Prom 74: Sonnleitner, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Maazel

Bruckner's Eighth resonates through the Albert Hall, despite a below par Vienna Philharmonic

Tradition used to decree that the last Friday Prom would be devoted to worshipping Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. Not so today. Anything deemed serious and big occupies the slot, and if Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony isn’t serious and big, what do you want? A 40-tonne truck?

Vienna Philharmonic, Tilson Thomas, Royal Festival Hall

VIENNA PHILHARMONIC, TILSON THOMAS, ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL Clever Brahms-Schoenberg programme from the American conductor

Clever Brahms-Schoenberg programme from the American conductor

When Schoenberg made his steroidal orchestration of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet he saw and heard what many don’t - that Brahms was more of a radical than the music world was ready to acknowledge, that he was not the conservative in the shadow of Wagner that commentators at the time felt the need to brand him.

Vienna Philharmonic, Rattle, Barbican Hall

VIENNA PHILHARMONIC, RATTLE: Gloriously shabby Schumann, Brahms and Webern from orchestral aristocracy

Gloriously shabby Schumann, Brahms and Webern from orchestral aristocracy

Just as the most impeccably aristocratic families have the shabbiest homes, so the oldest and most prestigious orchestras frequently deliver the most scrappy performances. Trying too hard is so arriviste. King of this insouciant shabby chic are the Vienna Philharmonic. It's almost as if at some point the orchestra got bored of playing well. One hundred and sixty years at the top delivering the world's warmest, plushest, most sophisticated sound must get repetitive. 

Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, Barbican

The Rite of Spring and Bruckner's Third receive a wonderfully vulgar performance

Shuffling about the podium like a cha-cha-chaing Jack Lemmon, slam-dunking his first beats, kicking out his heels for second beats, épéeing the trombone entries like a toy toreador, it wasn't hard to see why Lorin Maazel gets such a regular critical roasting. During The Rite of Spring he was almost playing up the vulgarian tag. "You want vulgar? I'll give you vulgar. Take that ridiculously elongated glissando! And that totally out-of-place ritardando! And that gob-smackingly inappropriate sforzando!" That Maazel is a showman has never been in question. What is more problematic is discerning whether this actually mattered? Eyes away now if you're averse to a bit of heresy but might Stravinsky's Rite and Bruckner's Third actually not both benefit from a bit of vulgarity?
 

Prom 74: Vienna Philharmonic, Mehta

Zubin Mehta coasts at the Proms

One sure (but expensive) way of luring Zubin Mehta to London is to hire the Vienna Philharmonic, too. He and the orchestra go way back to a time when the Indian-born superstar’s smouldering good looks might have suggested Bollywood as a more likely destination than the Vienna Conservatoire. But only the most precociously gifted 20-something conductor offers up Bruckner’s 9th Symphony for his first recording with the illustrious Philharmonic. And quite a fist of it he made, too. I still return to it from time to time.

Prom 73: Vienna Philharmonic, Welser-Möst

Still Frankly Worse Than Most?

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra like to do things their way. They still show little compunction about discriminating on sexual and ethnic grounds and for over 70 years have maintained the idiosyncratic position of having no fixed principal conductor. Instead, like the prettiest girl in the school year, they carefully bestow grace and favour on a special chosen few. One of their longest running relationships has been with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a partnership whose early results – trail-blazingly authentic - regularly raised Viennese hackles. So it was a great disappointment to learn that Harnoncourt – 80 this year - had been taken ill and that Franz Welser-Möst - whose former orchestra, the London Philharmonic, had nicknamed him Frankly Worse Than Most - would take his Proms place.
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