Proms on Four: Friday Night at the Proms - Bach Oratorios BBC Proms

It might be a little warm here in the Royal Albert Hall

but if there's one composer guaranteed instantly to

revive your sense of serenity and composure, it's JS Bach.

Tonight's conductor John Eliot Gardiner has made the music of Bach

- with all its complexity and crystalline beauty -

his life's work.

This evening, he's joined here at the Proms by his band of fellow

musical-explorers - the players of the English Baroque Soloists

and singers of the Monteverdi Choir.

It was just over a decade ago that these musicians together

went on a Bach Pilgrimage that took them to 14 countries worldwide.

There, they performed all of Bach's cantatas - pieces of sacred music,

each written for a specific date in the Lutheran church calendar.

And that completely immersive experience,

along with the 28 - yes, count them -

28 albums they recorded on that trip, means that we will hear

Bach performed tonight by some of the most knowledgeable,

responsive and passionate musicians on the planet.

On the bill this evening we've two of Bach's greatest sacred works -

his Ascension Oratorio and, before that, the Easter Oratorio.

Earlier today, I talked to Sir John Eliot Gardiner

about the music he's decided to bring to this year's Proms.

I think they're fantastic

because they've got just the right balance of narrative and meditation.

And also, untrammelled hi-jinx and joy.

Bach's life in Leipzig was pretty ghastly.

And yet he wrote this prodigiously uplifting music

that detoxifies halls, other music, it's there

and it's feel-good music in the best sense.

Can you put your finger on what it does, how it restores equilibrium?

Because there is an almost kind of bodily effect of listening to Bach.

Yeah, there is. And I think it's all to do with proportion

and mathematical structure.

I don't subscribe to the idea that he actually sort of ruled his paper and

worked out exactly the number of bars in a Fibonacci series or something.

I think he had an incredibly natural and intuitive sense of

balance and proportion.

And he also had an incredibly attractive sense of buoyancy,

rhythmic buoyancy and elasticity.

So there's... So much of his music is dance-related,

either very slow or very quick, or somewhere in between.

-But it's got a dance basis.

-You sort of almost bodily do want to move.

-You want to be tapping your toes.

-Absolutely.

I wonder how much people are going to find it difficult at

the Royal Albert Hall to just kind of sit and be still and be quiet.

But why should they?

I'm puzzled that people should think that's the correct way

of listening to music.

A few years ago, we did a Prom of Rameau and I had

the people from Soweto, the Buskaid, who love playing Rameau and singing.

And they, those South Africans,

they see no division between singing, playing and dancing.

It's all...part of the same experience to them.

And we in the West, we're much more separated and everything divided, but

there is a natural feeling of wanting to dance to this music and why not?

-It-it-it has huge...

-If they're all dancing in the gallery tonight...

-Good.

-..it's only you to blame.

-Fine. It's fine by me.

APPLAUSE

So, for the Easter Oratorio by JS Bach,

here comes conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner to join the

Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, and the solo singers -

Hannah Morrison the soprano, Meg Bragle, alto,

Nicholas Mulroy the tenor, and Peter Harvey, bass.

MUSIC: "Easter Oratorio" by JS Bach

APPLAUSE

The Easter Oratorio by JS Bach, performed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner

with the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists

here at the Proms.

We also heard Hannah Morrison, Meg Bragle, Nicholas Mulroy,

and Peter Harvey, the soloists.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Fantastic performances, I thought.

Not only from the solo singers, but some wonderful solo playing.

Particularly from the winds - flutes, oboes.

Applause for principal flute Rachel Beckett.

Beautiful obbligato playing from her.

Principal oboe there, Michael Niesemann.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Amazing, I think, to think the Easter Oratorio,

this is its very first complete performance here at the Proms.

Henry Wood played snippets of it here in the 1930s.

Malcolm Sargent did a few bits and bobs in the '50s.

And that was it, until now.

So, we've had the first day of Easter,

next is the story of the Ascension.

And it is just phenomenally uplifting music - quite literally.

Bach's Oratorio taking a story of hope and belief,

that I think reaches all of us - whether we believe or not -

and setting it to music that pulses with spiritual yearning.

There are trumpet-fuelled choruses,

and plenty of exquisite solo singing in between.

Well, in my conversation with tonight's conductor,

John Eliot Gardiner, earlier,

I asked him what he thought the secret was

to the drama of this music.

Well, I think it's to do with somebody who has a strong

sense of theatre but never wrote an opera.

Somebody who has a tremendously vivid sense of narrative, of colour,

but also of the complexity of human life.

And even though he's writing these pieces

ostensibly for the glory of God

and for the edification of his congregation,

and I don't belittle that in any sense at all, I think

there's also a different agenda, which is

to expose and underline the human condition, as it were.

And I think that's one of the reasons that his music is so poignant -

he is suggesting the fragility of belief, of behaviour even.

I mean, so many of his cantatas are full of wrath and anger

and disbelief, and then in a trice

he can change to something that's quite

parodistic and sardonic and as though he's pulling your leg.

I think that what's so appealing about his music

after all this period of time,

is its humanity, is the fact that he shows vulnerability and he shows

that humans are flawed individuals and that there is a way through.

There is a way out of it.

And he does it with so much persuasion, by musical

and rhetorical means, that you're drawn into it.

You're here tonight with your band, your players, your singers.

Can you just give us a sense of...I mean,

will there be a moment for you tonight where you just sort of

are suddenly in that wash of sound, where you're not

quite in the moment of conducting and you're just there as a listener?

-Does that happen to you?

-Very much so. Very much so.

I mean, when we come together,

there's a tremendous sense of complicity

and of camaraderie, really.

And a sense that the music we're privileged to play is the best.

And is just wonderfully refreshing and wonderfully uplifting.

And so there is a deep sense of joy and delight in the moment.

And I... Yes, of course I'm there to give the impartation

and suggest ways through, and a lot of it goes on in rehearsal.

But they're so committed.

Yes, and I feel totally enveloped by the experience of being

part of the team. It's a great joy.

APPLAUSE

So for the second ecstatic dose of Bach,

from surely some of the greatest exponents of this music -

coming on stage, Sir John Eliot Gardiner

to join the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists

in the Ascension Oratorio by JS Bach.

MUSIC: "Ascension Oratorio" by JS Bach

APPLAUSE

The Ascension Oratorio by JS Bach,

performed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir,

and the English Baroque Soloists -

led in that performance by Kati Debretzeni.

The soloists tonight -

Meg Bragle, the alto.

The soprano, Hannah Morrison.

APPLAUSE

Nicholas Mulroy, tenor.

And Peter Harvey, the bass.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

David Watkin, continuo cello there.

All of the players of the English Baroque Soloists now on their feet.

These performers brought here by a man who has simply

steeped himself in the life, the music, in the world of JS Bach.

John Eliot Gardiner gave the first performance of this piece

at the Proms in 1971.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Some stupendous choral singing tonight from the Monteverdi Choir.

They and the English Baroque Soloists performing in 1971

and then 1985, and bringing this piece back to the Proms in 2013.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

And that is the end of this very special Friday Night at the Proms

from the Royal Albert Hall.

Next Friday night, Nigel Kennedy will be here on BBC Four

to perform one of his signature pieces,

giving Vivaldi's Four Seasons

an intriguing individual twist of his own.

In the meantime,

tomorrow on BBC Two Katie Derham's here with Proms Extra - a glance

at the week's musical events, with some special guests and highlights.

And a reminder that you can hear all the proms live on BBC Radio 3.

But for now, from me, Suzy Klein, it's good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd