BBC Proms Masterworks: Stravinsky and Lutoslawski BBC Proms

Tonight's Prom is played by the youngest

but best rehearsed orchestra of the whole Prom season.

They are the largest orchestral collective you will see

at the Royal Albert Hall this summer, yet they are playing

a programme which is as much about individual virtuosity

as it is about what they can do together.

We're going to see the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain,

all of them 18 years old or younger,

conducted by a youthful British conductor too, Edward Gardner.

Now, there's nowhere to hide in the music they are playing tonight -

in Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra,

in Sergei Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto,

or in Igor Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka -

there's no symphonic padding to disguise your mistakes.

Instead, this music has to be a blaze of colour, of character,

of drama, so the pressure is on.

These musicians have got to make every moment count and communicate.

Tonight, these masterworks, then, are in the hands

of the country's finest, youngest musicians at the Proms.

Petrushka, the story of a puppet show whose three characters

are magicked into life during a Russian carnival, a Shrovetide fair.

The Moor, The Ballerina and Petrushka himself are involved

in a surreal love triangle, which is told in four scenes or tableaux.

And Stravinsky throws down the gauntlet to his musicians.

Tonight, the 160 musicians

of the National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain,

to really get inside the drama of this music,

to become everything from dancing bears to strange magicians,

from hurdy-gurdy players to Russian folk singers.

And each section of this orchestra is essential to the story.

Woodwinds. First tableau, Russian Dance.

Strings. Fourth tableau, Dance of the Gypsies.

Trumpets. The very end, The Ghost of Petrushka.

We'll hear the original opulently scored version

when it was premiered by the Ballets Russes in Paris

and these players on the Royal Albert Hall stage behind me

have got to give every ounce of their technique and their musicality

to this crazy, colourful cavalcade,

to quicken the inanimate puppet of the score,

black dots of notes on the page, into living, breathing experience.

You know, the very last thing that tonight's conductor,

That's the challenge that they are going to take up right now.

APPLAUSE

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CHEERING

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Something happened in that performance.

I mean, the spectacular colour in Petrushka,

all that... the Shrovetide fair,

even the kind of cartoon-like comedy that Stravinsky creates,

but it wasn't just spectacular, it wasn't just some technicolour riot.

The colour became emotion, you care about what happened to Petrushka.

And that's the thing - the fate of this puppet

becomes more real than real life.

It matters more than the human world around it.

There's more Russian music

in the piece we are going to hear next tonight,

a piece that was premiered just a year after Petrushka, in 1912.

It was composed by a prodigiously gifted 21-year-old student

at the St Petersburg Conservatory.

Sergei Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto,

a piece he originally wrote for himself to perform.

It's going to be played tonight by the pianist Louis Schwizgebel,

who is making his very first appearance here at the BBC Proms

with this ferociously difficult music.

Now, Louis started to explain this concerto to me

by thinking about another composer.

For example, the beginning, those chords. I mean...

It reminds a little bit of the...

It's almost like a part of the Tchaikovsky concerto.

The Tchaikovsky First Piano... HE HUMS THE TUNE

Yeah. So, what does he do, how does the tune continue?

Well, the Tchaikovsky...

but it's basically a bit like that.

So, what were the most challenging things, then, in learning this piece

for, after all, what is your Proms debut this evening?

I think one of the most challenging things

is right after this huge start,

you have the orchestra, like a very small introduction,

and then suddenly they completely stop

and the piano is playing almost a kind of exercise, like you have...

You are alone and you have these...these scales

It... You feel suddenly naked and you have to...

to play this without pedals and it's very... It's also very funny.

So there's all this virtuosity in this piece,

but there's also a big range of colour.

I mean, the lyrical music in the middle section, for example.

Yes, absolutely.

The second movement is absolutely amazing, it's very lyrical,

but also magical and, I would say, phantasmagoric.

When you have the piano come in...

All those colours and it's absolutely...

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CHEERING

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Well, the Prommers wanted more and Louis Schwizgebel gave them it.

His encore was Liszt's arrangement,

really an explosion of Schubert's song Standchen.

And just as Prokofiev's Concerto inspired four sequels,

he wrote five piano concertos in all,

you can't help feeling that Louis Schwizgebel's Proms debut

could be the first of many appearances

here at the Royal Albert Hall.

Well, from that concerto for solo piano

to a concerto for all the players -

Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra,

written in 1954.

Now, this is music of hugely colouristic and communicative power.

It's full of, em, earworm-like tunes,

melodies that are instantly indelible

and it is propelled by a driving musical momentum.

From the very first music you hear menacing rhythms

all the way through to its triumphant conclusion.

The last and biggest of its three movements is the hardest to play,

the most varied, the most challenging and demanding

for this orchestra and their conductor,

so how will Ed Gardner

and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain players

navigate this tumultuous music?

Well, I went to Birmingham to rehearsals.

In this piece, once you have the balance,

there is this common momentum about it.

I mean, shall I show you a little bit of...? Yeah, sure.

I mean, I would... I would say that the sort of...

the lace around the music, the interest,

is often not in the melody.

Just take the trombones and the clarinet

and the flutes and piccolos at 87.

And listen to what these high winds have

because that gives the music its energy.

That's it. And I think when you hear this stuff here,

with all this massive choir of flutes and piccolos and clarinets,

that's when it starts to really sound like Lutoslawski,

sound like that extraordinary colour.

I mean, it's incredibly loud here,

being right in the middle of the woodwind with the brass behind.

Is it question of how you all hear each other?

I mean, is that something you're trying to get this orchestra to do?

Yes, I would say yes.

There is a very big difference between doing this Lutoslawski piece,

which is fundamentally quite rhythmic right the way through,

and something like Petrushka at the other end of our programme,

which is all about listening to solos

and finding as much chamber music as possible.

Let's put this together and if we can hear all that detail,

suddenly the music starts to fizz and feel a lot more interesting.

Let's take it from two before 86

and I threatened the violas they'd have to stand in the concert

unless this is really fortissimo, so, Tom, you can be the judge. TOM LAUGHS

But all strings, you need to feel like the fortissimo

is soloistic and really strong.

Yeah, yeah, good, excellent. And it feels...

Once you start to hear the detail around the melody,

the music kind of opens out and you can really feel...

He's like no-one else. I mean, his writing.

The amount of colour he manages to put in every bar is miraculous.

I heard the violas too, by the way. It was fantastic. It was epic...

Yeah, but you are quite close, you're quite close to them.

Even stronger! True, no, fair enough, fair enough, but no...

Play for me, brass, horns, drums, timps.

And play with sharper accents, not softer, but sharper accents

and a bit more release

and then we hear the wildness of these half beats.

Five before 91, everyone.

Yeah. And you feel you've got to an end of a piece

and then we start another journey, ramping up to another coda.

It's endless, this last movement.

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's a vindication of what you can do with absolute kind of un...

totally distilled, concentrated energy that all of the players have,

absolutely every individual, all 150,

however many there were up there, giving absolutely everything.

The effect, musically speaking, not just as a show,

not just that as an exploration of colour but as an explosion of...

well, a kind of joy in the Royal Albert Hall.

That... That's what that performance was.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUES