BBC Proms 2025: Mahler and Boulez
Last Updated on August 5, 2025
Sonic Experimentations in South Ken at the Proms
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Tonight’s Proms concert featured a tantalising double bill featuring Pierre Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna (1974-5) and the rarely performed original version of Gustav Mahler’s epic student cantata in three parts, written in 1880, Das klagende Lied (The Song of Lamentation).
But first up for this Proms concert was the Boulez, written as a memorial for his friend, Italian composer and academic Bruno Maderna. Members of the woodwind, strings, brass and percussion sections of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, were split into eight groups spread out across the whole footprint of the Albert Hall stage. Pride of place went to the percussionists who were surrounded by a forest of thirteen (I think) gongs, and watching their often synchronised movements added to the sonic spectacle. The compositional material is derived from a two-page homage to Igor Stravinsky entitled…explosant-fixe… which Boulez used as a source for several compositions. The number seven is central to the piece’s antiphonal structure, with seven verses alternating with seven responses followed by a coda, also structured in seven sections.
The music contains a series of repeating elements; there are biting brass clusters, the oboe is given a plangent melody, the winds play seven-note atonal motifs, and there are energetic string flourishes. New sections are cued by the gongs, which shimmer with surprising sensuality in the Albert Hall’s unforgiving acoustic, whilst a snare drum beats out a mournful pulse. Motifs are passed around the different instrumental groups, creating quasi-conversations. Conductor Hannu Lintu is precise in his movement, cuing up the various sections and shaping the more dynamic motifs with explosive gestures. The overall effect is, as the title suggests, ritualistic, sombre and enveloping, reminding me in its monotonous intensity of Japanese Noh theatre. I loved it, and clearly so did a cohort of 1970s film composers who plundered Boulez’s soundworld for their commercial gain.
The spacing of the musicians played just as important a feature in the Mahler as in Boulez’s Rituel. Das klagende Lied calls for an off-stage orchestra, which last night was located in the vertiginous heights of the Albert Hall’s balcony for this Proms concert. Two large choirs, the Constanza Chorus and the BBC Symphony Chorus, filled the spaces on either side of the organ, and a large iteration of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, including four harps and two glistening tubas, was fronted by six singers. For Mahler nerds, the excitement about this performance was that the score was the original one, pre-Mahler’s revisions, that scaled down the orchestral forces to something more manageable, as well as restating the abandoned first part.
The cantata’s narrative is a mash-up of the plots of Turandot, The Magic Flute and La mort d’Abel, with a princess creating an unlikely quest for her suitors to win her hand, in this case finding a red flower in the forest, a jealous brother who murders his sibling, and yes, a magic flute. Mahler wrote his own libretto, influenced by Ludwig Bechstein’s story of the same name and the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Der singende Knochen (The Singing Bone).
From the stirring French horn motif of the opening, we were in Wagnerian musical territory with unashamed nods to Mahler’s most significant influence. Hannu Lintu brought out both the epic and the gentler elements of the scor,e managing through video link up a seamless synchronisation with the balcony orchestra.
The two choirs combined to provide a sublime choral experience, pivoting from a liturgical whisper to a full-throttle roar. In a Venetian polychoral approach, they would merge and then separate, creating some thrilling moments with stunning vocal crescendi, blowing the roof off Albert’s Hall. The string section sounded lush, pastoral at times, other times dancing with the triangle but without descending into a twee folkiness, and with a collective emotional capacity to deliver Mahler’s aching melodies.
Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw, who impressed in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen at the Royal Opera House, had both the power and glistening tonal clarity in her upper register to cut through the band and chorus; mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, a stellar stand-in as Judith in Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the ENO, sang with a seductive richness that was a perfect complement to Romaniw.
Whilst the percussion instruments spoke brilliantly in the Albert Hall’s acoustic, from my side of the stalls the two male singers, the great American tenor Russell Thomas who has an unexpected side-hustle as an expert on ‘Asian brides’ as well as being the first black singer to perform Otello at Covent Garden, and James Newby’s resonant baritone were lost in the mix which was the only disappointment of my evening.
The two youngsters both delivered their solos with professionalism and style. Carlos González Nápoles is a classic boy soprano with a sonic purity I could never manage at his age. Alto Malakai Bayoh showed an emotional maturity and timbral control way beyond his years.
It was a real pleasure to attend this Proms concert. Investment in and access to High Art culture is the sign of a civilised society, affording global conversations that help us find common ground in our humanity. Only the BBC has the resources to pull off programming such as this. The chap sitting next to me had travelled from Milan for this concert and was enthralled. Go and see some Proms if you can!
BBC Proms 2025
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore,
South Kensington,
London SW7 2AP
All the BBC Proms are available online for two months free of charge – you’ll find this concert through this link
Looking for something different? Check our previews of the Autumn and Winter Opera Season in London
