Friday Night at the Proms: Barenboim Conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra BBC Proms

Hello. There are a few orchestras in the world

which carry an added edge of excitement before them

wherever they go. This is most definitely one,

and that's on top of being a first-class musical ensemble.

Whether in Berlin, or at their base in Seville, in Ramallah,

or here, at the Royal Albert Hall,

a visit by Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan

is not just a concert, it's an event.

And with a unique mix of mostly Israeli and Arab musicians,

it's an orchestra with a mission,

and there are always plenty ready to listen.

The touring party hit Europe following a sold-out 11-day festival

in Barenboim's birthplace, Buenos Aires.

They astounded the Proms audiences here two years ago

with an epic exploration of Beethoven's symphony cycle,

audaciously matched with works by the modernist maestro Pierre Boulez.

This time round, however,

Barenboim brings a programme featuring Spanish-flavoured music

from the French master orchestrator Maurice Ravel,

ranging from the poised beauty of his Pavane For A Dead Princess

to the mesmerising rhythms of his hugely popular Bolero.

So a main course of Ravel coming up later,

but before that, there's an appetiser.

A century and a half earlier than Ravel,

a certain Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was looking to Spain

as the setting for what would become one of his best-loved operas.

Written during a period of prolific creativity,

The Marriage Of Figaro was premiered in Vienna in May 1786,

and it was an immediate success around Europe.

Wayne, the overture's five minutes long,

but it packs a punch, doesn't it?

It does. I mean, it's a great opener

because it's very fast, it's vivacious,

it's got a lot of energy, and it's difficult to play -

the first seven bars are really, really technically difficult,

just to get it all together. So, erm, it requires

a lot of concentration. PROMMERS SHOUT

The Prommers having their say right now!

-Difficult for a conductor, especially.

-It is.

CHEERING I mean, I've conducted the work

and again, it's a question of

whether one decides to do it in one or in two, that's a technical thing.

But...again, it's the same concentration.

And also, as an organist I played it too,

so different things involved there.

Mozart, of course, describes the opera as "une folle journee",

a day of madness, which kind of sets it up.

You know, the scene in Seville

at the palace of the lecherous Count Almaviva.

The head servant there, Figaro,

with his fiancee, Susanna, and the Countess,

they conspire to expose the Count's scheming ways.

And their aim, of course, is to set him back onto the path of true love.

The overture, interestingly and unusually,

doesn't quote from the rest of the opera.

That is unusual, isn't it?

A little bit, but when you consider something like West Side Story,

for instance, Leonard Bernstein,

you hear thematic music from the show straightaway.

Here, the overture was a kind of afterthought,

and it doesn't actually contain any thematic music whatsoever.

And you say an afterthought because he dashed it off really quickly.

Yes, and just because in the heat of the moment

he had to write something, so this is what he wrote.

APPLAUSE

CHEERING

And just listen to that roar filling the Royal Albert Hall,

as the man himself - conductor, maestro Daniel Barenboim -

joins the orchestra on stage.

An orchestra he co-founded with the late Edward Said,

the Palestinian intellectual,

and Barenboim's very close friend.

APPLAUSE

OVERTURE STARTS

APPLAUSE

The overture from Mozart's opera The Marriage Of Figaro.

Played there by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,

conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Led by his son, Michael Barenboim, the younger son.

APPLAUSE

At the same time as composing The Marriage Of Figaro,

Mozart was also writing two of his greatest piano concertos,

his A major and C minor.

It does occur to me, Wayne,

that we have, in this room,

at least three pianist conductors.

We've got Mozart, we've got Barenboim and we've got you.

We certainly have two -

because one isn't here! However...

But Mozart, yes, of course, certainly conducted from the fortepiano,

which was very traditional then.

And I think it's certainly common for conductors who conduct this opera

to do the same thing.

I've certainly seen Barenboim conduct from the piano here,

in the past.

This time at the Proms,

Daniel Barenboim brings four Spanish-infused works by Ravel -

Rapsodie espagnole, Alborada,

Pavane, and the famous Bolero.

But he'll be presenting them in an intriguing new way.

I spoke to him earlier today.

The great advantage for me and the orchestra

is to be able to play these four pieces together.

Because there isn't, in the repertoire,

a great Spanish symphony.

But the journey from the Spanish Rhapsody,

through Alborada, the Pavane,

and then end with the Bolero,

is a wonderful journey.

And I find the Bolero, when played on its own,

is a wonderful piece, as we all know,

but I think one can say, without being offensive,

rather primitive, how it is written.

But the minute you put that in this context,

as the last movement

of this huge symphony,

it assumes another dimension.

And the repetitiousness

of the rhythm

adds...energy to it

which it doesn't always have when it is on its own.

It's a French composer's view of Spain -

Ravel's mother was from the Basque region.

What does that do to the music, do you think?

Is there something very specific

about the fact that his perspective was what it was?

Well, you know, Spanish music is not only one thing.

It's not only one colour.

Like German music is also not.

Look at the difference between Schumann and Brahms, Wagner.

It's all different.

In Spanish music you have

slightly arid Spanish music, I think,

represented by Manuel de Falla very much.

But you have also voluptuous,

more 19th-century Romanticism

of Albeniz,

especially his great masterpiece Iberia.

And also, more interested

in colour than de Falla.

De Falla may be more interested

in the rhythmical aspect of Spanish feeling of music.

And Ravel has a bit of both.

I think Ravel, in his way,

is somewhere between de Falla and Albeniz.

I think that if de Falla had written these pieces,

they wouldn't have had this colour.

A fair number of the members of the orchestra are Spanish.

Is that directly related to the fact that

you're based in Seville, or...?

We always had a small number, it's not such a large number,

it's about 15%.

And when our new academy,

the Barenboim Said Academy will open in Berlin in 2016,

then we will have people from the region

and people from the European Union.

Tell me about the importance of this orchestra for you now.

It has always been the dream of you and your friend,

the late Edward Said,

to try and do something innovative

with a cultural exchange.

This year was, of course, particularly difficult,

with the war in Gaza.

It obviously...

Each side was concerned with its own suffering,

and that was not easy.

But the mere fact

that in time of war

not one member of the orchestra

cancelled his coming here,

and wanted to come and play with the other,

because they feel a sense that...

the orchestra is an example,

through music,

of what the future could look like.

Because in front of the Ravel pieces,

which we are playing now, we are all equal.

We have the same rights,

AND we have the same responsibilities.

And it is a great joy for me,

and a source of pride,

that when there is a solo by the first flute,

who is an Israeli,

I see all the Arabs

wishing him well, trying to support him, musically.

And a few bars later,

the clarinet has a solo,

and he's Palestinian,

and all the Israelis are with him on that.

And I believe this happens only in this orchestra.

It's just a few minutes now

before Daniel Barenboim returns to the podium

and then we get to revel in Ravel.

Right now, here's a word from our very own Prom queen, Katie Derham.

On Proms Extra tomorrow,

we're going to be talking about the Prom that you're watching right now,

as well as our usual round-up of Proms highlights.

I'm going to be joined on the sofa by not one, not two,

but three conductors,

and by you as well at home, I hope.

So that's Proms Extra, tomorrow on BBC Two at seven o'clock.

So, looking ahead to the rest of tonight's programme,

it's all about Ravel. A man of contradictions.

A dandy who strove to earn his place in the serious world of music,

but who didn't often pass up an opportunity

to defy the establishment.

In the same way, his music is also full of contrasts.

At times hedonistic and voluptuous,

at others, formal and restrained.

Tonight's pieces embody both -

from the mechanical rhythm of Bolero

to the sensual, sinewy melody of Pavane For A Dead Princess.

Ravel's work reflects and draws upon a broad range of musical cultures,

but perhaps none more so than that of Spain.

But while they all draw on Spanish musical traditions,

these four pieces are, in fact, a continuation

of a rich French century-long tradition,

a musical obsession with Spain embodied in dance.

Our first three pieces,

Rapsodie espagnole, Alborada del gracioso,

and Pavane For A Dead Princess,

were written before Ravel had even visited Spain.

APPLAUSE

Wayne, how does Ravel go about creating and evoking Spain,

or at least his version of it, through musical means?

Well, if we look at Alborada,

which, of course, is really based on fandango guitar style,

the orchestration of this is very, very exacting,

certainly for the strings, for the brass, and the woodwind.

So we've got a lot of repeated notes.

And, of course, the strings have got a lot of very fast pizzicati,

so it's very, very evocative.

One of the contradictions -

we were speaking about contradictions in Ravel -

was that he seemed to crave recognition,

and yet he resented his own success at times.

I mean, Pavane, which we're going to hear later on,

is an example - major international success with amateur pianists,

which seemed to really upset him.

And likewise with Bolero, I suppose -

instant blockbuster hit worldwide,

much to his own bewilderment, in fact.

He called it "orchestral tissue without music".

Have you conducted it, and what approach would you take

to making it relevant in a different way?

I've conducted it, and the way I like to think about it,

and for the orchestra, to think of it like a jazz improvisation.

And the way that the side drum, of course, keeps the rhythm going

all the way through the piece,

when the flute actually makes the first entry,

in a way the orchestral musicians

like to recreate and to improvise around it.

But yet, keep it in the structure,

so that the whole piece feels like an improvisation.

And what about rehearsing?

Well, rehearsing it, I tend not to do too much with it,

because it's like an improvisation

and, in a way, this is a piece that really only works in performance.

APPLAUSE

Daniel Barenboim getting another big reception

as he makes his way back

to conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

in four Ravel pieces based upon Spanish dances.

Kicking off with the composer's first major orchestral work,

Rapsodie espagnole.

It starts in the stillness of a Spanish night.

APPLAUSE

The sounds of a Spanish fiesta

close Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole.

Next up, here's Alborada,

which Ravel suggested very roughly translates as

"morning song of the clown".

APPLAUSE

Ravel's free and sensual Alborada.

The strings evoking the Spanish guitar.

Fiendishly difficult to play.

Next up, Pavane for a Dead Princess,

written in 1899 and Ravel's first work to make a long-term impact.

Simple but evocative - Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess.

It is a dance, not a funeral march,

and Ravel once castigated a pianist who played it very slowly.

"Don't forget that it's a pavane for a dead princess

"and not a dead pavane for a princess," he said.

And now for the big finish.

MUSIC: "Bolero" by Ravel

MUSIC ENDS, CHEERING

No-one had written a long-haul crescendo quite like that before.

CHEERING CONTINUES

Maurice Ravel's Bolero comes to its stuttering end!

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim.

Do you know, almost at the beginning,

he put his conductor's baton away

and he was just standing back, leaning against the podium

and it was only about two minutes in that he started to use his hands.

HUGE CHEER

I mean, it's a piece which really doesn't need to be conducted.

That's the whole point about it. It just sort of evolved.

It's a very difficult piece to rehearse, for that reason,

because, you know, the performance is going to take on

a different shape anyway, so one has to just feel the moment.

Daniel Barenboim calling individual members of the orchestra to stand.

The snare drum player, of course, is central to that piece,

came to the front of the orchestra.

CHEERING CONTINUES

-Are you aware that there's another Bolero?

-Is there?

-Yup.

Well, the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote a piece

called Bolerish to the same kind of structure,

the same amount of bars, different themes,

but very, very interesting. You need to check it out.

The audience here at the Royal Albert Hall

just absolutely loving this.

FEET STAMPING

APPLAUSE AND STAMPING INTENSIFIES

CHEERING

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

MUSIC: "Entr'acte - Act Four" from Carmen by Georges Bizet

MUSIC ENDS

MUSIC: "Entr'acte - Act Three" from Carmen by Bizet

APPLAUSE

CHEERING

MUSIC: "Entr'acte - Act Two" from Carmen by Bizet

ORCHESTRA: # C'est fini! #

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING

MUSIC: "Prelude" from Carmen by Bizet

AUDIENCE CHEERS AND CLAPS ALONG

CLAPPING DIES DOWN

AUDIENCE CLAPS ALONG AGAIN

CLAPPING DIES DOWN AGAIN

MUSIC: "Toreador Song" from Carmen by Bizet

CHORUS BEGINS, AUDIENCE CLAPS ALONG

CLAPPING DIES DOWN

MUSIC: "Prelude" from Carmen by Bizet

AUDIENCE CLAPS ALONG

MUSIC REACHES A CRESCENDO AND ENDS

HUGE CHEER

What an extraordinary showman the maestro is.

Those encores, real crowd pleasers,

from Carmen Suite No. 1, Excerpts from Bizet's Carmen.

Extraordinary that he just gestured that he was going off to sleep

-and the orchestra just played themselves.

-They are amazing!

I mean, just think that a young orchestra like this

really producing such quality

-and energy and passion from their music playing.

-And such engagement

with the audience as well. I mean, that's what's extraordinary.

You really get a sense every time Barenboim brings this orchestra here

-that he loves being here...

-CHEERING

..and the Proms audience love having them here.

-There's no question of a doubt about that.

-And he's back!

We came back a few days ago from Argentina,

where we had our own festival there for ten days.

And we had a wonderful time.

The Argentinians, of course, thought we went there to play for them.

LAUGHTER

Whereas, in fact, we went there to learn tango.

LAUGHTER

And we learned one tango, which has been a favourite of mine

for many years, and I'm very proud

that this completely Argentine-less orchestra...

LAUGHTER

..can play it so idiomatically.

It is called El Firulete.

SOME CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You know?

One of the people who knows it, do you know what it means?

-WOMAN: No.

-No.

LAUGHTER

Because it's very difficult to translate.

Firulete in Argentinian slang is something like...

something ornamental and flamboyant at the same time.

Ornamental flamboyance.

This is, of course, not a good translation,

but this is the nearest I can come to translate it.

And it was arranged for wind, brass and percussion

by a wonderful Argentinian musician whom I have known since my childhood

and his name is Jose Carli.

SOME PEOPLE WHOOP

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "El Firulete" by Mariano Mores

MUSIC ENDS, CHEERING

That was tango El Firulete. You can really hear

their enjoyment, can't you? I mean, I just loved that.

-I just wanted to get up and dance. Didn't you, Wayne?

-Yeah.

SHE LAUGHS It's amazing, actually.

Great arrangement, just to hear two sections of the orchestra,

or three sections of the orchestra, really.

-Fantastic, and hardly conducted.

-Yeah. Again, hardly conducted.

You could see his enjoyment, his physical movement,

that wasn't conducting, but just enjoying the music.

Yeah, just let them get on with it. Fantastic.

Well, that just about wraps things up here tonight.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim also performed

the UK premieres of new pieces by Kareem Roustom and Ayal Adler,

and you can watch them as part of the BBC iPlayer collection

of New Works from the Proms.

CHEERING CONTINUES

And next Friday, things are a little bit different

as we'll have a double helping of Proms here on BBC Four.

First, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis,

conducted by John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir.

And then, there'll be a live late-night Prom

with Paloma Faith and the Guy Barker Orchestra.

In the meantime, don't forget to catch Katie Derham and Proms Extra

on BBC Two tomorrow at seven.

From all of us here at the Royal Albert Hall,

-thanks very much for watching. Good night.

-Good night.