:01:34. > :01:38.orchestras around the European Union and further afield, these are
:01:38. > :01:44.some of the best musicians around and I will be speaking to some of
:01:44. > :01:49.them during the interval. Thanks. First up, Brahms's Third Symphony,
:01:49. > :01:53.written when he was 50 and already established as one of Europe's
:01:53. > :01:58.leading composers, but the symphonic landscape this time was
:01:58. > :02:03.still dominated by Beethoven's towering legacy and so it was in
:02:03. > :02:07.1883, with his Third Symphony, Brahms proved once and for all that
:02:07. > :02:12.he had last found his own unique symphonic voice. Let's hear what
:02:12. > :02:17.some of tonight's players had to say. If I think Brahms was at peace
:02:17. > :02:27.with himself more so for this symphony than the others. He seems
:02:27. > :02:28.
:02:28. > :02:33.to present beautiful themes in a It is beautifully reflective and it
:02:33. > :02:37.is almost autumnal in the colours and the emotional content.
:02:37. > :02:47.Something intimate and very personal, like someone's private
:02:47. > :02:51.
:02:51. > :02:57.Full of life! Full of emotion and passion and beauty and sadness.
:02:57. > :03:04.Just all the things that we play with the music instead of saying it
:03:04. > :03:08.with words. Maybe the things we cannot say with words. Some of
:03:08. > :03:13.tonight's musicians at rehearsals earlier in the week. As you can see,
:03:13. > :03:16.the orchestra on stage. If you would like to read a complete list
:03:16. > :03:26.of the members of this Chamber Orchestra of Europe, you can do so
:03:26. > :03:28.If in the music you would like to see a dedicated shot of the
:03:28. > :03:38.wonderful conductor, Bernard Haitink, along with expert
:03:38. > :03:46.
:03:46. > :03:50.commentary, just press the red You can see the leader, Marieke
:03:50. > :03:55.Blankestijn, co-ordinating the tuning of the orchestra. With
:03:55. > :03:59.something like 250 recordings and a string of illustrious prizes, the
:03:59. > :04:03.Chamber Orchestra of Europe is celebrating their 30th anniversary
:04:03. > :04:07.in style. They have a core membership of 50 players but
:04:07. > :04:17.tonight it expands to 60, just to fill the stage up at the Royal
:04:17. > :04:35.
:04:35. > :04:41.Bernard Haitink, making his way The extraordinary thing about this
:04:41. > :04:45.orchestra, how they play, they are not full-time. They organised 10-15
:04:46. > :04:53.projects a year, ranging from a conference to us, recordings and
:04:53. > :04:58.operas, alongside have been busy solo and change their careers and
:04:58. > :05:03.been professions of music at the leading conservatories of the world.
:05:03. > :05:12.A Rolls Royce of an institution, you might say. -- as well as being
:05:12. > :05:16.the professors of music. APPLAUSE. Here he comes now.
:05:16. > :05:20.Bernard Haitink. Joining the musicians of the Chamber Orchestra
:05:20. > :05:30.of Europe and together, we will hear their befall Brahms's Third
:05:30. > :05:30.
:05:30. > :44:56.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2365 seconds
:44:56. > :45:00.Brahms's Third Symphony. The COE When I look at the Third Symphony
:45:00. > :45:04.of Brahms, I feel like a tinker, so wrote no less a symphonist than it
:45:04. > :45:14.Sir Edward Elgar. Brahms has secured himself a place in the
:45:14. > :45:15.
:45:15. > :45:22.musical panoply as one of the three Bs alongside Beethoven and Bach.
:45:22. > :45:26.Averill performance of serenity, a kind of gentle poetry. This great
:45:26. > :45:34.conductor, Bernard Haitink, has been conducting Brahms for over 50
:45:34. > :45:39.years. He summed up his sense of Brahms remarkably well. He said he
:45:39. > :45:49.thought that Brahms thought with his heart and fault with his brain.
:45:49. > :46:19.
:46:19. > :46:23.I am delighted to be joined now by the composer and a professor from
:46:23. > :46:30.Oxford, Robert Saxton. Can you tell a bit about what was going on at
:46:30. > :46:35.the time of this symphony? Yes, this was Brahms at the age of 50.
:46:35. > :46:39.He lived until he was just over 60. At that time, Gladstone was the
:46:39. > :46:46.prime minister in England, Freud had just qualified in Vienna as a
:46:46. > :46:50.neurologist, where Brahms lived. The internal combustion engine had
:46:50. > :46:54.just been invented and tried out! It is interesting because you
:46:54. > :46:58.mentioned Edward Elgar. He conducted at Symphony a lot. I
:46:58. > :47:03.think that looking forwards, we will look backwards later, the
:47:03. > :47:08.opening of that symphony is related to the opening of Elgar's second
:47:08. > :47:14.and the tune in the last movement is very similar. What other music
:47:14. > :47:19.was Brahms listening to in 1880? Brahms was listening to a
:47:19. > :47:25.relatively new opera, Carmen. Didn't he claimed to have seen it
:47:25. > :47:32.21 times? I did not know that! He loved Carmen, he loved Johann
:47:32. > :47:40.Strauss, he famously wrote on a copy of the Blue Danube, alas, not
:47:40. > :47:48.by Johann Strauss! The fact that died the year after that Symphony
:47:48. > :47:53.was written. He knew Liszt's music. Marlowe was beginning to get going
:47:53. > :47:59.at that time and Brahms knew him. The what do you think about the
:47:59. > :48:08.Chamber Orchestra of Europe? 12 first violins, ten-seconds, eight
:48:08. > :48:12.viola. It is a real challenge. This is more Brahms's size, like? Yes,
:48:12. > :48:17.in fact the orchestra that gave the first performance of the Fourth
:48:17. > :48:22.Symphony some years later than this had only 49 players and apparently,
:48:22. > :48:27.Brahms said he liked that size of orchestra. Although of course he
:48:27. > :48:31.did have bigger orchestras available but he seemed to like his
:48:31. > :48:37.chamber music quality, which certainly came out there. It seems
:48:37. > :48:42.to me that is what Bernard Haitink is so hot on. A kind of restraint.
:48:42. > :48:46.Never pent up but it is letting the music speak. Those two middle
:48:46. > :48:51.movements, they had such space and light to them, where another
:48:51. > :48:55.conductor, probably myself included, might have gone for the hot spots
:48:55. > :49:01.slightly hard to! It is almost as if he is playing them to himself on
:49:01. > :49:05.the piano, which one suspects is a Brahms first brought them up, as
:49:05. > :49:10.inspirations and improvisations which he then worked out formally
:49:10. > :49:16.on his long and famous walks around Vienna, and yet that did come
:49:16. > :49:21.across. Thank you. Time to join our a backstage with the musicians.
:49:21. > :49:26.eye am joined by William Conway, principal cello, and one of the
:49:26. > :49:33.newer members of the orchestra, Thomas Djupsjobacka.
:49:33. > :49:38.William, how did the orchestra come into existence? In the late 70s, a
:49:38. > :49:44.large group of the founding members became members of the European
:49:44. > :49:47.Community's Youth Orchestra, as it was known then, now the European
:49:47. > :49:51.Community's Union Orchestra, and we met to get there for the first time
:49:51. > :49:57.and we had such a wonderful time playing together and discovering
:49:57. > :50:01.this new world, you know, speaking personally as a teenager coming
:50:01. > :50:05.from Glasgow where I was born to suddenly be in the European
:50:05. > :50:13.orchestra with one of the world's greatest conductors standing in
:50:13. > :50:19.front of you, and many European musicians around me, it was really
:50:19. > :50:23.a huge thing and at that time a lot of the European ideas were just in
:50:24. > :50:28.their early stages, of the orchestras and even in politics.
:50:28. > :50:31.you all carried on and you formed the Chamber Orchestra. What would
:50:31. > :50:37.you say is its special characteristic? The special
:50:37. > :50:44.characteristic of this orchestra is its listening quality. Through the
:50:44. > :50:48.music, Willie Thorne to one another and also, -- We listen to one
:50:48. > :50:52.another and we are a very listening orchestra with one another and from
:50:52. > :50:55.a musical point of view, that listening enables us to take in a
:50:55. > :51:01.lot of good information from the good people around us and we build
:51:01. > :51:08.on that. Thomas, you weren't there 30 years ago. What brought you to
:51:08. > :51:18.the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. first touch on it was recordings. I
:51:18. > :51:19.
:51:20. > :51:24.loved the quality of the orchestra and the Chamber music quality, and
:51:24. > :51:29.I thought it would be amazing to be a part of it and luckily enough it
:51:29. > :51:36.happen. Many of them are all do their new. Is there a sense of
:51:36. > :51:41.mentoring was mad I would say there is a sense of being a colleague.
:51:41. > :51:44.are a different age but we learn from each other. The younger
:51:44. > :51:47.members like me learn from the wealth of experience and the
:51:47. > :51:52.quality of the playing that is around me in every position of the
:51:53. > :51:58.orchestra. Obviously I learned from that. I hope there is some kind of
:51:58. > :52:03.exchange that every member brings his own and her own energy and play
:52:03. > :52:08.in quality and style to the group. Would you agreed? Absolutely. We
:52:08. > :52:15.learn just as much from the new people coming in. It is like a bank
:52:15. > :52:19.that we all seeded to and take from. Thank you both very much.
:52:19. > :52:24.An army of generals, you might say. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe
:52:24. > :52:28.often play without a conductor but when they play with a conductor,
:52:28. > :52:32.they certainly call on the very best. Speaking of which, I caught
:52:32. > :52:36.up with Bernard Haitink, who has along and distinguished
:52:36. > :52:41.relationship with the COE, and I are asked him what the attraction
:52:41. > :52:49.was. It is quite a problem for me to be honest. I love the music
:52:49. > :52:59.making so much that I am getting a bit suspicious of all these
:52:59. > :53:05.official, big symphony orchestras. It sounds... It is strange. But
:53:05. > :53:10.there is this incredible alertness... Sometimes I compare it
:53:10. > :53:16.to a huge ocean steamer, who goes a long and then you want to change
:53:16. > :53:22.course, you have to in advance make sure, and these are like a
:53:22. > :53:28.speedboat! The commitment is enormous. They do it for love. Of
:53:28. > :53:33.course I'm afraid they don't earn that much. It is a labour of love.
:53:33. > :53:42.It is fantastic. Do you think there is something special about playing
:53:42. > :53:50.Brahms with an orchestra of this size? Yes. Very special. Because
:53:50. > :53:56.Brahms had most of his works, I even think the symphonies, perform
:53:56. > :54:00.exactly the same as we have, so that was also at food for thought.
:54:00. > :54:05.The speedboat analogy is quite interesting. Because it is a small
:54:05. > :54:10.orchestra, there is more of a sense that everybody is playing like a
:54:10. > :54:14.soloist, less room for cover. but they also have to be an
:54:14. > :54:19.ensemble and they have very good years, they are excellent musicians.
:54:19. > :54:24.I don't want to say anything about official symphony orchestras. They
:54:24. > :54:28.are also excellent musicians. But the Chamber Orchestra has more
:54:28. > :54:37.chance to hear each other, to relate to each other, because they
:54:37. > :54:41.are small. They can make a lot of noise! If necessary! That's for
:54:41. > :54:48.sure! Can you remember the first time you heard Brahms was mad that
:54:48. > :54:53.is a long time ago. -- can you remember the first time you heard
:54:53. > :55:03.Brahms? That is a long time ago. I am such an old time. I even think
:55:03. > :55:05.
:55:05. > :55:10.it was during that time that... I was born in Amsterdam, I am Dutch...
:55:10. > :55:14.That during the occupation time, we were not allowed to listen to the
:55:14. > :55:24.radio but we all had of course a little radio, and at that time, I
:55:24. > :55:26.
:55:26. > :55:32.think it was 1944, imagine! I heard one of my first Proms, and I even
:55:32. > :55:42.think I headed debut of Handel. I think it was Brahms. I even think
:55:42. > :55:47.that I heard Beethoven's 7th. And I listened to a lot of Proms, it was
:55:47. > :55:55.totally different to what it is nowadays. On Monday night you had
:55:55. > :56:01.Wagner, Basil Cameron, then you had Bach and Handel, it was an
:56:01. > :56:05.incredible institution, and here we are. When you open a school of
:56:05. > :56:09.Brahms, you have been conducting Brahms to the most extraordinary
:56:09. > :56:13.degree for so many years, how much do you feel you have been on a
:56:13. > :56:17.constant personal odyssey of his music in terms of your
:56:17. > :56:26.interpretation? How different is the Third Symphony now than it
:56:26. > :56:32.was...? The wide interpretation should be commit in a way, -- the
:56:32. > :56:38.word "interpretation" should be forbidden. People say, that is my
:56:38. > :56:42.interpretation. I get seasick in my stomach. We have these wonderful
:56:42. > :56:50.scores and we have to try to make it work and we have wonderful
:56:50. > :56:57.musicians, so what is the problem? Just make music. Use the wonderful
:56:57. > :57:06.score which Brahms and which all composers have written. With Brahms,
:57:06. > :57:13.it is a special thing because very often, one confuses Brahms we've
:57:13. > :57:22.blown up, -- with being blown up but when you look at it, it is so
:57:22. > :57:28.often little piano, intermittent, he was a man in between colours.
:57:28. > :57:31.That fascinates me. I am very intrigued, the make-up of this
:57:31. > :57:35.programme is quite unconventional in the sense that we have the Third
:57:35. > :57:44.Symphony and after the interval we have the First Piano Concerto. It
:57:44. > :57:47.was written 25 years earlier. Why that way round? Well, in a way, I
:57:47. > :57:52.am the same sort of conductor as many of my colleagues who do not
:57:52. > :57:56.want to finish with the Third Symphony because it finishes piano.
:57:56. > :58:00.I have done it very often in that way because I am not too upset
:58:00. > :58:04.about it but the First Piano Concerto is so enormously dramatic
:58:04. > :58:09.and extrovert, much more than the Third Symphony, that I thought,
:58:09. > :58:13.well, maybe that is better. One of the thing I most enjoyed in the
:58:13. > :58:17.West has this morning was the extraordinary synergy and rapport
:58:17. > :58:22.between you and the orchestra but also between you, the orchestra and
:58:22. > :58:27.Emanuel Ax. Can you tell me about your relationship with it? I love
:58:27. > :58:33.him, he is a wonderful artist. Above that, a wonderful friend. We
:58:33. > :58:42.know each other for such a long time. I always have good memories,
:58:42. > :58:46.are always good memories of his playing, his musicians ship.
:58:46. > :58:54.Sometimes he drives me mad. He is so humble, he always says before we
:58:54. > :58:58.go on stage "will we still be friends afterwards?". He is a
:58:58. > :59:02.wonderful person. A wonderful musician. And he loves to work with
:59:02. > :59:08.musicians. Bernard Haitink speaking after
:59:08. > :59:13.rehearsals this morning. With me backstage are Kate Gould, cellist,
:59:13. > :59:18.and Matthew Wilkie, principal bassoon. The COE has got a very
:59:18. > :59:22.special relationship with Bernard Haitink. How did that come about?
:59:22. > :59:28.believe we started our relationship in Switzerland, where we are lucky
:59:28. > :59:32.to go regularly as an orchestra, and Bernard Haitink came along to
:59:32. > :59:36.one of the concerts and apparently, so the story goes, according to the
:59:36. > :59:40.man himself, he always thought he might come to the Chamber Orchestra
:59:40. > :59:44.later on in his career and he decided to dedicate a lot of his
:59:44. > :59:50.time to us so we have put a relationship over the last three,
:59:50. > :59:55.four years, and we feel very privileged to do so. The
:59:55. > :59:58.relationship musically consists of such a beautiful balance. He is
:59:58. > :00:03.extremely powerful musician and yet he lets the orchestra speak so it
:00:03. > :00:08.works very well with our Orchestra, which has a lot of personalities in
:00:08. > :00:12.it and some help there is a sense of being natural between us.
:00:12. > :00:16.Matthew, UWE Australian. You come all the way from Australia to play
:00:16. > :00:22.with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. -- you are from Australia.
:00:22. > :00:27.How does it work? I have been in orchestra for 25 years. I used to
:00:27. > :00:32.live in Germany. I left Germany ten years ago to join the Sydney
:00:32. > :00:35.Symphony but I just couldn't bear to cut the ties with the Chamber
:00:35. > :00:40.Orchestra, so I managed to work it out with the orchestra in Sydney
:00:40. > :00:46.and I get on that plane five times a year and every time I get on the
:00:46. > :00:51.plane I think, why am I doing this?! I don't know, as soon as I
:00:51. > :00:55.arrive and start working, it is just fantastic. Of course it is a
:00:55. > :01:00.good orchestra but there is something very special about it. I
:01:00. > :01:05.don't know. It reminds me of, it is an orchestra but it is like a
:01:05. > :01:09.string quartet, the way it works, and musically we are so flexible
:01:09. > :01:13.and the way we do things together without having to say anything. It
:01:14. > :01:20.is a great attack -- attraction. What is it like working with a
:01:20. > :01:26.soloist, Emanuel Ax? Different. It has got very organic. Suddenly
:01:26. > :01:29.there is a very charismatic individual thrown into the mix! We
:01:29. > :01:35.obviously have to be on tenterhooks listening to him, following the
:01:35. > :01:38.conductor, it is a chain of command, but actually, Emmanuel AX is so
:01:38. > :01:42.natural and he listens so much to the orchestra, like the conductor
:01:42. > :01:52.does, that it all works extremely organically. And the body language
:01:52. > :01:58.It feels like a partnership that was meant to happen. Thank you both
:01:58. > :02:03.very much indeed. Thank you. With me, Robert Saxton, we are about to
:02:03. > :02:09.hear the voice of the 25 year-old Brahms, already very successful and
:02:09. > :02:15.no beard. What do you think we can hear from his personality in this?
:02:15. > :02:20.The First Piano Concerto is a heritage of Beethoven, looking
:02:20. > :02:25.backwards and also the Third Piano Concerto and the recent tragedy of
:02:25. > :02:34.Robert Schumann's attempts suicide and death and bronze's conflict of
:02:34. > :02:40.his feelings about claret, he was much older. We're talking about
:02:40. > :02:46.those almost a posing personality traits. The fact that there is his
:02:46. > :02:51.deep sense of drama but also very intensely sensitive? What makes
:02:51. > :02:56.Brahms so expressive is that rather like Mozart, it is tightly formal
:02:56. > :03:00.and classical in some senses but bursting at the seams because he
:03:00. > :03:05.suppresses and one feels that very strongly in this piano concerto,
:03:05. > :03:09.which did not start life as a piano concerto. This is Brahms at a
:03:09. > :03:15.different period, this is Brahms before the internal combustion
:03:15. > :03:19.engine, this is Brahms in what we would feel as mid-Victorian world.
:03:19. > :03:24.The symphonies, the later Victorian type, they appeared after German
:03:24. > :03:28.unity and this is Brahms of the mid- 19th century, as the young
:03:28. > :03:33.Turk, if you like. And as a young Turk, he had a formidable
:03:33. > :03:41.reputation as a pianist, this was his first solo performance?
:03:41. > :03:44.first two performances and in Leipzig, he was a pest. Why? People
:03:44. > :03:51.cannot understand that, it was described as a symphony with a
:03:51. > :03:54.piano and it was not what they expected. And where the piano was
:03:54. > :03:58.virtuoso, the dense musical argument of this work and the way
:03:58. > :04:02.the piano interacts with the orchestra, and the material, they
:04:02. > :04:07.find it very difficult to come to terms with. To some extent, have
:04:07. > :04:13.they forgotten bit of an's legacy because this piece is very tautly
:04:13. > :04:17.argued as a symphonic argument? is easy to forget in the days of
:04:17. > :04:21.the CD and the iPod, people did not hear these pieces very often so
:04:21. > :04:26.they probably had one or two earlier Piano concerto's and this
:04:26. > :04:30.enormous scale, this first movement, 25 minutes, it must have been
:04:30. > :04:34.incomprehensible. We are talking about the age of the Super virtuoso
:04:34. > :04:40.and many of them stocking the stages of Europe at the time and
:04:41. > :04:46.Brahms included, what evidence is there in this piece of that? First
:04:46. > :04:51.of all, you have to have a very big reach to play Brahms, the chords
:04:51. > :04:57.are a very large. It is also the range of colour that you need. The
:04:57. > :05:00.spacing in relation to that and the Shia grasp of the material, the
:05:00. > :05:03.piano consent with material that the orchestra has not played and
:05:03. > :05:08.then does all sorts of things in relation to the orchestra and
:05:08. > :05:12.Brahms is one of these players who played very much as a composer
:05:12. > :05:21.rather than a pianist and although he was a very great pianist, he was
:05:21. > :05:26.not a virtuoso in that tradition. Thank you so very much. Emmanuel AX,