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

After the excitement of the first night a week ago,

welcome back to the Royal Albert Hall for the first of our regular,

but no less exciting, Friday night programmes,

running throughout the Proms season.

Each week there will be a different pair of presenters,

bringing you a Prom of classical big-hitters.

And Petroc and I kick off tonight

with a concert that feels like a real event.

Yes, tonight is the last concert that David Zinman will give

as chief conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.

In what's been a remarkable two decades in charge,

he's revitalised the Swiss ensemble,

turning them into a major international force

and finding new audiences for classical music along the way.

The orchestra has a reputation for electrifying live performances,

as I'm sure we'll hear tonight,

in a programme which includes Richard Strauss's music

and Beethoven's highly evocative Pastoral Symphony.

And Friday night used to be Beethoven night at the Proms.

Yeah, that's right, it's a tradition that stretches right back

to the earliest days of the Proms, under its founder Henry Wood,

when at least one Friday concert of each season would be

dedicated to Beethoven's music. The idea was phased out in the mid-60s,

so you could argue we're staging

a sort of mini revival of this tradition,

right here on BBC Four as our Friday nights ahead feature

the Eroica Symphony and the Missa Solemnis later on in the season.

To start, the 6th Symphony tonight.

Before that, Dvorak's Violin Concerto played by Julia Fischer

and first, in what is his 150th anniversary year,

Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.

That's right. It's a symphonic tone poem

based on a medieval German folk fable.

We have the character of Till Eulenspiegel, he's a German peasant,

a young rogue, a bit of a prankster.

He uses his simplicity to undermine any and all forms of authority.

His jokes and his jests, they are comical, brutal, even obscene.

He rides his horse right through the market and he causes chaos.

He escapes in seven-league boots, he dresses as a priest even,

flirts with girls, of course while dressed as a priest,

falls in love, completely jilted.

He even pokes fun at some of the serious academics in the village

and of course what happens, he's captured,

he's condemned to death and he's hanged.

So, he is an adventurer, even if he has a bad ending.

I mean, you're an opera singer,

you've sung lots of Strauss over the years.

He's wonderful at making pictures using words.

But he's able to do it with the instruments alone, isn't he?

That's something that I often get asked about,

is how do you tell a story without words?

As opera singers, we have music that's told through the melody,

we have a story that's told through the text

and the emotional colours that that conveys.

But there is a third story and that is the harmonic story

that's under us with the orchestra.

The tone poem sits right in between the symphonic orchestral composition

and opera in that its purpose is to unify music and drama,

so the singing is done actually not with voices but by the instruments.

His execution is painted particularly dramatically

and vividly as well,

Till being hauled up to the gallows, a sudden loud snare drum roll

-that recurs five times, with great brass fanfares on top.

-Oh, yes.

There's a death scream represented by wailing clarinet,

descending woodwind passages, quiet pizzicato strings.

Somehow the musical mood goes rather limp as he dies.

Except that his opening theme comes back because Till lives on.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" by Richard Strauss

APPLAUSE

David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra from Zurich,

opening their Prom

with Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel.

Well, that performance launches a season-long celebration

during what is Richard Strauss's 150th anniversary.

Strauss Night coming up on 3rd August here on BBC Four.

A feast of his orchestras as well at the Proms.

Indeed, the composer originally thought that Till Eulenspiegel

would be a stage work.

An as an opera singer, of course,

I can completely understand the appeal.

There is wonderful descriptive power

and very vivid characterisation in the instrumental colours there.

But, as it happened, Strauss had one failed opera under his belt

and it had only happened a year before in 1893,

an opera called Guntram,

and he was worried that the material for Till wouldn't quite stretch out

for a whole opera. He actually put it in a letter.

He said that Till was a role with too superficial a dramatic personality.

You get a bit of Rosenkavalier there.

Definitely, we were saying that, yeah.

Well, next tonight, a young violinist

for whom David Zinman has been something of a mentor.

Julia Fischer has recorded Dvorak's Violin Concerto with him

and together they have made it

something of a mission to champion the work.

It's partly personal for Julia.

Dvorak, the great Czech composer -

her mother was born in what was then Czechoslovakia.

And this was also the first concerto that she ever played.

Well, I know that she feels this concerto has been vastly underrated

next to the acknowledged greats that we know,

like Bruch, Mendelssohn, Brahms.

I must say Brahms himself championed Dvorak.

I'm a huge fan of Dvorak. I tend to agree.

There was so much more to his musical legacy than the chestnuts

we know, like the New World Symphony, the American Quartet,

Rusalka, which I adore.

Dvorak, I would say, was one of the very patriotic composers,

nationalists, he really drew upon the varied rhythms and the melodies

that were so colourful of his Bohemian folk songs

of his native Czech homeland.

And it gave his music a very unmistakable national identity.

I'm so pleased that Julia is championing his work.

APPLAUSE

So, a chance for the soloist to show what she is made of.

Julia Fischer says that the Dvorak Violin Concerto

has the most beautiful beginning of all violin concertos.

MUSIC: "Violin Concerto in A Minor" by Antonin Dvorak

APPLAUSE

What an amazing performance by Julia Fischer and David Zinman.

I'm still reeling from that.

It's like they've danced that dance before.

It's wonderful to see two people so comfortable with each other.

I almost felt like I was in their living room.

Yeah, you can tell that relationship has a lot of history to it,

from concert hall platforms and in rehearsal rooms.

she reminds me of one of those great Central European virtuosi

of the late 19th, early 20th century.

A wonderful richness to her sound.

But the virtuosity is somehow very contained,

no fireworks just for the sake of fireworks. Wonderfully restrained.

What I loved about Julia Fischer's performance

is she just allowed herself to feel her way through it.

She clearly feels so connected to this.

This must be for her the umpteenth performance

since she has played it since she was a child. It was just stunning.

AUDIENCE STAMP FEET

She's going to come back!

That telltale stamp which means they want an encore and here she comes.

The third movement from the Sonata in G Minor by Paul Hindemith.

APPLAUSE

What a wonderful choice for an encore,

a surviving fragment of the lost violin sonata by Paul Hindemith.

Well, tonight's concert is David Zinman's last,

as we have been saying, in charge of the Zurich Tonhalle.

The roots of the orchestra stretch back a century and a half.

Zinman has been there for nearly 20 years.

I've long been interested in the energy and effort that he's made

to find new, young audiences. One of his most successful initiatives

is something called Tonhalle Late.

Just open to young people, the idea came to Zinman

when his then 16-year-old son said

the reason that he didn't go to concerts was because

-he and his friends didn't want to be seen with their parents.

-Yikes.

These are really serious, rigorous classical concerts

that start at 10pm. They last an hour.

There's no slacking.

Then the Tonhalle is turned into something akin to a night club,

with live music and electronica into the early hours.

Zinman faced resistance to this idea when he first pitched it.

I think a lot of the older supporters of the orchestra thought

that the concert hall was going to be trashed,

the kids were going to run amok. But he stuck by it. He won through.

And it's been a real success.

I have to say, I'm all for breaking down musical barriers

and getting new audiences, young audiences, exposed to music.

We obviously love what we do.

It's wonderful to share it with other people.

I'm very passionate about changing the venues a little bit.

Even though we have wonderful times in places like Royal Albert Hall,

to actually go and take music somewhere else, where maybe,

there might be people who are a little uncomfortable

trying something out in a big classical venue for the first time.

-You took classical music underground.

-Absolutely.

I have done some crazy concerts.

I did one in Bermondsey tunnel, beneath the Tube.

So we were singing Handel,

with beer bottles and nightclub atmosphere. It was incredible.

It just actually proved that you don't have to change

the power of what we do. Classical music is totally brilliant

as it is and we took that in its complete entirety down into a tunnel.

The audience were spellbound. It was absolutely perfect.

But I think there is a real danger when people start apologising

and saying the only way to get young people in

is to somehow make it a bit simpler and a bit easier.

-You have to keep the standards up.

-Absolutely.

I don't think we need to compromise what we do or water it down.

I really believe in people's ability to see something

that is wonderful and moving. And classical music, let's face it,

it has withstood the test of time already.

So I really, really strongly support getting music out

into different venues, trying it out. Getting a slightly new audience.

And we are young musicians. It's our responsibility.

Well, Beethoven's music has long spoken to ordinary people,

young and old, across the centuries.

His Pastoral Symphony coming up in just a moment here on BBC Four.

But first of all, a word from our fellow Proms presenter Katie Derham.

Proms Extra returns tomorrow

and I will be talking about this concert and so much more

with my guests Imogen Cooper, Sir Mark Elder and Eric Whitacre.

We have an interview with the inimitable Jessye Norman, sharing her Proms memories.

We have Alison Balsom's video diary from China

and we have the exciting young pianist Haochen Zhang

performing for us at the end of the show.

It's what can only be described as a classical feast.

So do join me over on BBC Two tomorrow at 8:25.

So, looking forward now to the second half

and the main event of tonight's programme,

Beethoven's 6th or Pastoral Symphony,

which he composed contemporaneously with the 5th

and in fact they were premiered to the world

at the same concert in 1808,

a fairly mammoth and trying one by all accounts.

Like Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel,

the 6th is what's known as a programmatic,

in that it sets out to evoke a non-musical scene through music,

in this case, the beauty of the natural landscape.

Yeah, there's a great sort of tradition of composers doing this.

Composers evoking the outdoors,

journeys, special places, rustic weddings.

Glazunov, Ralph Vaughan Williams, also wrote pastoral symphonies.

There's Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Haydn's The Seasons.

Wonderful evocation of pastoral scenes

in Handel's Messiah. Mozart portrayed a peasant wedding.

I suppose the point is that most composers were,

by the nature of their work, urban dwellers

and cities 2-300 years ago were dirty, smelly, crowded places.

Not a nice place to be.

-Little in the way of sanitation.

-Industrialisation.

Industrialisation was under way, smoking chimney stacks,

by Beethoven's time, were beginning to appear around Vienna.

So the countryside, this Arcadian landscape,

offered a sense of escape, a sort of soothing balm.

I think that's quite relevant for today, actually.

We all have feelings of needing to escape the city.

And actually music itself is an escape

and I think, especially this Beethoven symphony,

we have a need to affirm this sheer splendour of life

through experiencing nature and beauty.

Yeah, and I think for Beethoven personally,

let's remember his deafness meant that city life was really hell.

Talking to people around him had become increasingly difficult

and something that he really didn't want to do.

He much preferred being alone outdoors.

He liked to take some sort of walk every day.

Vienna was a much smaller place in those days than it is now.

So it was very easy to escape to the woods.

Yes, he wrote, "To stay in town during the summer is torture to me."

I feel that Beethoven sort of invites others

to take a journey with him into the countryside.

He opens a door and it's warm outside, much like this summer.

Yeah, I mean, the first movement,

Happy Feelings On Arrival In The Countryside.

Later on, you hear this wonderful burbling brook

and it's this glorious evocation of water gently babbling away in music.

Absolutely. All the themes also, they all sort of repeat and repeat

and expand and they reinvent themselves, much like nature does.

Now, you're lucky enough to live in one of the most glorious places

in the country, at Glyndebourne

where that wonderful opera house is down in Sussex,

surrounded by an Arcadian landscape,

-I don't know if you got caught up in that storm last weekend.

-We did!

His musical portrait of the storm,

has a storm ever been portrayed anywhere in art?

Well, it's one of the more dramatic movements I've ever heard.

It is so contrasting with the previous movements.

We hear the thunder, we hear the storm, the clouds.

They're all very accurately represented.

You don't actually need to know the piece

to be able to hear these colours in the music.

It's absolutely thrilling and then of course everything calms down.

Yeah, and that sense of relief.

Joyful feelings,

grateful feelings after the storm, as the clouds finally roll away.

The oboe promises better things to come in what is it glorious phrase,

and the flute seems to raise the curtain on a fresh country scene

-as the peasants, the rural folk, celebrate their survival.

-Exactly.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "Symphony No 6 in F major, Op 68" by Ludwig van Beethoven

APPLAUSE

A spectacular way to end this great partnership

that's lasted 20 years between

maestro David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich,

playing Beethoven's 6th Symphony, his Pastoral Symphony,

here at the BBC Proms.

What a performance.

I mean, that is the power of music. It can paint a picture with notes.

I feel so privileged to I feel so privileged to have been able to hear that, here at the Royal Albert Hall.

-It's the first time for me hearing it live.

-What?!

-Yeah, I have never heard this before.

-You are a Pastoral version.

-I am,

so I feel immensely privileged

and I have to say that I know for all the people watching at home,

they will have felt like I have,

just absolutely transported to another world.

I think there is a danger in being carried away by the event

and gushing, but I am not sure

you could have heard a better first performance, live, than that.

Because he brings such style and such elegance and such clarity

and such storytelling.

Absolutely. It must be bittersweet for him as a last performance.

What I love about David Zinman is it's not about being

"the maestro" but it's about making beautiful, beautiful picture

and he's really done that tonight.

APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Well, the 6th Symphony is one of those great Proms favourites.

It's been performed more than 100 times here at the BBC Proms,

but this is David Zinman's first time conducting it

at the BBC Proms. And you'll notice,

there's a bit of movement on stage as David Zinman returns.

There are some more players on stage, percussionists.

Not actually wearing the tails

that the rest of the orchestra are wearing.

-That's exciting!

-I think that's a special dispensation

because they weren't performing in the Pastoral Symphony.

Which means an encore.

Now we'd like to play something really Swiss for you.

LAUGHTER

MUSIC: "Evviva I Soci" trad arr. Florian Walser

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

MUSIC CONTINUES

APPLAUSE

That was very Swiss.

It's a piece called Evviva I Soci, a traditional Swiss work,

arranged by Florian Walser, who is E Flat Clarinettist

-in the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.

-Fantastic.

-David Zinman,

conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra here at the BBC Proms.

Well, that wraps things up for tonight.

-All Proms across the season are live on BBC Radio 3.

-Of course.

And there's lots more to explore on the Proms website

Don't forget to watch Proms Extra on BBC Two tomorrow night

with Katie Derham and watch out for more Beethoven later in the season

with the Eroica and the Missa Solemnis both here on BBC Four.

From the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall,

-from us, for now, good night.

-Good night.