In any BBC Proms season, there are always concerts in which the sense of occasion is inseparable from the music-making. This year is no exception, and Mark Elder’s final Prom appearance with the Hallé, of which he has been the music director for 24 distinguished years, was undoubtedly one of them. At the end we got a fine speech from the conductor and an encore, Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit. But in the end it was the fascination of the Hallé’s and Elder’s work, not the emotions of the evening, that gripped most.
One of Elder’s many achievements in Manchester has been to build and sustain the Hallé’s choirs, integral to the memorable Elgar choral works that have provided some of Elder’s milestone events. Three of the choirs, including those for children and young singers, featured in James MacMillan’s 2022 Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, a no-holds-barred hymn to music, set to a 1697 John Dryden text, of which Elder gave the UK premiere in May, and which took up the first half of this Prom.
The vividness and delicacy of MacMillan’s orchestral craftsmanship was often striking. Spotlight moments for the Hallé’s principals were beautifully articulated. But Timotheus is fundamentally a big, well structured piece for large orchestra and mixed choruses. There is an underlying – and very contemporary – tension in the pulse of the score and text between the sounds of war and the need for music. It is an impressive conception, which built to huge ensemble moments, for which the Albert Hall is a perfect venue.
Elder’s unerring sense of structure and control of dynamics were the hallmark of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, after the interval. Where other conductors wear their hearts on their sleeves in this music, Elder focused instead on the symphony’s architecture and its many interconnections. An enormous amount of work must have gone into this refreshingly cerebral and disciplined approach to the piece. The stormy second movement was virtuosically played, but it was also masterfully controlled throughout, while the restraint of the adagietto made the release of the finale seem emotionally and musically truthful in a way one rarely hears.
