Dvorak and Bartok BBC Proms

Tonight we travel though the rugged soundscapes

of central Europe by way of a whole new musical solar system.

Welcome to the BBC Proms 2017.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra, the backbone of the BBC Proms,

is back in the Royal Albert Hall tonight

to perform music by Bartok and Dvorak,

and a contemporary work

by the acclaimed young American Missy Mazzoli.

Hello, I'm Sara Mohr-Pietsch.

Welcome to our final night of BBC Four broadcasts from the BBC Proms.

We have a special last-night double bill for you this evening

with the ground-breaking debut of "Chineke!",

Europe's first black and minority ethnic orchestra

which you'll be able to see straight after this concert.

And we're about to see another debut

from the young American Karina Canellakis,

her first time conducting at the Proms.

Karina started out as a violinist before being encouraged to take up

the baton by none other than Sir Simon Rattle, and last year,

she won the prestigious Georg Solti Conducting Prize.

Joining Karina tonight is fellow American, the pianist Jeremy Denk,

who'll be playing Bartok's Second Piano Concerto -

a piece that's notoriously difficult

and challenging for both the soloist and the orchestra.

And we finish with the richly melodic and adventurous

Eighth Symphony by Dvorak,

reinterpreting the traditions and folk music of his Czech homeland.

But first, Missy Mazzoli, the toast of New York,

and a hugely celebrated composer of new opera.

In her orchestral Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres),

Missy takes us on a journey to the centre of a musical solar system.

Lloyd Coleman caught up with her at rehearsals to find out more.

Let's talk about your piece that's being played,

-Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres)...

-Yes.

Can you tell me a bit about that title, what it means?

Well, the word "sinfonia" has a couple of different meanings

throughout history, so it can refer to a Baroque orchestral work,

and this piece certainly has a lot of Baroque influences.

But there's another meaning which is that

sinfonia is the old-fashioned word, Italian word for the hurdy-gurdy,

which is the cranked medieval instrument. I have a real thing

for out-of-tune, old, strange instruments.

I'm not going to give it away, but you know, in this piece,

there are some strange instruments

that the orchestra plays that sort of imitate

the sound of a hurdy-gurdy, so I thought, OK, you know,

what if I try to turn the orchestra into a massive hurdy-gurdy?

So, there's that!

And then the "orbiting spheres" part is I had this other idea to try

to create a piece in the shape of a solar system, which, again,

sounds maybe crazy and impossible, but, it's just the idea

of all these little loops that come together to create bigger loops.

And the piece itself ends where it starts,

but in a massively transformed way,

which again, I'm not going to give away the ending,

but it comes back in a very unexpected, strange way.

You do ask the orchestra, or some members of the orchestra,

-to pick up a harmonica, or a melodica.

-Yeah.

How have you found the response of the players?

It's tricky. And you know, you're asked to play this toy instrument

that you've never...maybe never played before

and, maybe it feels silly, but I think once they hear it,

they realise that it's actually...

You know, the sound of a harmonica is actually, for me,

a very heartbreaking sound.

It's intimately connected to everyone's breath,

it's a sound that everyone is familiar with.

So, I think, to put that in the context

of this virtuosic playing

is actually quite tender

and it gives the piece a sort of vulnerable quality.

So, I think that these players have such good ears that they,

I think, after the first rehearsal

they heard how it worked with the strings

and realised that it wasn't a joke, it wasn't a gimmick,

but it was a genuine part of the sound world.

When you're in the Albert Hall, will you be nervous at that point?

Is it a moment of, "Oh, it's out of my hands now,

"it's in the musicians' hands!"

Or is it just something that, you know, you just let the piece go?

Yeah, I mean, I wish that I could have

that sort of Zen attitude about it,

but I'm probably going to be, like, sweating out of my palms profusely!

Very honest of you! Very honest of you.

Obviously, there's something strange about not having control

and then you have to go up on stage and say, "That was mine."

You know, like, and represent.

So, I think I'll be very scared, but very excited.

So, get ready for the Royal Albert Hall to be transformed

into a sort of musical planetarium

as Karina Canellakis takes to the stage

to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra

in Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres) by Missy Mazzoli.

APPLAUSE

SILENCE DESCENDS

APPLAUSE

The American composer Missy Mazzoli turning

the orchestra into a musical solar system and a giant hurdy-gurdy.

The European premiere of Sinfonia (For Orbiting Spheres)

by Missy Mazzoli.

Karina Canellakis making her Proms debut

conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra

in the European premiere of Mazzoli's piece.

Originally a piece of chamber music,

but turned into that full orchestral version last year

for the Boulder Symphony Orchestra in Colorado.

Here's Missy Mazzoli making her way onto the stage

of the Royal Albert Hall.

She had a huge success recently with her full-length opera,

Breaking The Waves, based on the film by Lars von Trier.

It was in New York earlier on this year and won Best Opera

in the American Music Critics' Association.

And she has a third opera

due to be premiered in Washington DC next January.

Missy Mazzoli described by the New York Time Out

as "Brooklyn's post-millennial Mozart".

Next tonight, Bartok's Second Piano Concerto,

a virtuosic piece written by a true virtuoso.

Bartok is remembered today

as one of the greatest Hungarian composers of the 20th century,

but during his life he earned his living

mainly from teaching and playing the piano

and he was also a pioneering collector

and a passionate expert in central European folk music,

particularly of the Hungarian, Romanian and Slovak peasantry.

Bartok was an uncommonly gifted pianist,

but even he found his own work challenging at times.

It's said that after he wrote his fiendish First Piano Concerto

in 1927, he resolved that his second would be less difficult to play,

so quite how he ended up with a piece this hard, who knows?

The great pianist Sir Andras Schiff famously said that every time

he finishes the Second Concerto, there's blood on the keyboard.

We caught up with tonight's soloist Jeremy Denk in rehearsals.

So, Bartok's Second Piano Concerto

is about two kinds of virtuosity -

his virtuosity as a pianist

and his tremendous virtuosity as a composer.

It's in three very different movements.

The first channels Bach, Gabrielli, earlier music,

so there's all this wonderful chatter between the brass,

the winds and the piano. You know, counterpoint.

Kind of an orgy of counterpoint!

Then, the second movement, completely different mood,

everything turns still.

It's a great "dark night of the soul" Hungarian lament,

and the piano sings these kind of Hungarian blues.

And then the last movement,

good old-fashioned riotous Hungarian gypsy dance

and he brings back all the themes from the first movement

so that the piece is symmetrical, and it rounds itself out

and it returns to its beginnings.

APPLAUSE

The American pianist Jeremy Denk making his way onto the stage

of the Royal Albert Hall, joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra

with Karina Canellakis for the musical orgy

that is Bartok's Second Piano Concerto here at the BBC Proms.

SILENCE DESCENDS

MOVEMENT ENDS

NEXT MOVEMENT BEGINS

MOVEMENT ENDS

NEXT MOVEMENT BEGINS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, there's no blood on the keyboard of the piano,

and, frankly, Jeremy Denk looked like he barely broke a sweat.

But what an astonishingly muscular and radiant performance

of one of the most challenging works in the repertoire,

Bartok's Second Piano Concerto -

Jeremy Denk at the BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Karina Canellakis.

Bartok's Second Concerto is so difficult for both pianist

and orchestra that it's barely ever performed.

So, a wonderful treat to hear it here at the Proms.

And since it's done so rarely,

there are members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra

playing it for the first time tonight.

Exquisite playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Bartok's score demands such a lot from them.

Jeremy Denk is a real musical polymath.

As well as an astonishing virtuoso pianist,

he's also a composer, a writer

and a winner of the MacArthur Genius Prize.

And now for something completely different.

LAUGHTER

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Something completely different indeed!

American pianist Jeremy Denk

could not have picked a more perfect encore

than the slow movement of Mozart's C-Major Sonata

which carries the nick-name, the "Sonata Facile",

the "simple" or easy sonata. So, the ideal antidote

to the fiendishly challenging Bartok concerto

he played earlier this evening at the Proms.

Well, we've got about 20 minutes now

before the second part of this Prom

and we're almost at the end of this year's BBC Proms festival.

It all wraps up tomorrow night

with the traditional Last Night celebrations.

So, to mark the end of a glorious eight-week season

of broadcasts here on BBC Four,

we thought we'd take the chance to relive

just some of our favourite moments,

including some other encores from the 2017 BBC Proms.

APPLAUSE

LOUD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUTED SASSY NOTES

APPLAUSE

WILD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Just a taste of the BBC 2017 Proms and, of course,

lots of the television and radio broadcasts are still there

to relive on BBC iPlayer.

Well, the BBC Symphony Orchestra is starting to return

to the stage here at the Albert Hall.

The second half of their concert devoted to just one work -

music by the great Czech master, Dvorak,

and his gloriously joyful Eighth Symphony.

Unlike his other late symphonies, which are outward-looking,

the Eighth is a profoundly personal take

on the music of his homeland,

written in his summer home in Bohemia.

During rehearsals, Lloyd Coleman spoke to tonight's conductor,

Karina Canellakis, about this symphony,

and also about her stellar career which has taken her

from a job as a professional violinist to the conductor's podium.

Working with an orchestra like the BBC Symphony Orchestra,

how does your experience

as a professional violin player inform that?

My experience playing string quartets

probably influenced my approach as a conductor,

my approach to scores,

more than any other single thing that I've done as a musician.

The analytical way you have to approach

playing in a string quartet,

the way that you have to try things dozens of times.

You have to also learn how to communicate with other people

without speaking,

without necessarily dictating

or deciding every single tiny detail,

but sometimes it has to be left up to...what happens in the moment.

I understand that none other than Sir Simon Rattle

became something of a mentor for you,

or encouraged you to take up conducting?

He heard me play a chamber music concert and was very encouraging,

um, towards the idea that I would become a conductor.

And he gave me a tremendous amount of confidence and guidance.

We are still very much in regular contact

and talk about all things related to nerdy conductor problems.

What a thought! You and Simon Rattle having coffee over a score

and nerding out over Dvorak Eight or whatever!

I think all conductors love to nerd out together.

And it's your first time at the Proms as a conductor,

but it is also your first time conducting

the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

What do you make of this particular band?

Everyone is excited to play at the Proms,

and, at the same time, we're still getting to know each other,

there is a lot of electricity in the air

and there's a lot of suspense, even, as to what is going to happen.

How are we going to react to each other on that stage

with that audience on that particular day?

So, I'm very happy and very excited to work with them.

The Eighth Symphony by Dvorak - what did this piece mean to you

and why do you want to play it at this Prom?

I love this symphony...so much.

I think it's, um...

one of the most joyful pieces ever written.

It is so beautifully constructed,

every movement complements every other movement,

and by the time you get to the third movement,

this theme that the violins play, you don't expect it,

and it just takes you into a whole other world.

And then, you get to the last movement

and the trumpets have this fanfare

that comes out of...out of nowhere.

And you expect, perhaps, something victorious or march-like,

and you don't get that at all. You get, again,

the cellos somehow reminding you of the beginning of the symphony,

but then they play something incredibly tender,

like a lullaby, and then, after that,

you have the exciting full orchestra that comes in.

But even at that moment, it's never aggressive,

it's never violent, it's never that kind of intensity

that you would hear from perhaps other composers.

There's always a roundness to the sound,

there's always a richness and a suppleness

in the sound in Dvorak's music.

And especially in the Eighth Symphony.

And, ultimately, at the end of the symphony,

just the most sort of ebullient and joyful ending you could imagine.

We should have a thesaurus to look up

all the different words for "joy",

because it's just... that is what this piece embodies.

It's just absolute, pure joy.

Karina Canellakis, and here she comes to conduct

the BBC Symphony orchestra in Dvorak's Eighth Symphony.

APPLAUSE

SILENCE DESCENDS

MOVEMENT ENDS

NEXT MOVEMENT BEGINS

MOVEMENT ENDS

NEXT MOVEMENT BEGINS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The BBC Symphony Orchestra bringing warmth,

exuberance and plenty of joy to that performance

of Dvorak's Eighth Symphony,

conducted here at the BBC Proms for the first time

by the American Karina Canellakis.

The Eighth is one of Dvorak's most popular symphonies,

second only perhaps to the one that came after, the Ninth,

the so-called New World Symphony.

Karina Canellakis bringing principal flute Michael Cox to his feet,

principal clarinet Richard Hosford, principal oboe Richard Simpson.

And that's bassoonist Amy Harman.

Some wonderful woodwind writing by Dvorak in that symphony.

And Karina Canellakis was making her debut tonight as a conductor

at the Proms, although she has already played at the festival

as a violinist back in 2008.

She appeared in a concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

under Bernard Haitink.

There's lots of wonderful standout solo and orchestral writing,

but it's a very collegiate piece, Dvorak Eight.

Dvorak doesn't give any one individual limelight to a player,

he involves the entire orchestra

in the atmosphere of warmth and optimism.

Well, that's the end of this concert given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra,

but do stay tuned because straight after this broadcast,

you can watch the ground-breaking orchestra "Chineke!"

in their Proms debut from last week.

And, of course, tomorrow night, starting at 7.15 on BBC Two,

we'll begin our live broadcast

of the Last Night celebrations of the BBC Proms 2017.

But, for now, from all of us here at the Royal Albert Hall, goodnight.