To the Albert Hall last night for a Prom – my first this year.
I was a guest and our hostess did us proud; four front row seats in a big box close to the stage (Box 9) and in-box catering. As she has a touch of Parkinson’s she is allowed to bring a carer (half price) and I was her nominated carer last night. An usher kept telling me where the lifts and lavs are located so I must have looked the part, unless she thought I was the one in need of care.
But we digress. We kicked off with Sibelius; uncontroversial and more than a whiff of Wagner I thought – nobody else did. Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto was not played by the Swiss pianist on the printed programme and we heard a last minute Canadian substitute. I wondered how the BBC had secured his services. Had he dashed across the Atlantic? I took a look at Jan Lisiecki’s website and fortuitously there is a gap in his busy schedule.
Jan, now twenty-seven, was an infant prodigy, specialising in Beethoven’s piano concertos. He is a tall, skinny, tousled chap with good stage presence. He’s by no means a Proms regular; it was his second gig, the first was in 2013 when he played a Schulman piano concerto.
He played without music and with a flamboyance that communicated itself to us all. Well not quite all. My hostess, herself no mean pianist when she was younger, said he was taking liberties with Beethoven’s composition and playing to the crowd at the expense of an understanding of the music. Anyway he milked the applause and I’m sorry to say did not turn to the orchestra to include them.
Nielsen’s 4th Symphony is a perfect Proms piece. The duel between two sets of kettledrums (timpani) was excellent. One set was in the middle of the Prommers but apparently had no one to play them. At the last moment a late arrival in t shirt and denim shorts, apparently a prommer, emerged from the throng precisely in time to play his part; a coup de timpan?