0:00:02 > 0:00:05Welcome to a century - and more - of musical shocks of the new.
0:00:05 > 0:00:07Over the next few Sundays at the Proms,
0:00:07 > 0:00:10we journey into the sounds and furies of the modern era,
0:00:10 > 0:00:14experiencing how music shouts down tyranny in Shostakovich's 11th Symphony
0:00:14 > 0:00:18and expresses the beginning of a new world order
0:00:18 > 0:00:20in Elgar, Britten and Tippett.
0:00:20 > 0:00:22We'll hear how it transcends conflict
0:00:22 > 0:00:25in Polish composer Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto
0:00:25 > 0:00:27and dances with the Grim Reaper
0:00:27 > 0:00:30in a world premiere from British composer Thomas Ades.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33And throughout all of the concerts each Sunday, I'll give you
0:00:33 > 0:00:37my take on how music has responded to, reflected
0:00:37 > 0:00:39and shaped the tragedies and triumphs
0:00:39 > 0:00:42of the most turbulent 100 years in human history -
0:00:42 > 0:00:45from 1913 - until right now.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16We start with the single piece of music
0:01:16 > 0:01:19that changed everything in the 20th century,
0:01:19 > 0:01:22Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25Francois Xavier-Roth and his orchestra Les Siecles
0:01:25 > 0:01:28are doing something that's never been done before at the Proms.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33They're going to play Stravinsky's original score
0:01:33 > 0:01:37on instruments they were written for when the curtain went up that night
0:01:37 > 0:01:42at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, in Paris at the end of May 1913.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46It was a night at the ballet that turned into a near riot.
0:01:46 > 0:01:48MUSIC: "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky
0:01:53 > 0:01:55It means that we'll hear the Rite's rawness,
0:01:55 > 0:01:59its earthiness and its violence as we hardly ever do today,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02because the Rite just has to be shocking.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05If it doesn't shake you to the core, if it doesn't make you feel
0:02:05 > 0:02:07that the guts of the Earth are opening up,
0:02:07 > 0:02:11or at least that the Royal Albert Hall is being immolated in orchestral violence
0:02:11 > 0:02:14then the performers just ain't doing it right.
0:02:14 > 0:02:17"RITE OF SPRING" CONTINUES OVER VOLCANIC RUMBLING
0:02:22 > 0:02:26The Rite makes noises that music had never dared to before,
0:02:26 > 0:02:31like the extreme and high bassoon song that the whole work opens with
0:02:31 > 0:02:33or the voluptuous overload of the music
0:02:33 > 0:02:36at the start of the second part, The Sacrifice,
0:02:36 > 0:02:41and there's the sheer, rhythmic power that pulverises you
0:02:41 > 0:02:43at the end of both halves of the piece.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46It pulverises the performers, too.
0:02:46 > 0:02:48In 35 minutes, the Rite tells a story in which
0:02:48 > 0:02:52a girl is chosen to dance herself to death
0:02:52 > 0:02:55to appease the Russian gods of the seasons, the pagan gods.
0:03:01 > 0:03:04That story was originally and shockingly choreographed
0:03:04 > 0:03:06by Vaslav Nijinsky.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11The mayhem the 1913 wasn't just in the stalls, it was on stage too.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14Nijinsky had come up with a new kind of choreographic language.
0:03:14 > 0:03:16Instead of graceful prima ballerinas,
0:03:16 > 0:03:20he came up instead with earthy, clod-hopping primitives.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24And dancing the lead role of The Chosen One at the first performance
0:03:24 > 0:03:27was an English teenager called Lydia Sokolova.
0:03:27 > 0:03:31She'd only joined Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes the month before
0:03:31 > 0:03:35and she was thrown in when another dancer had fallen ill.
0:03:35 > 0:03:38Also dancing that opening night was the great Marie Rambert.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42They both spoke to the BBC half a century later.
0:03:42 > 0:03:47Now it was a very, very difficult thing for people of those days,
0:03:47 > 0:03:51dancers of those days, who had been used to dancing
0:03:51 > 0:03:58to Chopin or Ravel, easy things, melodious music,
0:03:58 > 0:04:01to suddenly have thrust upon them
0:04:01 > 0:04:08this gigantic work, a modern thing that was 25 years in advance
0:04:08 > 0:04:10of what they had been used to.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16Nijinsky insisted absolutely that every note of the music
0:04:16 > 0:04:20should be done by a step or a movement of the arms and so on.
0:04:20 > 0:04:26In the end I think he was right, because the music was so powerful,
0:04:26 > 0:04:31and its rhythmic impact so tremendous
0:04:31 > 0:04:36that when it was all done by a company of magnificent dancers - as they were -
0:04:36 > 0:04:41that practically doubled the impact of what Stravinsky had written.
0:04:41 > 0:04:45But it was received with absolute uproar, wasn't it?
0:04:45 > 0:04:50They had prepared in Paris for a riot, you know,
0:04:50 > 0:04:53like they do today, but in a different sphere.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57They had got themselves all ready.
0:04:57 > 0:05:01They didn't even let the music be played for the overture.
0:05:01 > 0:05:07As soon as it was known that the conductor was there, the uproar began.
0:05:07 > 0:05:09Diaghilev in advance said, "Whatever happens,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13"the conductor must go on playing and we go on dancing."
0:05:13 > 0:05:17It was terribly difficult to hear the orchestra
0:05:17 > 0:05:19because of all that noise in the audience,
0:05:19 > 0:05:25until Nijinsky stood in the wings, counting out 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2,
0:05:25 > 0:05:261, 2, 3.
0:05:26 > 0:05:31ORCHESTRAL MUSIC TAKES UP JAGGED "1, 2, 3, 1, 2" RHYTHM
0:05:32 > 0:05:35It was so exhausting,
0:05:35 > 0:05:38so utterly and completely exhausting.
0:05:38 > 0:05:43And when I collapsed at the end I collapsed really and truly.
0:05:47 > 0:05:50The dancers pushed themselves to almost inhuman lengths
0:05:50 > 0:05:54to enact the gripping paradox at the heart of The Rite's drama
0:05:54 > 0:05:57which is at once bodily and mechanical.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01The music becomes an automaton in its final thrilling few minutes
0:06:01 > 0:06:04as The Chosen One dances to her annihilation.
0:06:04 > 0:06:10Stravinsky makes a sequence of dozens of small musical cogs mesh together,
0:06:10 > 0:06:14that create a gigantic orchestral sacrifice machine that,
0:06:14 > 0:06:17even as a concert piece, consumes everything in its path -
0:06:17 > 0:06:21the girl, the orchestra, us listeners.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24"RITE OF SPRING" CONTINUES OVER BOOMING OF HEAVY ARTILLERY
0:06:30 > 0:06:34So it's a prophetic, ultra-modern vision of mechanisation,
0:06:34 > 0:06:36on the eve of the First World War.
0:06:36 > 0:06:40But it's also an evocation of a primordial primitivism
0:06:40 > 0:06:42- like the painterly return-to-roots that Picasso
0:06:42 > 0:06:45and Cezanne were up to at a similar time in Paris.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50I think Stravinsky's music is more powerful than the pictures,
0:06:50 > 0:06:54because it turns that aesthetic knife-edge of primitivist modernism
0:06:54 > 0:06:59into a real-life sonic, musical, and above all bodily experience
0:06:59 > 0:07:01that lacerates and pummels us,
0:07:01 > 0:07:06and ultimately extinguishes that sacrificial victim, The Chosen One.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09So here it is - Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring,
0:07:09 > 0:07:13performed by Les Siecles, conducted by Francois-Xavier Roth.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19You can follow my guide to The Rite of Spring live on Twitter, live at -
0:07:19 > 0:07:22See you on the other side of The Sacrifice.
0:41:32 > 0:41:33APPLAUSE
0:41:41 > 0:41:46Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49Francois-Xavier Roth conducted his orchestra, Les Siecles,
0:41:49 > 0:41:53on instruments from the time of The Rite's seismic premiere,
0:41:53 > 0:41:55100 ago.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59We survived - just! - even as the sacrificial victim is murdered
0:41:59 > 0:42:01by the inescapable power
0:42:01 > 0:42:04of Stravinsky's mechanistic yet earthy music.
0:42:17 > 0:42:20Not quite the doodlings of a madman, I promise -
0:42:20 > 0:42:22this is my version of a drawing
0:42:22 > 0:42:25that Igor Stravinsky himself made in the late 1950s
0:42:25 > 0:42:28when his friend and amanuensis, Robert Craft, asked him
0:42:28 > 0:42:30what his music might look like.
0:42:32 > 0:42:37So you see...points, lines, intersections, blocks, repetitions.
0:42:37 > 0:42:38All right, it's only wee,
0:42:38 > 0:42:40but it's like a micro-realisation
0:42:40 > 0:42:43of the savage geometries of The Rite.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47Look, see how the line wraps around itself and crosses itself out?
0:42:47 > 0:42:50It's almost as if it's dancing its way to oblivion.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53Stravinsky's Rite sounds unprecedented.
0:42:53 > 0:42:55But that's not really true.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58It's rooted most obviously in its immediate predecessors -
0:42:58 > 0:43:01Stravinsky's two previous ballets, The Firebird and Petrushka,
0:43:01 > 0:43:04written, like The Rite Of Spring,
0:43:04 > 0:43:06for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09But it's also part of a much longer story
0:43:09 > 0:43:12of exotic music for extraordinary bodies
0:43:12 > 0:43:14that premiered on Parisian stages.
0:43:14 > 0:43:17The other half of Francois-Xavier Roth's Prom
0:43:17 > 0:43:18with his orchestra, Les Siecles,
0:43:18 > 0:43:21is a scintillating survey of French ballet music
0:43:21 > 0:43:23from the 17th century to the 19th,
0:43:23 > 0:43:27music by Lully, Rameau, Delibes and Massenet.
0:43:27 > 0:43:31It's all connected, as Francois-Xavier Roth told me.
0:43:31 > 0:43:35This programme is really interesting, because the main theme -
0:43:35 > 0:43:38we just heard Le Sacre Du Printemps -
0:43:38 > 0:43:40the main them is the dance.
0:43:40 > 0:43:44And we, Les Siecles, as a French orchestra,
0:43:44 > 0:43:47for sure, the dance, since Louis XIV,
0:43:47 > 0:43:49is something extremely important,
0:43:49 > 0:43:52extremely noble in the music.
0:43:52 > 0:43:56And one other possible connection across the whole
0:43:56 > 0:43:58of tonight's programme is a sense of exoticism,
0:43:58 > 0:44:02whether it's the dandified gentleman of Lully's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,
0:44:02 > 0:44:06the savages, the wild men, of Les Indes Galantes by Rameau,
0:44:06 > 0:44:11the dancing dolls who come to life in Coppelia, or the Moors of Le Cid,
0:44:11 > 0:44:15does exoticism sort of arc across the whole programme tonight?
0:44:15 > 0:44:16Certainly.
0:44:16 > 0:44:19Certainly there is, and also, I would say,
0:44:19 > 0:44:25this...this passion of the rhythm and this aspect of, I would say,
0:44:25 > 0:44:27super-sophistication of the rhythm.
0:44:27 > 0:44:31You find it so radically in Le Sacre Du Printemps.
0:44:31 > 0:44:34It's also something that...it's like a tsunami with Stravinsky.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38It's more subtle or more...yes, subtle with Lully,
0:44:38 > 0:44:42but it's the same goal - that the rhythm takes you from your seats.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45So with Les Siecles, you're playing instruments of the period.
0:44:45 > 0:44:48Then we've heard more than 100 instruments
0:44:48 > 0:44:49from around about 1913,
0:44:49 > 0:44:51the premiere of The Rite Of Spring,
0:44:51 > 0:44:54music from the 19th century and the Baroque period,
0:44:54 > 0:44:55the Baroque and Classical period too.
0:44:55 > 0:44:58Does that then mean, Francois-Xavier, we've got three...
0:44:58 > 0:45:01really three sets of instruments for this concert?
0:45:01 > 0:45:04Yes. It's a specification of this orchestra
0:45:04 > 0:45:09that we use every right period instruments for every repertoire.
0:45:09 > 0:45:11I love this idea.
0:45:11 > 0:45:13You find the music, the interactions,
0:45:13 > 0:45:16the articulation,
0:45:16 > 0:45:19the general sound envelope completely different
0:45:19 > 0:45:21with the period instruments.
0:45:21 > 0:45:26And that also it is so easy, so...
0:45:26 > 0:45:28obvious to play the music.
0:45:28 > 0:45:31The Les Siecles project isn't just about instruments of the period -
0:45:31 > 0:45:33it's also about conducting of the period.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36When Jean-Baptiste Lully was conducting
0:45:36 > 0:45:39at the Court of the Sun King in the 17th century,
0:45:39 > 0:45:42he used a staff to beat on the ground,
0:45:42 > 0:45:44beat the rhythm on the ground.
0:45:44 > 0:45:47In fact, he did that so vociferously one night, he injured his big toe
0:45:47 > 0:45:51and in fact died from the injury, from the gangrene that resulted.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54So, how far are you taking the period conducting
0:45:54 > 0:45:55with Les Siecles?
0:45:55 > 0:46:00You know, the conductor's job is very new in music history.
0:46:00 > 0:46:05And at the time of Lully and Rameau, the conductor didn't exist.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09It was somebody who did beat,
0:46:09 > 0:46:12to give the rhythm, to give the speed.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15So it's why I have a baton and I beat.
0:46:15 > 0:46:20It gives the right impact, the right energy for the players.
0:46:20 > 0:46:25And when I start to beat, they get ready and then they play.
0:49:26 > 0:49:28GENTLE BEATS
0:57:00 > 0:57:03APPLAUSE
0:57:09 > 0:57:13Music from Lully's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, played by Les Siecles.
0:57:13 > 0:57:17And hopefully you noticed that amazing instrument
0:57:17 > 0:57:20that looks like a hat stand with bells on.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23In French, it's known as the Chapeau Chinois - or Chinese hat -
0:57:23 > 0:57:26and in English, the Jingling Johnny.
0:57:26 > 0:57:29Next up, music from Jean-Phillippe Rameau - Les Indes Galantes.
1:11:19 > 1:11:21APPLAUSE
1:11:29 > 1:11:31The dances of Les Sauvages.
1:11:31 > 1:11:34Rather gallant, chivalrous savages, but exotic wild men
1:11:34 > 1:11:37from the furthest reaches of the Americas nonetheless,
1:11:37 > 1:11:40as imagined by Jean-Phillippe Rameau
1:11:40 > 1:11:43in his 1735 opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes.
1:11:48 > 1:11:52Taking my cue from Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky,
1:11:52 > 1:11:54I've come up with a couple of visual representations
1:11:54 > 1:11:56of the music we've just been hearing.
1:11:56 > 1:11:59For Lully, a 17th-century stick man,
1:11:59 > 1:12:02appropriately perriwigged and in rhetorical pose,
1:12:02 > 1:12:04framed by a knot garden of squares.
1:12:04 > 1:12:06And for the Rameau...
1:12:06 > 1:12:10a savage exotic encased by a French Enlightenment sun.
1:12:10 > 1:12:14Er, maybe I need to go back to drawing school.
1:12:14 > 1:12:17Now, Les Siecles have moved on from the Baroque
1:12:17 > 1:12:20to authentic instruments of a more recent vintage
1:12:20 > 1:12:23for the two suites of 19th-century French ballet music
1:12:23 > 1:12:24that we're going to hear next,
1:12:24 > 1:12:27starting with Coppelia by Leo Delibes.
1:12:27 > 1:12:29Stravinsky wasn't the first
1:12:29 > 1:12:32to come up with a mechanical kind of ballet.
1:12:32 > 1:12:36Coppelia is the story of a workshop of dolls that come to life.
1:12:36 > 1:12:40A young man is so entranced with one of these dancing dolls
1:12:40 > 1:12:43that his real-life lover pretends to be a manikin
1:12:43 > 1:12:45in order to show him the error of his ways.
1:12:45 > 1:12:48Long live the real flesh!
1:12:48 > 1:12:49MUSIC PLAYS
1:12:55 > 1:12:57It's actually pretty creepy when you think about it.
1:12:57 > 1:13:00A kind of 19th-century dream of what happens
1:13:00 > 1:13:03when sex is instrumentalised and when female bodies are reduced
1:13:03 > 1:13:06to inanimate objects seen through the fantasies
1:13:06 > 1:13:09of a weirdo toy-maker turned fetishist.
1:13:09 > 1:13:11But maybe I'm reading too much into it.
1:13:11 > 1:13:14The music, after all is really rather gorgeous,
1:13:14 > 1:13:18even if the tunes themselves are like little repetitive devices
1:13:18 > 1:13:20rather than flesh-and-blood creations.
1:22:16 > 1:22:19APPLAUSE
1:22:19 > 1:22:22Music from Coppelia by Leo Delibes.
1:22:22 > 1:22:25Francois-Xavier Roth conducted his orchestra Les Siecles,
1:22:25 > 1:22:29playing 19th-century instruments, at the Proms.
1:22:31 > 1:22:34The last suite of ballet music we're going to hear
1:22:34 > 1:22:37is from Jules Massenet's 1885 opera Le Cid.
1:22:37 > 1:22:42This is a story of passion, love and war on the Iberian peninsula,
1:22:42 > 1:22:44taking us on a journey into lusty, Latin climes,
1:22:44 > 1:22:49with dances evoking Catalonia, Andalucia and Madrid.
1:22:49 > 1:22:52You'll hear authentically inauthentic castanets,
1:22:52 > 1:22:54drums and dance rhythms.
1:22:57 > 1:23:01That's because Massenet's music is an ersatz vision of Spain
1:23:01 > 1:23:04seen through the eyes of a late 19th-century French composer.
1:23:04 > 1:23:07Spain was the best of all possible places to set your story
1:23:07 > 1:23:10of unbounded passion if you were a French composer like Massenet,
1:23:10 > 1:23:13especially in the wake of Bizet's Carmen,
1:23:13 > 1:23:15which had premiered ten years before in Paris.
1:23:15 > 1:23:19In fact, it was only once the Parisians had had their fill
1:23:19 > 1:23:21of passionate Latins dancing across their stages
1:23:21 > 1:23:24that they were ready for something even more out there,
1:23:24 > 1:23:27even more fantastical, even more exotic -
1:23:27 > 1:23:30the Russians, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.
1:23:30 > 1:23:33But that, as we know, is another story.
1:37:06 > 1:37:10APPLAUSE
1:37:13 > 1:37:15Latin-loving ballet music
1:37:15 > 1:37:19from French composer Jules Massenet's opera Le Cid.
1:37:19 > 1:37:21Francois-Xavier Roth conducted his Les Siecles musicians
1:37:21 > 1:37:23at the Proms.
1:37:23 > 1:37:26Take those rhythms and warp them just a wee bit,
1:37:26 > 1:37:28put those tunes on top of one another
1:37:28 > 1:37:31and mash up the harmonies, and you might just end up
1:37:31 > 1:37:34with something like the music we started with tonight,
1:37:34 > 1:37:36Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring.
1:37:36 > 1:37:38That's just about all for this Sunday.
1:37:38 > 1:37:41The next Prom you can catch on TV is on Thursday on BBC Four.
1:37:41 > 1:37:44As part of the Orchestras of the World series,
1:37:44 > 1:37:47Antonio Pappano conducts the Santa Cecilia Orchestra
1:37:47 > 1:37:50in a programme of Mozart, Schumann and Rachmaninov.
1:37:50 > 1:37:53And every Prom is live on Radio 3.
1:37:56 > 1:37:59Next Sunday, one of the highlights of the whole Proms season for me -
1:37:59 > 1:38:02the world premiere of Thomas Ades's Totentanz,
1:38:02 > 1:38:04his Dance Of Death,
1:38:04 > 1:38:06which the brilliant composer himself will conduct.
1:38:06 > 1:38:09I'll be talking to Ades throughout the programme,
1:38:09 > 1:38:12in which he'll also conduct the dark, dazzling drama of music
1:38:12 > 1:38:15by two composers whose centenaries we're celebrating this year -
1:38:15 > 1:38:18Witold Lutoslawski and Benjamin Britten.
1:38:18 > 1:38:19Join me next Sunday
1:38:19 > 1:38:23for more of the sounds and furies of Modern Times.
1:38:35 > 1:38:39Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd