Jörg Widmann’s opera Babylon, a bombastic, Stockhausen-baiting mix of myth, spirituality, human sacrifice and singing genitalia, had its premiere in Munich seven years ago. It has yet to be staged in the UK; until then we have to make do with his Babylon Suite, already heard in Cardiff and Birmingham. This performance by the Orchestre de Paris and its outgoing music director Daniel Harding was its first in London.
It’s a barnstormer of a piece, wheeling through music from the opera in an unbroken 30-minute work for a huge kitchen-sink orchestra but no singers. Initially, the music grows swiftly from a single accordion line into a layered, chaotic whirl. It’s the kind of opening passage that promises cataclysm – and that’s what we get, although not in the brutal way we might anticipate.
Instead, things get progressively more tuneful: first a glimpse of soupy Rachmaninov, then an impish, Straussian solo violin, a slow klezmer-style waltz and an oompah band playing Oktoberfest songs. By this time, the Widmann prism distorting all this melody has all but dissolved, and towards the end the waltz returns in a way that is so Hollywood it’s as if the credits are rolling. The final reiteration is climactic, but oddly marmoreal and therefore almost sinister.
Taken out of the context of the opera, it is a baffling piece; but it’s archly anarchic and infectiously fun, the work of a virtuoso composer clearly enjoying himself. The Paris players were enjoying it, too.
There was also much geniality in the works that framed the Widmann, from the tenderly shaped lines of Schumann’s Genoveva overture to the thanksgiving music at the end of a careful performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 6. The orchestral sound was pristine and beautifully blended, almost to a fault. Harding is leaving one French organisation in good shape; next year he’ll join another – a qualified pilot, he’s planning to take a sabbatical to work for Air France. But while neatness and precision may be exactly what we want from the person flying our plane, this Beethoven could have used a little bit of turbulence.
• Available on BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 14 September.
