BBC Proms Masterworks: Mozart and Beethoven BBC Proms

Symphony and Mozart's Requiem are tonight's indulgence. In the

death-haunted tunes in the final unfinished work. Think again, and

listen again, because this is music of shock, of revelation, of terror

and of experimental expressive extramity. Or at least it ought to

be in the hands of the performers we are going to hear tonight, the

Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Donald Runnicles the conductor.

So, Beethoven's fourth first. This B flat major symphony is often vend --

undervalued between the third and the fifth. How will tonight's music

make it as energetic and visionary as I think it should be? I spoke to

the leader of the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and to tonight's

conductor, Donald Runnicles. I never approach it thinking I have done it

six times and the seventh time I will slow up there and do this

faster or slower, like any great work of art you try to dig deeper

and just find the essence. Laura, what are the chances for you, what

is the essence for you? As a string player, because we are often

imitating wonderful single wind lines and the amazing slow movement

is a wonderful flute melody which we play on the first violins to emulate

it. And it is played with such immaculate line and poise. It is a

challenge to get a large force of people to do that, especially for

our orchestra which is often playing strong, rich textures, it is a real

challenge. But I think everyone is loving it, it is incredibly

inventive, the more you delve the more you find. Something that was

said about the slow movement which points to the extramity which

perhaps we don't often think about in connection with this symphony, he

described it as if it was the archangel Michael contemplating men

collie the Cosmos, do you feel it like that? I don't think I have the

nerve to begin that movement now. Thank you. Thank you Tom. We will

start it without you, don't worry. I think Berl iOS e, the guy was

constantly high, he was always smoking something, so he came out

with the most picturesque and dramatic explanations for pieces of

music. Where there is, jesting aside, there is an essence of truth

there. You feel as if so often in these movements you are coming in on

the middle of the movement, there is not a beginning. It began a long,

long time ago. We have opened the door and come into this remarkable

world, and even though it is the fourth symphony, the ninth symphony

is lurking already. Where do you hear that? I hear it in the opening,

the very opening, there is this feeling of if Beethoven had written

a work called The Creation, I think that's how his creation would have

begun. There is a feeling at the these mists that are grey and themes

appearing and disappearing, then, of course, there is this feeling from

darkness to night leading into the allegro. I know it well, it is like

watching the San Francisco fog burn off. The day starts grey and you

think this will never burn off and then it does and you feel as if each

day you are experiencing the colour blue for the first time. Well that

is an Analogy to what happens in this remarkable introduction.

That's a performance to Scotch literally the idea that is the

Cinderella symphony in Beethoven's canon. It looks forward to even the

ninth symphony as we were saying before the performance, there are

things that happen in that piece that happen only in that symphony.

The churning dissonance where you feel the strings are fighting each

other and moments in the slow and first movement too. There is a

harmonic thing that happens, the music seems to go down and down into

the bowels of the earth and there is an aftershock and some of the

sparist and most orchesteral rising Beethoven ever achieved. This isn't

a piece that matters because it is about something else or because it

is going somewhere else, it is simply completely itself. The next

and final piece on tonight's programme, in more ways than one is

Mozart Requiem, we are also going to hear the massed voices of the

National Youth Choir of Scotland and four world class British soloists.

And it is not just vocal solos either, instrumental ones too are

really important in this piece. Becky Smith is the orchestra's

second trombone player. The movement is manic and fast and loud, it

finishing abruptly and then it is silence and then you have to start.

So that's quite challenging! You have got the instrument with you

now? I have. We are surrounded by the Proms queue. They could be very

lucky if you were going to play us, or give us a sneak preview. OK.

Shall I do it? I will give it a go. A round of applause everyone for

Becky! That was the trombone solo from the tuba from Requiem,

consoling music that comes after the lashing hellish strokes. That is a

musical fragment that comes from a bigger fragment, the music that

Mozart actually managed to finish of the Requiem, which isn't actually

that much. After his death on the fifth December 1791 his widow needed

to get the Requiem completed, and the task fell to Souzmeyer, we won't

hear that version, which is still the one most often performed.

Instead Donald Runnicles has chosen the version, The Completion by

Robert D Levin. It is a journey, there is still a feeling from the

beginning of the work to the end of this work, each of us performing or

listening to it has been taken on an important journey, this is the world

of Don Giovanni, his finest opera. You have this picture of the one

that comes in and shakes Don Giovanni's hand and goodbye. I liked

film Amadeus, I hope it was like that. I love a good conspiracy

theory. But I think more importantly that that is once again something

that is always very successfully managed to capture, is this dark

world, the specter which is always there no matter how beautiful or

certificate Rhone or tranquil. All of a sudden, isn't that Mozart's

genius, within a couple of bars you are suddenly reminded there is a

dark side to it all. There is not a last word on this because the last

word would have been with the composer who sadly left before it

was ended. Not the last word but at least the next word on Mozart

Requiem, at the Royal Albert Hall. Tonight's singers, the vociferous

voices of the National Youth Choir from Scotland aren't standing up on

the stage thinking about the competing versions of Mozart's

Requiem, they want to take ounce the journey of Mozart and everyone

else's music. Nanograms about the This piece really is, not just a

meditation, but it is a confrontation with death, with

mortality, with Mozart's own and the rest of us too. And tonight,

watching those young people go absolutely defiantly and fearlessly

through the veil of Mozart's music with such complete conviction. It

was shatteringly powerful that. It will stay with me a long time.