Friday Night at the Proms: Beethoven's Eroica Symphony BBC Proms

Tonight, music that changed the course of history,

Beethoven's epic Eroica, his Third Symphony,

and it promises to be a cracking night.

We are joined this evening by some real Proms favourites -

conductor Sir Mark Elder and his Manchester-based

Halle Orchestra.

Now, Sir Mark Elder is famed for his interpretations of Elgar,

and later, he will be joined by British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote

for Sea Pictures, Elgar's orchestral song-cycle

exploring the fascination and fear inspired by the sea.

But first, Berlioz's swashbuckling Corsair Overture,

depicting the adventures of pirates on the ocean waves.

So, rather a nautical theme to the first half of tonight's concert.

Well, exactly! At the first performance of Sea Pictures,

the singer Dame Clara Butt, she actually dressed as a mermaid!

I hope there won't be any such dressing up

-for tonight's performance.

-Somehow, I doubt it! I do!

So, what or who is a corsair?

Now, a corsair is a private individual or ship

authorised by government to attack a foreign vessel in a time of war.

So, we're talking pirates, essentially.

And Berlioz, this wildly-imaginative French Romantic composer,

that's so up his street. I mean, just to give you a snapshot

of Berlioz as a person, he falls in love with a girl,

they get engaged, she calls it off. He goes after her

dressed in a maid's outfit, with two pistols. He's determined

he's going to kill her and, then, completely changes his mind

and goes on holiday in Nice, instead!

So, this music is saltier than the sea itself! It's a wonderful piece.

And, basically, it was inspired when he stayed in Nice in a tower

and there, he became absolutely fascinated by pirate romance novels.

And he called the piece...

Well, the first title was The Tower Of Nice.

He fiddled around with the title of this piece,

tried all sorts of things, and he eventually settles on the title

of a very famous poem of the day by Lord Byron, The Corsair.

And this poem was so popular, it was read by everybody.

It sold 10,000 copies on the first day of sale.

So, piracy definitely in the air and Berlioz seizes on all of that.

Now, Rodney, as a singer, Berlioz, to me, is always so operatic.

He wrote operas, he wrote a requiem mass.

Even though there is no singer in this,

it's still an intensely theatrical, dramatic piece.

It's great, because he has this ability

to tell a story without words. It opens with this flourish,

it's almost as if a champagne bottle has just been popped open

and it foams everywhere, like waves crashing on the sea.

As we sit bolt upright in our seats for this wonderful voyage,

a voyage of discovery, a voyage of jeopardy, darkness,

but don't forget, it all ends triumphantly.

It's an important piece of concert drama.

-And a great curtain-raiser.

-Exactly.

APPLAUSE

So, buckle your swash. Here comes Sir Mark Elder,

to conduct the Halle in Berlioz's Corsair Overture.

SILENCE DESCENDS

PIECE ENDS

APPLAUSE

Berlioz's Corsair Overture, performed here at the BBC Proms

by the Halle, conducted by Sir Mark Elder

and led tonight by Lyn Fletcher,

a totally fizzing way to open a concert!

Truly virtuosic playing from the Halle.

Tonight's voyage is well and truly under way.

Well, we stick with the maritime theme next

for Elgar's orchestral song-cycle, Sea Pictures.

One of this country's great vocal artists is joining the Halle

this evening and Sir Mark Elder. It's the mezzo-soprano, Alice Coote.

Now, Rodney, Alice has this remarkable voice, doesn't she?

It's amazing and what struck me earlier on

in the rehearsal is that she has such vocal power

and, more importantly, pathos.

I believe that these are essential components to a great show.

And, as a mezzo, what you want is a fantastic bottom to your voice

and she has this incredible low register

and so fruity and rich and amazing up at the top.

It's a voice that goes all the way across.

She just gets a great chance to show it off in this song-cycle.

She does and she really inhabits the role of storyteller.

You can see that in her physicality and, in fact,

she grew up this music. I spoke with her earlier on

and she said that she remembered listening

to Dame Janet Baker's recordings

and this piece of music is really important for her.

As a fan of Elgar, I know you've sung Elgar before, as a soloist

and in the chorus, what is it that he gives a singer to do?

He gives the singer the opportunity to really convey

the emotions to the audience and, obviously,

with the subject matter, these are five wonderful songs

by different poets - one is, in fact, from Melbourne.

So, we get songs from England and down under.

How important is it, as a singer, then, to be singing in English?

It's a gift for Alice Coote, singing in her mother tongue.

And I believe it's the perfect way to communicate,

especially at the Proms.

APPLAUSE

So, here comes the mezzo-soprano, Alice Coote,

to perform Elgar's Sea Pictures, with the Halle,

conducted by Sir Mark Elder.

SILENCE DESCENDS

# Sea-birds are asleep

# The world forgets to weep

# Sea murmurs her soft slumber-song

# On the shadowy sand

# Of this elfin land

# I, the Mother mild

# Hush thee, O my child

# Forget the voices wild!

# Hush thee, O my child

# Hush thee

# Isles in elfin light

# Dream, the rocks and caves

# Lull'd by whispering waves

# Veil their marbles

# Veil their marbles bright

# Foam glimmers faintly white

# Upon the shelly sand

# Of this elfin land

# Sea-sound, like violins

# To slumber woos and wins

# I murmur my soft slumber-song

# My slumber-song

# Leave woes, and wails, and sins

# Ocean's shadowy might

# Breathes good-night

# Good-night

# Leave woes, and wails, and sins

# Good-night

# Good-night

# Good-night

# Good-night

# Good-night

# Good-night. #

SONG ENDS

# Closely let me hold thy hand

# Storms are sweeping sea and land

# Love alone will stand

# Closely cling, for waves beat fast

# Foam-flakes cloud the hurrying blast

# Love alone will last

# Kiss my lips, and softly say

# Joy, sea-swept, may fade today

# Love alone will stay. #

SONG ENDS

# The ship went on with solemn face

# To meet the darkness on the deep

# The solemn ship went onward

# I bowed down weary in the place

# For parting tears and present sleep

# Had weighed mine eyelids downward

# The new sight, the new wondrous sight!

# The waters around me, turbulent

# The skies, impassive o'er me

# Calm in a moonless, sunless light

# As glorified by even the intent

# Of holding the day glory!

# Love me, sweet friends, this Sabbath day

# The sea sings round me while ye roll

# Afar the hymn, unaltered

# And kneel, where once I knelt to pray

# And bless me deeper in your soul

# Because your voice has faltered

# And though this Sabbath comes to me

# Without the stoled minister

# And chanting congregation

# God's spirit shall give comfort

# He who brooded soft on waters drear

# Creator on creation

# He shall assist me to look higher

# He shall assist me to look higher

# Where keep the saints, with harp and song

# An endless, endless Sabbath morning

# An endless Sabbath morning

# And, on that sea, commixed with fire

# On that sea, commixed with fire

# Oft drop their eyelids raised too long

# To the full Godhead's burning

# The full Godhead's burning. #

SONG ENDS

# The deeps have music soft and low

# When winds awake the airy spry

# It lures me, lures me on to go

# And see the land where corals lie

# The land where corals lie

# By mount and mead, by lawn and rill

# When night is deep, and moon is high

# That music seeks and finds me still

# And tells me where the corals lie

# And tells me where the corals lie

# Yes, press my eyelids close, 'tis well

# Yes, press my eyelids close, 'tis well

# But far the rapid fancies fly

# To rolling worlds of wave and shell

# And all the land where corals lie

# Thy lips are like a sunset glow

# Thy smile is like a morning sky

# Yet leave me, leave me, let me go

# And see the land where corals lie

# The land, the land

# Where corals lie. #

SONG ENDS

# With short, sharp, violent lights made vivid

# To southward far as the sight can roam

# Only the swirl of the surges livid

# The seas that climb and the surfs that comb

# Only the crag and the cliff to north

# And the rocks receding, and reefs flung forward

# And waifs wrecked seaward and wasted shoreward

# On shallows sheeted with flaming foam

A grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly

# And shores trod seldom by feet of men

# Where the battered hull and the broken mast lie

# They have lain embedded these long years ten

# Love!

# Love!

# When we wander'd here together

# Hand-in-hand!

# Hand-in-hand through the sparkling weather

# From the heights and hollows of fern and heather

# God surely loved us a little then

# The skies were fairer and shores were firmer

# The blue sea over the bright sand rolled

# Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur

# Sheen of silver and glamour of gold

# Sheen of silver and glamour of gold

# So, girt with tempest and winged with thunder

# And clad with lightning and shod with sleet

# The strong winds treading the swift waves under

# The flying rollers with frothy feet

# One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on

# The skyline, staining the green gulf crimson

# A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun

# That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet

# Oh, brave white horses, you gather and gallop

# The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins

# Oh, brave white horses, you gather and gallop

# The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins

# Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop

# In your hollow backs, on your high arched manes

# I would ride as never man has ridden

# In your sleepy, swirling surges hidden

# I would ride as never man has ridden

# To gulfs foreshadowed

# Through strifes forbidden

# Where no light wearies and no love wanes

# No love, where no love

# No love wanes. #

PIECE ENDS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Oh! Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures performed by Alice Coote,

with Sir Mark Elder and the Halle,

every fibre of her being impressed within these songs.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Alice Coote, such a wonderful singer.

This is a woman who, as a teenager, was a punk.

She had everything, she had the black hair and the white face

and the blue lips - the whole works.

And she says, for her, life was always about drama.

She is someone who is just intensely comfortable on the stage,

who really, as we said earlier, inhabits the spirit of this music.

Sea Pictures was first performed at the Proms in 1900,

the year after it was composed,

and it was done 15 times in its first decade and, in total,

it's had 54 performances at the Proms.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's absolutely packed in here tonight, unsurprisingly.

A great orchestra, great conductor,

wonderful repertoire and a fantastic soloist.

I know we were joking a bit about Clara Butt in her mermaid's outfit.

I absolutely love the fact that I think Alice Coote is wearing

this beautiful dress coat that looks like a crashing wave.

It was incredibly dramatic and she makes everything feel theatrical.

So, we've had an overture, we've had a song-cycle.

The concert night also features work

by the contemporary composer Helen Grime. It's called Near Midnight.

You can watch it exclusively on the BBC iPlayer.

It's in our New Works collection. Do check it out. We'll be adding

to that as the season goes on.

But next tonight, Beethoven's epic, iconoclastic Eroica,

his Third Symphony.

A symphony that eclipsed every other that came before it,

in size and ambition. It marked a complete sea-change in music

and established Beethoven as a Romantic genius for all time.

So, we're talking about a seriously important piece of music, here.

Well, we think it's an extremely serious piece of music,

quite rightly, but when they first heard it in 1805,

most of the audience were completely baffled by it.

It was hugely long, it was very complicated,

somebody described it as a "piling up of colossal ideas" -

it was just impossible to make sense of.

You have to imagine that this is an audience who had grown up

on symphonies by Mozart and Haydn - very elegant, beautiful works.

The first movement of Eroica is longer

than some complete Haydn symphonies.

So, it's just a, sort of, genre-busting exercise.

And it's a symphony that is genuinely revolutionary,

not just in terms of shattering the old styles,

but in the scale of its ambition -

turning music into a personal and political drama.

And this is a man who was always deeply connected to what

was going on politically.

Yeah, he was a great believer, and ardent fan, of Napoleon,

in fact, and he very much upheld the French ideals

of liberte, egalite and fraternite.

He had originally wanted Napoleon to be the hero of this work.

It's called the Heroic Symphony. That all went slightly awry.

It did, because he declared himself emperor...

That's Napoleon, not Beethoven, who should've declared himself emperor!

But Napoleon did declare himself emperor and marauded across Europe.

Exactly. Beethoven flew into a blind rage and, in fact, tore out

the dedication page and finally inscribed it,

"to the memory of a great man".

And worth remembering that this is written against the background

of increasing deafness.

Just a few years before he wrote this symphony, sort of 1802-ish,

he writes this very famous letter, the Heiligenstadt Testament,

which is where Beethoven suddenly realises he will be profoundly deaf

for the rest of his life.

It's essentially a, sort of, suicide note, written to his brothers.

He never sends it, but it's a heartbreaking letter,

where he is just suddenly facing a wall and has to push through it.

Yes, it's extremely sad.

And, in fact, very brave of Beethoven,

as he comes to terms with an affliction

that some would argue that, really, as a composer,

he cannot afford to have.

Well, Sir Mark Elder, tonight's conductor,

has described the Eroica as being "on the threshold of another age".

I met up with him earlier today

and asked him why he thinks this work is so revolutionary.

Well, it's the first symphony that had a big idea, isn't it, really?

The two symphonies he'd written before it were wonderful

and they were steeped in the tradition

that he'd taken from Haydn, from the previous generation.

They've got a sense of humour, great beauty of melodies.

But, right from the beginning of Eroica,

you realise that he's taking you into another world.

And the whole of the exposition, which is a long exposition,

is on a different scale,

and I think he's trying to find the way

to portray heroism in music, in sound.

It's very often spoken of this middle-period, heroic Beethoven.

Does it feel to you like this is a, kind of, mission statement?

I suppose, even from the opening chords,

-this is a symphony that is meant to mean something.

-Yes, absolutely.

I think he wanted to shock everybody into listening in a different way.

Because after number three,

the Fourth is such an incredible contrast

and then you've got the dynamism and battle of the Fifth,

then the Pastoral Symphony.

It was as if he wanted to stretch what a symphony could be.

He wanted to take his orchestra -

three horns, interestingly, not two or four, three -

very interesting writing for the timpani,

great writing for all the woodwind

and he wanted to stretch the audience's imagination

and get them to think afresh about a symphony could be.

And he chose, as the object of his imagination,

the figure of the Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte,

not the Emperor. He didn't like that.

What, for you, if there is a moment in this symphony,

is the most challenging part of it?

I think controlling the pulse of the music is the hardest thing, really.

Giving it space,

and yet, giving it momentum.

So, the answer to your question is bars one to the end, really.

APPLAUSE

MOVEMENT ENDS

MURMURING

SILENCE DESCENDS

MOVEMENT ENDS

MURMURING

SILENCE DESCENDS

MOVEMENT ENDS

MURMURS

SILENCE DESCENDS

PIECE ENDS

LOUD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The exhilarating close of Beethoven's Symphony Number 3,

The Eroica, one of the great milestones in music history.

First performed in public, Vienna, 1805,

played here at the Proms in 2014 by the Halle,

led tonight by Lyn Fletcher and conducted by Sir Mark Elder.

What a way to end tonight's voyage!

Beethoven taking us to new heights - simply breathtaking.

Well, we were saying earlier, mixed reviews

when this was first heard, but Beethoven's close friend,

Ferdinand Ries, just saw the score of Eroica

and was immediately overwhelmed.

I believe that he said that

"Heaven and Earth must tremble beneath it" when it is performed.

CHEERING

CHEERING

CHEERING

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

LOUD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, that's it for tonight

and don't forget that every Prom is live on Radio 3

and there's plenty to explore on the Proms website.

And don't forget to watch Proms Extra over on BBC Two

tomorrow night, with Katie Derham, at the new time of seven o'clock.

And tune in to BBC Four on Sunday

for a very special Battle Of The Bands,

as jazz greats come to the Proms.

There'll be Gregory Porter and Clare Teal - fabulous!

Swing music from the '30s and '40s,

Count Basie and Duke Ellington - what more could you want?

But, for now, from all of us

-here at the Royal Albert Hall, good night.

-Good night.