Proms review: The Sound of an Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Taking its title from Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Young People’s Concerts, televised in 1965, the evening saw a mix of live music, recorded words and video projections designed to explain the art of orchestration.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Joshua Weilerstein began with the first note anyone hears at the start of a concert, which is the octave unison – the “A” note that musicians tune to one another.

We moved on to chords, hearing the difference in sound that three great composers – Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – brought to a straightforward E flat major, and reached Wagner’s famously complicated “Tristan” chord. Recorded extracts from writings by past composers included Berlioz’s warning that any attempt to pin down the art of orchestration will fail.

In the second half longer excerpts of music began with the UK premiere of the first movement of American composer Elizabeth Ogonek’s All These Lighted Things – an exuberant piece inspired by Thomas Merton’s poem of that title. Bernstein’s jazzy overture for Wonderful Town had Weilerstein practically jitterbugging on the podium.

In contrast, there was Ligeti’s dreamlike Atmosphères, followed by Debussy’s evocative 3rd movement Dialogue Of The Wind And The Sea from La Mer. Wagner’s Prelude to Lohengrin and Beethoven’s Egmont overture concluded an enlightening journey through musical history.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/Alsop★★★✩

The following evening’s Prom by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under music director Marin Alsop again marked the year of Leonard Bernstein’s 150th birth anniversary.

In a programme note Alsop drew connections between Bernstein’s Second Symphony The Age Of Anxiety and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony in their subtexts of war and its aftermath. The Age of Anxiety, first performed in 1949, interprets WH Auden’s poem of the same name about the search for a meaning in life in troubled times.

At the piano French soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet brought out the contrast between the nocturnal anxieties of Auden’s four New Yorkers and their desperate attempts through partying to quell their fears but the mood was edgy without being exciting.

Shostakovich had greater reason for anxiety when he composed his Fifth Symphony under the shadow of the Stalinist purges, as several of his close relatives and friends had been imprisoned or executed.

The symphony reflects the menace of the era in the brass and percussion of military marches and a dark sense of foreboding from the cellos. In the final part the minor chord changes to a triumphant D major, to provide the joyful ending that the Soviet dictator required.

At the Leningrad premiere in 1937 the audience’s prolonged standing ovation signalled Shostakovich had survived to compose another day.

To finish the evening and lighten the somewhat sombre tone, Alsop chose a cheerful medley including extracts from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for encores.

The Sound of an Orchestra Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/ Weilerstein Prom 58 and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/ Alsop, Prom 60, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (Tickets:020 7070 4441/ royalalberthall.com; £7.50-£100)