Verdi's Requiem BBC Proms

Welcome back not Royal Albert Hall for one of the real highlight of

the 2011 Proms season, the extraordinary combination of high

operatic theatricality and deep religious faith that is Verdi's

Verdi himself was here at the Royal Albert Hall for the first London

performance of the Requiem. That was in 1875. The work was only a

year old then and had already proven hugely controversial. There

had been outcry over the theatrical nature of many of the sole lows and

he had to get express permission from the archbishop in order to use

women at the Premier of the St Mark's Cathedral in Milan. He got

his way, but the women had to be hidden, wearing black dresses and

mourning veils not to be too much of a distraction. Tonight's opera

is in the hands of a man who is passionate about opera, Semyon

Bychkov conducts. It is every time we come in contact

with it, it is truly heartbreak. We know quite a few things about Verdi

from his own letters and from the way in which he was remembered by

his wife, for example, and people who came in contact with him. We

know him to be - to have been a man of extraordinary qualities of

character, very straight forward, very honest, a little bit severe

and reserved, fiercely devoted to art, to his country, to life. He

was actually a very rare breed of musician. From a technical point of

view, 380 in the choir tonight, you have the BBC Symphony Orchestra,

four soloists - how do you ensure the balance of the piece works so

in music on such a great scale no detail is lost? You know, all music,

in fact, when it is shared by more than, let's say, one individual,

all music becomes chamber music, what we call - whether it is shared

by two artists or shared by 2,000 artists, the principle is exactly

the same: everyone who is involved needs to have a place for

expression and needs to know what the other colleagues are expressing

at the same time, so at any given time, someone will have to have a

priority, and those priorities are shifting from chier to soloist,

from one soloist to another, from orchestra to the chier, so there is

a permanent, almost like a dialogue that is going on, and that comes

almost from familiarity, and familiarity means time of having

lived with this music. What I am particularly grateful for is what I

deserved during the rehearsal period is that all members of the

choir, all members of the orchestra, have exactly the same commitment to

this music. You know, there is nothing more touching than when

everybody seems to be equally committed in the degree of the work

of art that we must interpret. That does not happen every time. It

happens only in the most extraordinary circumstances. This

music speaks to all, and therefore, you see in the eyes - you see it in

the way in which they enunciate the text, in the way in which they

phrase the music with their violins or trumpets or oboes. It doesn't

really matter because those are just the instruments of expression.

You see it in the human beings, and why do they do that? Because ever

since they first heard it, they were so taken by it, and they

identify so deeply with it, its subject and the man behind it.

Semyon Bychkov talking to me earlier. As always, there are full

details of our programme on the website. There you'll also find the

names of every musician on stage tonight, including our 380-strong

granted chorus. It's actually drawn from three separate choirs, who

have been preparing for months ready for tonight's Prom. We have

been catching up with one of those choirs, the BBC Symphony Orchestra

and its chorus master Stephen Going out on to the stage at the

Royal Albert Hall with that huge number of people, 380 people, it's

just going to be exciting. This is just one of the biggest choral

pieces you can be involved in. It's, for me, his opera that ever was.

All the great Requiems, the Brahms, the Verdis, they only wrote one,

but this is masterpiece. It's everything good about what Verdi

has done. Bychkov is a great stickler for detail, so we went

through it bar by bar, so what he gets will be very much to his

specifications. Semyon Bychkov is very clear in his conducting, in

his great care for detail. I shall be part of a huge force working

under a great conductor in a hall at the Proms. That's what it means

for me. The Verdi Requiem is the Requiem with the most, the most

explosion of emotion. It's very much about how the choir presents

the piece and how the emotion of the piece is visible in the pieces

of the choir that'll have an effect on the audience. After all that

preparation, the moment of truth is near. I have temporarily joined the

extraordinary choir performing tonight, 380-strong, singers from

the BBC National Chorus of Wales, the London Philharmonic Choir and

the BBC Symphony Orchestra joined by 80 musicians from the BBC

Symphony Orchestra to bring us the drama, passion and excitement of

Verdi's Requiem. What an extraordinary place this is to

stand as a performer looking out over the great circle of the Royal

Albert Hall packed to capacity this evening - 6,000 people in here,

1200 plus packing into the arena. The orchestra tuning, so I think

it's time I left the stage and left all of these great professionals to

get on with it. Ladies and gentlemen, have a wonderful evening.

Have a great concert. Stephen Jackson, leader of the

BBC's Symphony Orchestra, taking his position on the stage here at

APPLAUSE And here are the soloists, Mariana

Pencheva, Marina Poplavskaya, Joseph Calleja and Ferruccio

Furianetto, and with them, Semyon Bychkov to conduct our mass choral

forces, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and this Proms performance of

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 5007 seconds

So with an almost whispered prayer that represents an individual human

being terrified and trembling before death, Verdi's Requiem

reaches its conclusion. Semyon Bychkov conducted this Proms

performance here at the Royal Albert Hall, where Verdi himself

conducted the UK Premier 136 years ago.

APPLAUSE I went to watch this performance

from right up high in the gallery of the Royal Albert Hall, and what

an amazing Proms night it's been, this great cathedral of music

filled with something highly operatic, but also deeply religious.

Russian soprano Mariana Pencheva, metzo rope ran know Marina

Poplavskaya, Joseph Calleja and Italian bass Ferruccio Furianetto.

What a cheer for the massed choral forces here at the Royal Albert

Hall tonight - 380 of them who have been preparing and drilling

themselves for months ready for tonight's performance. Chorus

masters on the side of the stage there - Stephen Jackson, BBC

Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Partington of the BBC National

Chorus of Wales and Neville Creed, chorus master of the London

Philharmonic Choir. APPLAUSE

Well, that's it tonight from the Royal Albert Hall. Join us here on

BBC Four on Friday when we'll have the fantastic Spaghetti Western

Orchestra, and then next Sunday another chance to catch the Simon