Britten at the Proms BBC Proms

All season the BBC Proms have been celebrating

the life of Benjamin Britten.

Born 100 years ago

and one of the most significant British

composers of the 20th century.

Today we are going to hear one of his master works,

the Violin Concerto.

Britten wrote it while in his 20s and then spent three decades

tinkering with it and revising it before, finally, he was happy.

This evening it will be played by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen

who joins the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Paavo Jarvi in a programme

that also includes music by one of Britten's favourite

composers, Hector Berlioz.

The concert ends with a thrilling French work premiered

here in London,

Saint-Seans Organ Symphony.

Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, the son of a dentist.

He spent most of his life living and working by the Suffolk coastline.

And his music is inextricably linked with the vast skies and

moody seas that surrounded him.

Yehudi Menuhin once said, "If wind and water could write music,

"it would sound like Ben's."

But we start this evening with a work written in honour of Britten.

For the Estonian composer Arvo Part Britten's death in 1976 was

a bleak moment.

He'd just discovered him

and what he called, "The unusual purity of his music."

For a long time Part had wanted to meet Britten.

Now he knew that would never happen.

His response was to write his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten,

which opens with a bell struck three times.

Perhaps a funeral bell tolling news of the composer's death.

In the 1960s Part had seen his work criticised by the Estonian

state and as a result he'd barely written any

music in the decade before he composed the cantus.

Tonight's conductor, fellow Estonian Paavo Jarvi explained to me earlier

how Britten's death helped Part find his musical voice once again.

It was one big piece. The one piece that sort of made him known.

And what an odd title to a piece.

And especially coming from a composer from the Soviet Block...

country but, yes, it seemed to inspire him

but I think there might have been a little different connection, as well.

Because Britten was very close to Rostropovich, for example,

and to the musical life of Russia.

So there is a certain connection to the Soviet artist

and I have a feeling that somewhere in the subtext of this title there is

a little connection and a little hint to that connection, as well.

It seems to me Arvo Part represents the musical soul of Estonia and he's

such a representative of its extraordinary history over the years.

He is our greatest composer.

He certainly is somebody who is like a guardian saint of our music.

He's somebody who everybody, literally every person in Estonia

if Arvo walks on the street, everybody knows who Arvo Part is.

And also for a small country, we have 1.5 million people,

the role models are extremely important because...

..that's why we have all these composers

because Arvo Part has told directly or indirectly to

so many people in Estonia that if I can do it, you can do it.

And that's like Bjorn Borg was the reason why every tennis

player in Sweden thinks that they can be world champions

because one can and needs a kind of role model in a small country.

APPLAUSE

And here is Paavo Jarvi to conduct the

Orchestre de Paris in Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.

MUSIC: "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten" - Arvo Part

APPLAUSE

Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.

Written immediately after the English composer's death in 197 .

Played by the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Paavo Jarvi.

Well, just as Arvo Part was denied the chance of meeting Britten,

so Britten's own dreams of studying with Alban Berg were shattered

when the Austrian composer died suddenly in 1935.

The following year Britten heard the posthumous premier of

Berg's Violin Concerto in Barcelona and became almost obsessed with the piece.

Which he said, "Moved me like no other music."

Two years later Britten began work on his own Violin Concerto

which was premiered in New York in 1940 when he was just 26 years old.

For Britten the work was problematic.

He returned to it again and again.

Not settling on a final version until 1965.

For many years the concerto was rarely performed.

Some critics dismissed it as uninvolving and slight.

Now it's regarded as one of Britten's master works.

Earlier I spoke to tonight's soloist, the Dutch violinist

Janine Jansen and asked her why this has bee such a neglected work.

Actually I wouldn't know a good answer to that because I think it's a

great piece.

One of the, I would say, masterpieces in the violin concerto repertoire.

I do actually believe that it's been played much more often than it

was maybe 10, 15 years ago even

Because I remember the first time I played it was maybe around 19 9

and then hardly anybody was playing it.

And I was fighting everywhere to get this concerto on the programme.

And I succeeded, which was wonderful. It should be played.

But I know many other people, many colleagues are playing it,

recorded it so it's great.

It's really as it should be.

Britten started writing it when the Spanish Civil War was raging.

He finished it in America after the outbreak of the Second World War.

Politics and current affairs

so inspired Britten in so much of his music.

Do you hear that in the Violin Concerto?

Yeah, very much. Of course '39 it was, yeah, end of the

Spanish Civil War.

There's a lot of...Spanish influences in rhythm.

Little motifs there for sure in the first movement.

And the whole piece is such a..

..emotional struggle also.

There's so much underlying tension in this piece

and it's one big line from beginning to end.

And it ends with this amazing coda which...

I feel it starts as a prayer, quite inward, quite intimate prayer.

And it becomes this enormous scream out of despair and that's...

When I play it I feel so emotional and so empty afterwards

but also so full with all the emotions.

It's really, extremely strong for the player, for all the musicians

but also for an audience to listen to this.

Somehow you don't want to hear anything after that.

Which, of course, there will be

something to listen to afterwards.

But I think the intermission will be very good to reflect and...

It's quite impressive.

APPLAUSE

Janine Jansen making her way now onto the Royal Albert Hall stage with

Paavo Jarvi to join the

Orchestre de Paris in this centenary

performance of Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto.

MUSIC: "Violin Concerto" - Benjamin Britten

APPLAUSE

CHEERING

What a well made argument for the greatness of Benjamin Britten's

Violin Concerto.

Janine Jansen...and the

Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Jarvi

here at the Proms in this, Britten's centenary year.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

"She plays it like it is.

"She is a person of genuine warmth, genuine feeling, genuine expression."

So says Paavo Jarvi about Janine Jansen.

"There is nothing fake, nothing manufactured

"and prepared about her performance."

Jansen was born into a musical family in the Netherlands.

As a child she sang in the choir her father conducted.

Began violin lessons when she was six.

Her two brothers are also musicians

and she's been playing chamber music from an early age.

An experience she says has very much shaped her as a musician.

Ten years ago she was a member of the Radio 3

New Generation Artist Scheme.

And it was then that she made her Proms debut.

Now recognised as one of the world's great violinists.

Well, the Royal Albert Hall is not the only Proms venue this year

At nearby Cadogan Hall there have been a whole series of Proms

chamber music concerts.

Some of which you will be able to see here on BBC Four early

next year. But before then a preview of what we can look forward to.

We're going to hear Britten's first canticle, My Beloved is Mine.

He wrote five canticles and while he didn't use the form in a strictly

liturgical sense, these are works with deeply religious sensibilities.

The first canticle was written in memory of Dick Sheppard, former

vicar of St Martin in the Fields and founder of the Peace Pledge Union.

A cause that the pacifist Britten was deeply committed to.

The text is a poem by the early 17th century poet Francis Quarles.

Inspired by a quotation from the Book of Solomon.

Tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Imogen Cooper perform the work.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "Canticle I" - Benjamin Britten

# E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks

# That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams

# And having ranged and search'd a thousand nooks

# Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames

# Where in a greater current they conjoin

# So I my best-beloved's am

# So he is mine

# E'en so we met and after long pursuit

# E'en so we joined

# We both became entire

# No need for either to renew a suit

# For I was flax and he was flames of fire

# Our firm-united souls did more than twine

# So I my best-beloved's am

# So he is mine

# If all those glittering Monarchs that command

# The servile quarters of this earthly ball

# Should tender in exchange their shares of land

# I would not change my fortunes for them all

# Their wealth is but a counter to my coin

# The world's but theirs

# But my beloved's mine.

# Nor time, nor place, nor chance, nor death can bow

# My least desires, can bow my least desires

# Unto the least remove

# Nor time, nor place, nor chance, nor death

# Can bow my least desires unto the least remove

# He's firmly mine by oath; I his by vow

# He's mine by faith and I am his by love

# He's mine by water; I am his by wine

# Thus I my best-beloved's am

# Thus he is mine

# Thus he is mine

# He is my Altar

# I, his Holy Place

# I am his guest and he, my living food

# I'm his by penitence

# He mine by grace

# I'm his by purchase

# He is mine by blood

# He's my supporting elm and I his vine

# Thus I my best beloved's am

# Thus he is mine

# He gives me wealth

# I give him all my vows

# I give him songs

# He gives me length of days

# With wreaths of grace he crowns my longing brows

# And I his temples with a crown of praise

# Which he accepts an everlasting sign

# That I my best-beloved's am

# That he is mine

# That I my best-beloved's am

# That he is mine

# That he is mine. #

APPLAUSE

James Gilchrist and Imogen Cooper

performing Benjamin Britten's Canticle Number 1,

My Beloved Is Mine,

part of the Proms Chamber Music season at the Cadogan Hall.

Well, back here at the Royal Albert Hall, the Orchestre de Paris

and conductor Paavo Jarvi are about to start the second half

of tonight's Prom with a work by the French composer Hector Berlioz.

Throughout his life, Britten was a great fan of Berlioz.

He was just 18 when he bought the score of the Symphony Fantastique.

"What power and imagination," he wrote of Berlioz's requiem.

And near the end of his life he asked a celebrated English

mezzo-soprano, Dame Janet Baker

to sing a programme of Berlioz's songs at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Given Britten's love of Berlioz and his lifelong love of the sea,

which is a recurring theme throughout his music,

it's highly appropriate that next we're going to hear Berlioz's

exuberant overture Le Corsaire

The music reflects the play of wind and sea

and the exhilaration of what Berlioz described as the

"young, light-hearted masters of the waves."

Pirates. The overture celebrates the life of the privateer,

a figure that appealed to Berlioz's romantic outlook -

men who, though disapproved of,

were free from the cares and conventions of bourgeois society.

APPLAUSE

Paavo Jarvi returns to the stage

to conduct the Orchestre de Paris in Berlioz's overture Le Corsaire.

MUSIC: Overture Le Corsaire by Hector Berlioz

APPLAUSE

Berlioz's overture Le Corsaire

Paavo Jarvi conducting the Orchestre de Paris.

Le Corsaire written in the 1840s and inspired by the Mediterranean,

of Nice, in the south of France,

where Berlioz had gone to relax after an exhausting summer

organising and conducting concerts in Paris.

He was going to name it Le Tour de Nice,

after a tower high up in the hills behind Nice

where he'd written the piece,

but later renamed it Le Corsaire.

Well, this Prom that started with a celebration of Britten's centenary

concludes with a great French work for the Royal Albert Hall organ,

Saint-Saens Third Symphony, with organist Thierry Escaich.

The work is now recognised as one of the pillars

of the French symphonic tradition,

and while tonight it's played by a Parisian orchestra

with a French organist, the symphony was actually commissioned

by a British musical institution, the Philharmonic Society,

now the Royal Philharmonic Society.

It was premiered here in London in 1886

with Saint-Saens himself conducting.

Mixing organ and orchestra is surprisingly challenging.

Are they good bedfellows?

Conductor Paavo Jarvi.

I think they're perfect bedfellows.

It depends on, first of all, how large the bed is.

The second is how it's put together

and if you marry these two forces in the way that Saint-Saens did,

it's a perfect example how it can work.

The misconception about this piece is that it's an organ symphony

meaning it's a symphony with organ as a soloist -

organ is one of the instruments

It's a normal symphony...with organ.

In fact, with organ, it's not a solo.

But if you have an organ anywhere in the vicinity, it becomes a soloist,

it's such a commanding instrument that it becomes something

that you simply cannot ignore.

We're going to hear a genuinely authentic performance tonight.

I hope so. I don't actually know what that really means.

I think the people who will really like to keep an eye

on what's really French about this particular Orchestra,

listen to all the slow, quiet music.

That's where you hear certain things that you might not hear

with other orchestras because this...

And I cannot tell you exactly what it is because I can't tell what it is,

but I always find, "Mm, this is something that I couldn't do.

"I haven't heard another orchestra..."

There is something...the timing and the colour of quiet music.

APPLAUSE

Paavo Jarvi walking on to the stage.

Thierry Escaich already at the organ console

here at the Royal Albert Hall.

Saint-Saens Third Symphony in C minor, the Organ Symphony.

MUSIC: Symphony No. 3 in C minor by Saint-Saens

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Symphony No. 3 in C minor by Saint-Saens

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony.

His third symphony.

Paavo Jarvi conducting the Orchestre de Paris.

Thierry Escaich the organist.

Thierry Escaich one of a new generation

of great French organists.

Organist at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont

in Paris since 1997.

The church where the composer and great organist Maurice Durufle

was resident for many years.

CHEERING

Escaich a composer as well as organist.

Gives recitals that combine repertoire pieces

and his own compositions.

Also specialises in accompanying silent films

on the organ or piano.

Paavo Jarvi has been music director

of the Orchestre de Paris since 2010.

Last year he was awarded

the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters -

great French honour -

for his outstanding contribution to music in France.

Well, the audience here

not going to let the orchestra go home without an encore.

MUSIC: "Jeux D'enfants Movement 2" by Georges Bizet

CHEERING

Paavo Jarvi conducting the Orchestre de Paris

in The Ball from Jeux D'enfants Children's Games by Georges Bizet.

Written originally as a piano duet by Bizet in 1871.

One of 12 pieces, five of which he later orchestrated.

MUSIC: "L'Arlesienne Movement IV by Georges Bizet

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And more Bizet as a second encore here at the Proms

The Farandole from Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite.

A French end to a magnificent musical journey

that started marking the centenary of Benjamin Britten.

A musical entente cordiale at the proms this evening.

And so we reach the end of this concert.

From me, Petroc Trelawny, and all of us here at the Royal Albert Hall,

good night to you.

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