Episode 3 BBC Proms

Tonight on Proms Extra, we have a song and dance about Kiss Me Kate,

we get vocal about Mozart, Strauss and Mahler and we have three

Hello and welcome to Proms Extra, the show that delves into

Amongst the goings on this week, the Albert Hall entertained

a horse named Joey, had unfinished business with Mozart,

faced a Battle of the Bands and got too darn hot with Cole Porter.

And that was week three of the Proms.

From the Albert Hall to our studio in the Royal College

of Music and to the question ? just who are on the sofa tonight?

First up, a gentleman with a voice that has had Proms audiences

a tremble, he is one of the titans of the operatic world.

family and quite a brilliant violinist to boot.

Ahead of her appearance on the Last Night of the Proms.

It?s a welcome return to Janine Jansen.

And talking of this year?s Last Night of the Proms,

the honour of steering that colossal ship of performers,

orchestra -and Janine - is here with us tonight, it?s Sakari Oramo.

And we have two exciting performances on the show tonight;

for the first time on Proms Extra all of our guests will be performing

including Sakari who will be dropping his baton and playing a

violin duet with Janine, and Sir Willard White will close

the show with a touch of Figaro ? and you really don't

Sakari you and Janine are going to perform,

How did this happen? It was Janine's idea. But I used to be a violinist

in my previous life and I have tried to keep it up as much as I could. I

love playing. I love playing more than ever before. So it is suitable.

And the two of you will be performing in a chamber Proms on

Monday. Yes. That will be splendid for you both. It is fantastic and he

is a wonderful violinist. It is great to play together. And it is

exciting to be back in the thick of the Proms? It is, I have had dreams

and part of the dream is being here and looking at the Albert Hall

brought back fond memories and maybe one day stoon I will -- soon I will

sing there. Who knows. The last night of the Proms, this is the big

one isn't it? Conducting the Last Night of the Proms, how do you feel?

Yes, I can't imagine what the atmosphere will be like on stage. I

am sure it will be hot and I will be busy getting through all the music.

But I'm happy with the programme. I'm happy that Janine is playing and

I'm happy with the rest of it as well. Just looking forward. The one

thing people worry about is having to make a speech in the Hall. So we

thought we would give you some help so here is something to inspire you.

Your very impatient up there. You want me to talk? I have been told

I'm not to make a long speech. But I'm quite overcome. You're the

greatest audience in the world. Well nearly all of you. They told me it

would be like this. It is your focus, your energy. Your sensible

shoes! Don't be so rude! Any ideas? Any inspiration? I will keep this to

myself! I won't give out anything before. If you have any questions,

we have the man here to answer them. You're a veteran of the last night

of Last Night of the Proms, what was your experience on that night?

Before the singing it was amazing to step on the stage and be welcomed

with such a wall of shouting and applause, it was most inspiring.

Daunting. But one has to breathe and continue. And at every moment it is

the only audience I have sang with or sang to or sang for that kept on

supporting from the ones leaning right at the very front, through,

you felt this energy of support all the time. Love. So tips for Janine

and Sarari this year? Be yourself and enjoy. We have had the most

extraordinary week. standout performances to bring

the house down came via the staged production of ?Kiss Me Kate?, the

award winning musical written by one of the greatest songwriters

of all time - Cole Porter. For once at the back

of the stage rather than the front was the hugely popular John Wilson

Orchestra, led by their talented maestro with a knack for giving

the audiences what they want. Taking our lead from Cole Porter,

when it comes to the Wilson and his orchestra

are just too darn hot. # I'd like to pitch some woo with my

baby tonight # But it's just too darn hot!

by John Wilson and his amazing orchestra.

He tleet treats that music with such respect as if it were Mahler or

Beethoven. Yes it is incredible. John has forensic interest in what

was originally written and for this production he went back to the very

originals that Cole Porter wrote. Because this musical and any others

have been done a lot sips and they have always been modified. John goes

back to the original and treats the music as if it would be the most

valuable thing. Let me ask you about Cole Porter. He is considered one of

the great American song writers, the father of the great American song

book. What is is about his tunes that make him so marvellous. It is a

particular ability to go straight to the heart. To go simply express a

longing, a great desire of a lifetime and an eternal question. To

present it in a way not high brow, but really speaking directly to the

people, to their hearts. That is for simple Mol dis, the or -- melodies.

The melodies are the tune you get in your head and they stay there for

days. Yes, he knows how to marry one note to the next. The thing which

striebs me with the -- strikes me with the John Wilson Orchestra is

how much fun they're having. Yes and everyone wants to play in the

orchestra. I saw a solo musician and people want to join that. I also get

itching fingers to. When we spoke about John Wilson last year, you

said if you got the phone call you could be there. Yes and I missed it.

But it is so great what you have programmed at the Proms, I want to

be at all these concerts. They did bring together a wonderful enCemable

to perform a piece that requires cometic timing and wonderful acting

skills and dancing skills and they had them all. We are going to see a

clip of the character Kate. Who really hates men!

# I hate men! # Avoid the travelling salesman, from China he may bring

you jade, but don't forget it is he who will have the fun and I hate

men! # I have never heard you sing like that, I must say. But what a

great example, the Broadway star, now a classical star. How do you

sing when you're having to be so active on stage like that? I haven't

done many parts where I have had to be that active. But there is one

thing that I learned and which has carried me through a lot of

experiences is the central core of breathing. Keep that breath loose

and in balance, don't make the breath tight, because that tires

you. And if you keep the breath in balance, you actually build your

stamina and you can go on. Do you ever dance? Willard? Do I ever

dance? I mean on stage, off stage? I made a mistake in one production, in

on aria I did a dance move and they said, do that. After that, I have

been careful not to dance too much! We have to learn Kiss Me Kate there.

If that isn't painful enough that, performance won't be on your screens

until December, but it is worth the wait. Now Mahler's symphony No 5.

Let's have a listen. Sakari, tell us as we regain our

stability after the emotion of that piece, what is the story of Mahler

5? When he started writing this symphony, sketching it at least, he

met a young woman. Alma Schindler, who became pregnant and they got

together. I think this can be seen as containing the process from the

brooding, depressed conductor, composer, looking for something in

his life, then wooing this young woman and at the end in the last

movement, the relationship is born. She unlocks some beautiful music

from Mahler. I saw you getting all misty-eyed there. What is your

emotional response to Mahler? I love Mahler's music of course as a

violinist, and not playing in an orchestra, very often, I don't get

to play his music. But there is one movement, a piano quartet and

wonderful to play it, but also I think maybe even more wonderful, I

need to listen to it and just... Just get taken by this you know...

Power and it reaches so deep and t unleashes so many different

emotions. It is just one cannot... Describe it, one cannot touch it. It

is... Is marveer an important part of your sound When I decide to

follow like one instrument in the orchestra and it takes me on a dream

and it takes me into an area of fascination of this composer,

touching on a human aspect, a human longing, a human dream, a human fear

and through one note, one instrument will take you and then take you

right into a mountainous experience of avalanches and it's staggering.

We've been curating all our favourite bits of the Proms for you

in our Proms Extra Collection, but you do need the latest version of

Once you've got it you can watch Mahler 5 and so much more.

Very soon Sakari and Janine are going to perform

But, before they go and get ready, we're going to stay

for a moment more with Mahler and learn about his relationship

with his wife and muse, Alma, with a few simple notes according to David

That's an astonishing dischord rkts C sharp, F, D, it goes to the heart

of what the symphony is all about. It starts in C sharp minor. This is

in the key of F. We are going to end in D. So our chord, C sharp, F, D,

spells out the tonal argument of the symphony. But though it's a dischord

with a point it's an astonishingly ugly chord to put into what is

really a love song to Mahler's new young wife Alma. Mahler found his

marriage was very difficult. He even consulted Freud about his impotence.

The movement is full of dischord. This very harsh dischord at the

beginning. And Mahler drags that E up to the harmony note F. For me,

that E is like mall's spirit of independence -- like Alma's spirit

of independence. He wouldn't let Alma compose or play the piano. Once

he has the E to the F, he invents very strange chords to keep it

there. Only after our chord of the week is

the F free to fall, but not to an E, to an E flat. It's as if Mahler

having won Alma, have woulded her from E to -- wooed her from E to F,

dare not let her go. Still to come on Proms Extra we'll

be looking into the concerts of Strauss and Mozart and how

musicians cope with their health Now a rare treat, here are Sakari

and Janine to perform a very short piece entitled Duo

for Two Violins, No 36, by Bartok. Sakari Oramo and Janine Jansen

performing together and if you loved that why not listen to

their lunchtime Prom at Cadogan Hall Now before they rejoin the sofa,

I have Sir Willard White still with We're about to review

Strauss' Four Last Songs. I know you adore that piece, why?

Well, I had a very fine singer, who did an interpretation. I'm not

really given to tears, I think, because I haven't cried very much in

my life. But I felt the tears welling up. I was wondering why. And

Strauss manages to strike a line of understanding, I feel, of the human

journey. Because his journey, in my opinion, was so profound, full of

conflicts, full of important issues that he needs to declare who he is.

You can hear it in the music that he makes bold, very strong statements,

not against anyone, but for the revelation of self. The horns speak

in such a way, the cellos takes over and they sing their tune, it's just

in praise of what is. Grab a shoulder to cry

on or a cushion to hug ? here's one of the emotional highlights

of Strauss' Four Last Songs. That was a wonderful performance.

But one great performance to another. We heared Inger Dam-Jensen

pulling at our heart strings there. What are the challenges of pulling

this work off? It's immeasurably challenging for everybody. The

orchestral part is written in such long lines, you need to have

incredibly long and focussed and centred breath. For a conductor,

it's always so important to support the singer, to breathe with the

singer, not before, not after, just with. It's so important to make the

orchestra listen to the voice, even though when they play they can't

actually hear it, but there is a kind of listening that goes beyond

that, that you know what's there, you know there's a voice and you

place your part accordingly. This piece is an emotional journey. It

has so much of what is best in our musical heritage and tradition. What

is so lovely about listening to that Strauss is to hear all the different

parts of the orchestra working beautifully together with the

soloist and that marvellous violin segment, which I asked them to put

in specially for you. Thank you! It's beautiful. I mean, when one

listens to this beautiful violin solo, one is, I mean, I would always

try to be like a voice, to breathe. You make long lines, the tension

that one needs to create, it's all about breathing and the human voice

is the most natural instrument. I would very much try to go for that

and to yeah, deliver it. What's fascinating this season, we have the

opportunity to hear not just the work like this, right at the end of

his life, but we've heard something 40 years previously, the range of

his work is extraordinary. It's incredible. He lived a very long

life. In times, that changed greatly. He lived, he was born in

the late 19th century and his family was all musical. He was very

talented. He very soon got very famous as a composer and conductor

as well. His music from his last years, which he always described as

coming from the work station of an invalid. He had great self-irony and

wit. And this music is then almost the last item to come out of that.

I'm totally fascinated by the expression he creates in the Four

Last Songs. I've contemplated death and I see that this man in his 85

years old must be contemplating death and the way he treats the

final phrase, you don't hear a cutting off. It's a continuation

with a question, with a dream, with a statement and I found that most

inspiring, because we don't know what death means. But that's, I

think, that interested Strauss early in his life. Because he has had

early tempo with death and transfiguration. It comes at the end

too He quotes himself. I think he had a lifelong... That's what life

does, isn't it? You can find more about Strauss

and everything to do with the Proms Now, it's been a busy old summer

of sport. We've got the cricket Test match

series, the Commonwealth Games has just finished, we've had Wimbledon,

the World Cup, and the football season is just around the corner,

but it's not only sportsmen and women who have to train

and keep their fit Double bassist with the Orchestra

of the Age of Enlightenment Chi-chi Nwanoku led Proms Extra to

the starting blocks to find out the highs and lows of staying

on track as a classical musician. I was on track for an international

athletics career as a sprinter until at 17-and-a-half a life-changing

injury left me hungry to find another outlet for my energy and

passion. My knee injury completely devastated me. My life changed from

one second to the next. So how do musicians and performers, at the

peak of their careers pro, tect themselves? -- protect themselves?

There should be more attention played to warming up. All athletes

do their stretching and they also do warm down, don't they? Warm down? I

don't think we do that. We play our concert, go out to the pub. I think

people don't realise just how physically tiring a two-hour resital

is. The left hand on the cellos is incredibly strenuous, the stressing

and there's a massive weight on the fingertips with quite thin strings.

The bowing is something that is physically very exhausting. The idea

that you have a flow of breath with singing, through part of your own

body, anything your body is doing that is extreme is going to be

detrimental to that. Of course, you get very strong physical reactions.

I've had concerts where my lips have stuck to my top teeth because my

mouth has suddenly gone so dry. I've had a very difficult year last year.

I had whopping cough followed by viral pneumonia. I was poorly for a

long time. Having been a very robust, healthy woman, I think, I

had not anticipated the things that I would normally be able to do with

the voice, I couldn't do. My worst fear was that I would never

sing again. That it was over. I had laser treatment to remove this tiny

polyp. It healed clean as a whistle. It was six to nine months of no

singing at all, which was like losing part of myself. It was quite

shocking, what an eenterprisous part of my -- what an enormous part of my

identity being able to sing each day was. The difficulty with playing

some of our instruments is that we have to often consort into weird

positions in order to play them. Some of them are design -- were

designed centuries ago. However fantastic they sound, if we're not

careful, they can really challenge our bodies. My left-hand fingerers

still today much longer than my right. That's constant stretching

with the left hand over the years. I lost power in my bowing arm. That

stopped me playing the big pieces, which is obviously what I've always

done. It was a serious problem. When it happened, it came very suddenly.

I knew about it last October, in the middle of a concert. Because you

play that extra 10%. When you practice at home, I didn't realise I

had a problem. Then suddenly, in the first movement, I suddenly thought,

"What's wrong? I can hardly hold the bow." The most embarrassing moment

of my life, I went to the concert organiser in the interval and said I

wasn't sure if I could do the second half. I can't hold the bow. It's

ridiculous. We have seen footballers being stretchered off the pitch in

agony. But it is equally tragic when a musician is forced to take their

final bow. I had two MRI scans on my neck and showed the disk pressing on

a nerve root. I am thinking it is time for me to move on. I have to

say I miss the playing enormously. I really do. But that is the way it

is. And I want to move on and do something that makes a difference.

There is a kind of bereavement there. That is what I did all my

life and suddenly it is not there. I'm not with the cello any more and

it is a strange feeling. It was great to see Christine Rice

performing Mozart's Requiem. But Julian shared something very sad to

hear. As a fellow string player, what was your reaction about him

losing his love? It is very sad. I could not imagine that it is losing

your, I mean, yeah, part of who you are. And yeah, impossible to imagine

that. Of course, one realises watching it even more how much one

has to watch out for you know something happening and... I mean

probably I don't warm up enough when I take the violin and I kind of, I'm

quite impatient in the way I maybe practice. Also I just pick it up and

want to play. But also in exercise. It is not a natural way to be like

this. Of course, so many emotions and also tension goes through body.

Maybe it is not continuous. But it goes through it. What are the danger

points, is it the fingers, the hands the wrists? You know, it can be

shoulders and of course the fingers. For myself, I think it is mostly

like between the should irblades and lower back. But mostly here. Because

there is so much emotion. In teaching we are told as

instrumentalists to kind of be relaxed and play like you know, how

can you when you feel things that you feel and you feel the tension

and the stress. It has to go into the muscles. It is not an easy job

standing on that podium with that emotion going through your for two

hours. The concerts are minor problems. The rehearsal days are

worse. I insist mostly in rehearsing standing, because if I'm sitting, I

find it has more adverse effects to my body than standing. Neither is

ideal. But also I feel that I can't give the orchestra my energy and

activity if I don't stand. If I sit it has no meaning. It has to come

from the floor. The power comes through the floor. Through the feet

upwards. I stretch regularly. It is very important. And I keep myself

hydrated, which helps. Water is a solution to almost anything. How

about you? And breathing. Breathing. Yeah. You have it. Is it all about

the breath for you Willard? If you're breath is relaxed the rest

follows? Well, I had a challenge in my life at one time and I met a

thing called Shingun and it transformed, well it didn't

transform, but my meeting with it assisted a transformation in my

approach to my singing. My approach to my speaking. My approach to my

being. And it wasn't through any instructions you must do this, it

was about breathing, gently and allow the tension to be dissolved as

if the breath is dissolving it. And everything, whether we like it or

not, happens from here. It all starts from here. The beginning. The

idea. Be at home with that which you are. I feel like I'm going to come

out of this programme with a whole new approach to breathing, to

sitting and I will have learned so much from hearing you speak. My

goodness. That is fascinating. We are going to hear you close the show

with a performance from Mozart's Figaro and we will see all those

techniques in action. Now in this episode, we have had a show stopping

kiss me state and a love-struck Mahler and Strauss. Now the final

bars that Mozart ever wrote. His Requiem. You have performed this at

the Proms, Willard. Tell us your response to this work. There is so

much myth and legend about Mozart. Was he writing his own Requiem. What

is your take? You listen to the music and it's a resignation. So the

death has actually taken place. So it is an honouring, the actual life

and coming to the point of a peaceful death. At least that is the

dream any way. And in the Mozart Requiem, I actually hear this

encouragement that we and even maybe Mozart himself feel that yes,

getting to that point will be a wonderful cadence. Now we are going

to hear Mozart's Requiem. Certainly when you listen to that,

what you're saying about Mozart having a sense of acceptance about

the end of life, there was no rage there was there? I didn't detect the

rage. Even in the DS era, there is a passionate expression, but rage

against nothing. It is an acceptance of the death. It is the end and I

can't do anything else. And they will sing over my dead body. Often

it is tempting to put Mozart on a pedestal and I know I will call your

bluff, I know you don't particularly rate the Requiem. I want to hear you

defend yourself. I'm the bad guy here. Never say never. But I would

never choose to conduct it. Because for me, Mozart is a fantastic

composer, but he doesn't represent the kind of culmination of all art

that many people want to hear in him and see in him. Generally they do.

For me, he is another very good composer, that wrote great pieces,

the E flat major spring trio. But some that are I don't know. They're

a bit standardised often. Some of the symphonies. I so appreciate your

honesty on this subject. I really do. But I very much look forward to

hearing the tweeteds, the calls the letters. Keep them coming. We will

stay with Requiem and a premiere of John Taverner's Requiem Fragments

now. The world prepremiere can be seen

tomorrow on BBC Four. Now let me remind you BBC Four is where you can

watch the Proms every Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Radiothree

broadcasts every -- radio three broadcasts every Prom live. I'm back

next week with rose Arya and another star, Roger Williams. Thank you to

my guests. To Janine Jensen and Sakari and good luck with Last Night

of the Proms and our guest giving a rare TV performance. Here is Willard

with a performance from Figaro.