Bruckner, Sibelius, John Adams: you only need to hear a snatch or two of their writing to recognise the composer in question. In the case of Adams, the label of minimalism is helpful only up to a point. In 1980 he declared himself to be “a minimalist who is bored with minimalism”. Though he acknowledges his debt to Glass and Reich for the use of a steady pulse and hypnotic repetition, he parts company with them in his violent changes of gesture and mood that signal highly effective moments of drama. His music is frequently a kaleidoscope of colour, rhythm and texture which he continues to shake in order to dazzle the listener. Expect the unexpected.
At this Prom it fell to Kazuki Yamada, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the CBSO Chorus and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs to kick off early celebrations of Adams’s 80th birthday, due in February 2027. Choosing Harmonium, completed in 1980, made good sense. If you’re going to go big, you might as well go very big. The Royal Albert Hall may have its weaknesses, but this is the kind of music that seems made for this auditorium. With its many-faceted spatial effects, the vast array of percussion instruments, including some like the metallophone and sizzle cymbal not often encountered in concert, and writing for massed human voices that moves from a chant-like reverie to a wild and passionate outpouring of emotion, there is huge variety on display. Big and small, loud and soft, jagged and smooth, dramatic and reflective, the work packs a lot into its thirty-five minutes.
In this commission from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the composer’s initial intention was to treat the chorus like a gigantic human synthesiser, producing an endless stream of vowels and syllables. This idea was eventually rejected as being too much of a constraint, and it is certainly the case that the work profits considerably from the use of three poems, the opening one by John Donne and two by Emily Dickinson. In their powerfully expressive language they lend an undeniable transcendence to the overall effect. It is a reminder that contemporary composers are well equipped to write music of spiritual significance. Music that moves in more senses than one.
Chorally, the work is full of mesmerising, voluptuous power. With 270 choristers, unflagging in commitment and tone, filling the vast spaces of the hall, this was music on steroids, with all kinds of hallucinogenic substances thrown into the mix. Starting on a single D above middle C, the initial single note develops into a tone cluster and then a chord, creating the layering effect that Adams calls “accretion”. Donne’s text, in his Negative Love, an example of an apophatic approach to the existence of God, detailing what the deity is not, rather than what it is, is skilfully woven into the orchestral texture by Adams. Yamada brought out all the flashes of colour, the almost imperceptible shifts in rhythm and pacing, with an unerring sense of epic scale. He was equally inspired by the cinematographic imagery of the first Dickinson poem, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, which moves from its sepulchral underpinning through a gentle peal of alpine bells, a borrowing from Mahler, to a state of quiet acceptance. Finally, in the concluding movement that features Dickinson’s Wild Nights, Yamada expertly combined the eruptive, Dionysian force of some of the most shattering passages with the soft lambency of the whispered phrase, “Were I with thee” and the continuous, hypnotic undulations of the word “rowing”. In this work, the CBSO has past form. It gave both the UK premiere in 1987 and its Proms premiere three years later. Here, there was much instrumental detail to delight the ear, and evidence of the coordinated precision of the six percussion players to admire.
If Adams has so often been branded a minimalist, the pigeon-holing of other composers is equally tiring, because this glib form of simplification inevitably throws up all sorts of questions. As in the case of Poulenc. The first half of this concert was taken up with two of his works which are often seen as “light”. In this context, Leonard Bernstein once commented that a distinction between “serious” and “light” music is meaningless. All that matters, he thought, was whether the music was “good” or “bad”. Which in turn opens up another linguistic conundrum. Safe to say, Poulenc himself wasn’t in favour of intellectualising. How could he be, as one of Eric Satie’s mentees and as a member of the rebellious group of fellow composers called “Les Six”, noted for their tongue-in-cheek humour? His advice was short and simple: “Don’t analyse my music – love it!”
In Poulenc’s orchestral music there is little or no attempt at profundity or seriousness. It is full of French joie de vivre, of unashamed playfulness, a world in which the bon vivant is very much at home, relaxing in silk dressing-gowns and surrounded by ornate cigarette-holders and cocktail glasses. A BBC commission destined in 1947 for what was then the Third Programme, the half-hour long Sinfonietta has taken almost eighty years to be played at the Proms for the first time. Its good humour shines through the four movements, the silken threads of melody and delicious wind harmonies richly conveyed by the CBSO and Yamada. Nothing to excite the iconoclasts of the immediate post-war period, which probably accounts for its comparative neglect.
High spirits were very much to the fore in the performance of the Concerto in D minor for two pianos that followed, with the Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen as the two sparkling soloists giving their Proms debut. This too was a commission, one of many by the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, who as Winnaretta Singer was heiress to the family’s vast fortune. Written fifteen years before the Sinfonietta, it is permeated with a spirit of childhood exuberance. The Jussen siblings made light of the helter-skelter passagework, playing up all the fun elements. It is a work that looks both back and forward: I relished the dreamy Larghetto with its reminiscences of the slow movement of Mozart’s K466 concerto; in the effervescence of the final Allegro molto it was startling to hear blocks of brass choral sound which reappeared years later in Messiaen’s Turangalîla. The enthusiastic Proms response was rewarded with one of the trademark encores that the Jussen brothers give, Igor Roma’s Strausseinander, which draws on themes from Die Fledermaus, stunningly played. Who said that classical music has to be difficult and boring?
Alexander Hall
Poulenc and Adams
Poulenc: Sinfonietta; Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor. John Adams: Harmonium.
Lucas and Arthur Jussen (pianos); CBSO Chorus (chorus-master Simon Halsey); Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (chorus-master Brett Weymark); City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Kazuki Yamada (conductor)
Royal Albert Hall, London, 26 July 2026
All photos © BBC/Chris Christodoulou