CBSO Plays Tchaikovsky BBC Proms

Hello. Tonight, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

brings us Tchaikovsky's fateful Fourth Symphony,

a curtain-raiser from Mozart and a contemporary song cycle by

the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen.

And all under the baton of their brand-new conductor.

I'm Sarah Mohr-Pietsch. Welcome to the BBC Proms.

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla.

Remember that name, because everyone is talking about her.

Earlier this year, aged just 29, the Lithuanian-born conductor

was announced as the new music director of the CBSO.

It's a seriously prestigious job, it's where Sir Simon Rattle

made his name, and tonight is Mirga's Proms debut,

and the first London concert for her with the Orchestra.

Joining them onstage is another extraordinary musician,

the Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan,

who sings the song cycle Let Me Tell You,

which Hans Abrahamsen wrote for her three years ago.

Tonight, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla's chosen to open with Mozart

and the overture to his last opera, The Magic Flute.

Like the rest of the opera, it combines the seriousness of

its hero's challenge with the playful invention of its comedy.

The Magic Flute is heavily inspired by Freemasonry -

Mozart was a Mason himself.

And it opens up with three powerful and symbolic chords.

From what I've seen of Mirga so far in rehearsals, her presence

on the podium is rather like this music - strong and serious,

and at the same time, incredibly playful,

making it the perfect piece for her Proms debut.

And here she comes now

to conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

in Mozart's Overture To The Magic Flute.

What a sense of joy on her face.

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla making her Proms debut,

conducting the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, led by

Zoe Beyers, in the overture to Mozart's opera The Magic Flute.

Mirga rather boldly chose a very small ensemble for the

first piece in tonight's concert, violins sitting opposite each other.

They'll join up again later on for Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

Next up tonight is Let Me Tell You by the Danish composer

Hans Abrahamsen.

He wrote it three years ago for Barbara Hannigan, who's one

of the most sought-after performers of 20th and 21st century repertoire.

She's also a conductor as well as an outstanding soprano.

And it was Barbara Hannigan who originally suggested setting a text

drawn from a novella called Let Me Tell You,

by the British writer Paul Griffiths,

which is based on Hamlet but focuses specifically on Ophelia.

It tells her story in the first person,

using only the 481 words which Shakespeare gave her in his play.

Hans Abrahamsen and Barbara Hannigan spoke about the experience

together in rehearsals.

When I first got the score,

I opened it in the hotel room, and I felt understood.

But you know, when I wrote it,

I always heard Barbara's voice on the lines.

For me, this piece is Ophelia,

however many centuries later,

telling her story again

with the advantage of time.

Now she has looked at what has happened in the world, perhaps

looked at what has happened with humanity and with women,

and she has a different perspective.

And so, when she sings the three sections of the piece -

Let Me Tell You How It Was,

Let Me Tell You How It is,

and Let Me Tell You How It Will Be, you know...

There is a poignancy, especially at the end,

there's a poignancy and there's a wisdom to it.

Barbara asked me if I could imagine a work

based on Paul Griffith's novella.

You knew that I have not written for voice before,

but you somehow imagined that I could do something. Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

And... And then we met in Berlin.

And I was demonstrating

many, many different styles of vocal writing for Hans.

Baroque styles, also using different registers with the

same material like Mahler does in his Fourth Symphony.

Hans does use a kind of baroque, or even Monteverdi, technique,

this repeating of note.

# Aaa-aa-aaa

# Le-e-et me tell you. #

So it...

It's the repeating, it's kind of like, as if your heart is going...

SHE HUMS RHYTHMICALLY

But you know, when a composer gets things shown,

you never know if it can come into the piece. Yeah. But it...

Somehow, musically, and...out from the expression,

it came into the piece and belonged to the piece.

We're working very hard up there. But we're...

I'm certainly trying not to show any of that complicated construction,

which is also why I have always sung the piece from memory.

Literally incorporated the piece, because as soon as I would sing with

a score in front of me, it would be a completely different experience.

It would be saying, "This was too hard to memorise."

It was almost too hard to memorise.

Hans Abrahamsen and Barbara Hannigan there.

And here comes Barbara Hannigan now with Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla

behind her to conduct the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

in the London premiere of Let Me Tell You by Hans Abrahamsen.

# Let me tell you

# How it was

# I know I can do this

# I have the powers

# I take

# Them

# Here

# I have the right

# My words

# May be poor

# But they have to do

# There was a time

# When I could not

# Do this

# I remember

# That time

# O but memory

# Is not one

# But many

# A long

# Music

# We have made

# And will make

# Again

# Over and over

# With some things we know

# And some we do not

# Some that are true

# And some that are made up

# Some that have stayed

# From long before

# And some that have come

# This morning

# Some that will go

# Tomorrow

# And some

# That have long been there

# But that we

# Will never find

# For to memory

# There is no end

# There was a time

# I remember

# When we had

# No music

# A time

# When there was no time

# For music

# And what is music

# If not time

# Time of now and then

# Tumbled

# Into one another

# Time

# Turned

# And loosed

# Time

# Bended

# Time

# Blown up

# Here and there

# Time sweet and harsh

# Time still

# And long

# Let me tell you

# How

# It is

# For you are the one

# Who made me more

# Than I

# Was

# You are the one

# Who loosed out

# This music

# Your face

# Is my music lesson

# And I sing

# Now I do not mind if it is day

# If it is night

WORDLESS TRILL

# If it is night

# An owl will call out

WORDLESS TRILL

# If it is morning

# A robin will tune his bells

# Night, day

# There is no difference for me

# What will make the difference

# Is

# If you are with me

# For you are my sun

# You

# Have sun-blasted me

# And turned me to light.

# You

# Have made me

# Like glass

# Like

# Glass in an ecstasy

# From your light

# Like glass in which light rained

# Rained

# Rained

# And rained

# And rained

# And goes on

# Like glass

# In which

# There are

# Showers of light

# Light that cannot end

# End

# End

# End

# End

# End

# I know

# You are

# There

# I know I will

# Find you

# Let me tell you

# How it

# Will be

# I will

# Go out now

# I will

# Let go the door

# And not look

# To see my hand

# As I take it away

# Snow falls

# So I will

# Go on

# In the snow

# I will have

# My hope

# With me

# I look up

# As if I

# Could see

# The snow

# As it falls

# As if

# I could

# Keep my eye

# On a little

# Of it

# And

# See it

# Come down

# All the way

# To the ground

# I cannot

# The snow flowers

# Are all like

# Each other

# And

# I cannot

# Keep my eyes

# On one

# I will

# Give up this

# And go on

# I will

# Go on. #

APPLAUSE

The exquisite close of Hans Abrahamsen's Let Me Tell You.

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla conducting

the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

and the soprano for whom it was written,

an extraordinary artist, Barbara Hannigan.

"I will go on," sings Ophelia at the close.

She doesn't drown herself, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet,

but we are left, instead,

with the image of her wandering out and becoming one with the snow.

Even when singing stratospherically high,

Barbara Hannigan's voice is crystal clear and precise.

She inhabits every note, every nuance of Abrahamsen's score

with total conviction.

Here he is now, Hans Abrahamsen leading the way.

Behind him is Paul Griffiths, the librettist.

A well-known British writer and music journalist,

a great authority on contemporary music.

And he wrote the novella Let Me Tell You,

and helped adapt it for Abrahamsen's score.

And Hans Abrahamsen, a leading Danish composer,

studied with Per Norgard and the late Gyorgy Ligeti.

He often deals with the subject of snow in his work - his next piece

is his first opera, based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen.

And Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla in her Proms debut,

and one of her first concerts with her new orchestra the CBSO,

really showcasing the fact that contemporary music

is going to be one of her focuses in her new position.

Well, coming up in a few minutes,

something completely different - Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

Ahead of that, we're going to get to know tonight's conductor

a bit better.

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla is just days into her new job at the CBSO,

following in the footsteps of Andris Nelsons, and before that,

Sakari Oramo and Sir Simon Rattle.

It's an appointment which always generates quite a lot of buzz,

but this time round, there was even more.

Partly because she's young,

and partly because there are still very few women who hold

such prestigious orchestral jobs in the classical music world.

Hers has been a pretty meteoric rise over the last few years,

including assisting Gustavo Dudamel at the LA Philharmonic.

And she's still only 30.

We caught up with her in the days running up to her Proms debut,

starting in her new workplace in Birmingham.

This hall, it's not only one of the best halls in Great Britain,

it's one of the best halls in the world.

And the hall an orchestra is rehearsing, performing,

living in always influences the spirit of the orchestra.

Over the years, the CBSO has built a reputation

for inspired choices of chief conductor, prepared to take risks

to spot and grow the next generation of talent.

The orchestra does appraise all conductors that come here,

just so that we know who we should invite back and who we don't.

The players go on to the website, and it's al very confidential,

and we vote. And that's the system that we used

when choosing the principal conductor.

It was electric when we first met Mirga,

and it was just so not what we expected.

The CBSO are incredible musicians,

and it feels as if it was a youth orchestra, because of the spirit.

They don't say, "This is how we play Tchaikovsky," or

"Mozart is only like this," or other things.

So this openness is an incredible gift.

One of the amazing things that Mirga seems to do is she takes

fairly normal, standard repertoire and completely turns it on its head.

Her ideas are new ideas.

They're not just recycled, and we feel we're doing a piece

for the first time, even if it is Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

We are now 48 hours ahead of our first Prom together.

Following one performance and two days of rehearsals,

Mirga and the orchestra make their way to London.

My parents were young when I was born. My mother was 19,

she's a pianist, my father is a choral conductor.

So I was just spending my childhood in music making.

And then, when I was 11, I said,

"Well, I can't imagine any other profession, work, than music."

At 11, already? Yeah.

I got nervous that if I don't start really learning things now,

it'll be too late!

The fact that you're a female conductor

is probably completely normal to you,

but for a lot of young aspiring female conductors,

you are going to be a role model in this job.

How do you feel about that?

I'm schizophrenic about this question, because I hate

the question itself, but I know how important it is for our society.

And...

After a family concert in LA,

some Latin American mothers came to me and said,

"Thank you, it was so good for our daughters,"

and it was so touching, that moment.

And afterwards,

I was thinking about what they said and reflecting and actually,

every little girl, and every little boy,

has a right to have such a picture in their mind.

This is a possible profession for their life.

The first steps.

I'm still on this journey of exploring what it is like for me.

You're not afraid to take risks.

Oh, we all need risks!

But the classical music world is not always one

in which people take risks.

Well, not only in classical music. I think.

We want to protect ourselves, and to say,

"This is like this, and there are rules,

"and there are things I can lean at."

But sometimes,

taking everything away and saying, "No, there is nothing,"

maybe you discover something completely new.

Tonight's conductor, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla.

Now, it's time for Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony - the cry

of a man at the mercy of fate.

In the middle of writing this symphony in 1877,

Tchaikovsky got married.

It was not a love match, and it was a complete catastrophe.

It only lasted a couple of months.

The experience shook him to the core.

In this symphony, we meet a man who's deeply troubled.

The opening movement introduces the Fate theme,

a subject he was to return to again and again.

Now, it also has lots of moments of beauty, nostalgia,

consolation and playfulness in it.

The second movement is basically an aria for solo oboe,

and reminds me so much of his tragic opera Eugene Onegin,

which he started around the same time.

And the third movement of the symphony,

played on plucked strings, is just like one of those

fizzy ballet scenes in Swan Lake, which premiered the same year.

But for all that, it feels as though the moments of respite

are constantly being chased away by the dark clouds of destiny.

Tchaikovsky called his symphony "An unburdening of the soul in music."

The Fate theme is ushered in by a mighty brass fanfare

at the start of the symphony,

and listen out for it recurring throughout the piece,

as Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla conducts the City of Birmingham

Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

APPLAUSE

in the final movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony Number Four,

the Fate theme crashes in to interrupt the festivities.

But there is still hope at the end as the music goes out

in a blaze of celebration.

And there is much to celebrate tonight

for the young Lithuanian-born conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla,

making her Proms debut and her London debut

with the orchestra with whom she's just begun as music director,

the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

A triumphant start to a brand-new artistic partnership.

That's a very nice touch.

Ordinarily, the conductor stands up on the podium

in front of their orchestra.

A wonderful collegiate gesture for her to stand in amongst

the violins to take that applause.

She did manage to hold on to her baton

at the end of that Tchaikovsky.

Apparently she has been known to get so excited on the podium

that it flies into the audience.

But you could really see the extraordinary power and energy

that she brings to her work.

An incredibly authoritative conductor,

particularly when she points with her left hand at members

of the orchestra, but also such a fluid style.

And wonderful to be able to see her face,

which most of the audience standing behind her can't.

Such joy and light in it.

Now, that's very unusual.

She's picking up percussionist Toby Kearney's stand.

See you in Birmingham!

CHEERS, APPLAUSE

With a shout of "See you in Birmingham," what a treat.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,

under their new music director, conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla,

rounding off their Prom with the final variation,

the Diamond Fairy and Coda, from Tchaikovsky's ballet

The Sleeping Beauty.

And a lovely triangle solo at the beginning

from percussionist Toby Kearney.

Well, that is it for tonight.

A terrific London launch for Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, promising

great things for what she's going to do with her orchestra.

The Proms are back on BBC Four with much fire and brimstone,

next Friday evening at 7.30 with a live broadcast of Verdi's Requiem.

The Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment,

conducted by Marin Alsop.

From me, Sarah Mohr-Pietsch, at the Royal Albert Hall, goodnight.