Memories of Pierre Boulez continue to hover over this year’s Proms like a spectre at the feast. My first encounter with Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin – his masterpiece, in my view – was in this hall, with this very orchestra and choir – and what a performance it was. Stark, malevolent and capricious Boulez and the BBC Symphony Orchestra left a lasting impression – and few performances since (Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra a notable exception) have come close to it. The work is in many ways Bartók’s answer to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (it was composed in 1918/19) and he never again composed music quite so turbulent, violent or discordant than he would write in The Miraculous Mandarin.
Like Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, much of the atmosphere of The Miraculous Mandarin is gained from the sonic backdrop of place – here, the grimy city in which clients and prostitutes mix for sexual pleasure. The orchestra becomes Bartók’s sound-world: prostitutes (often played on the bassoon), old men (played on brass), students (the oboe) and other clients (clarinets) are often evoked. Colossal orchestral passages, with percussion, accompany the mandarin himself – some of the finest music Bartók ever wrote.
If not quite as lacerating as Boulez (as I still remember it), Josep Pons had at his disposal a BBC SO on tremendous form, nevertheless. Perhaps more of the music’s exotic chromaticism emerged here, the tempo certainly wider; but one craved a brisker speed for the chase sequence which lacked just the right rhythmic pace in the violins to drive the music forward with true barbaric force. Some of the 6/8 rhythms felt just a tad on the slow side during the robber episode, less hysterical than one might have wished for too. The seductions, on the other hand, were magnificent – louche, light and with elegant playing. The mandarin’s triple death was superbly done (blurred glissandi on brass and timpani sharply etched) – and the BBC Singers were wonderfully mysterious, siren-like, in their wordless text of the mandarin hanging from the lamp, his body glowing. The Miraculous Mandarin is a work which still has the capacity to shock; here, the performance – if sometimes on the measured side – reminded us how violent this Bartók score is, as well as how shattering an experience it can be. Boulez it might not have been, but Josep Pons brought much detail to the work, and considerable emotional impact.
Beatrice Rana’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was amongst the finest I have ever heard. One reason her playing was so exceptional was because of a willingness to emphasise the poetic side of this work rather than the simply virtuosic. In Variation 7, for example, the score markings were exemplary, the meno mosso near ideal, with Rana’s stress on the harmony and lyricism judicious enough to make the Dies Irae elements of Variation 9 frighteningly obvious. Octaves rang out like tolling bells. Variation 17 had the most gorgeous tone, before Variation 18 – as majestic as I have heard it. There was some beautiful rubato here – the spaciousness between the finger work; the weight on the keyboard which gave it such depth of expression; the interplay with the orchestra. The return to the Dies Irae was superb. Variation 19 was like a jig. The remaining variations were dazzling – cyclones of notes, breathtaking keyboard control and the most dynamic shading of colour. It was dizzying to watch and hear. I’m not sure the BBC SO were the most impressive of partners (woodwind solos were over balanced, and often too coarse) but they gave Rana adequate support.
The concert opened with Paul Dukas’s La Péri. A “symphonic poem with a balletic air”, Pons got good playing from the BBC SO (strings were impressively weighty in places) but tempi didn’t always allow the impressionistic writing of Dukas’s work to emerge with sufficient colour. Less iridescent than they might have been, some of the melodies here felt a little as if they had been swept under the carpet.
Marc Bridle
Rachmaninov’s ‘Paganini’ Variations (BBC Proms 2025)
Paul Dukas – La Péri; Sergey Rachmaninoff – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Béla Bartók – The Miraculous Mandarin
Beatrice Rana – piano; BBC Singers; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Josep Pons – conductor
Royal Albert Hall, London, 8 August 2025
All photos © Mark Allan