Andrew Clements 

Prom 14: BBCNOW/Fischer review – virtuosity pushed to the limits

Astonishing flautist Emmanuel Pahud performs in premiere of Simon Holt's concerto, Morpheus Wakes, writes Andrew Clements
  
  

Thierry Fischer
Conductor Thierry Fischer surrounded Simon Holt's piece with French music. Photograph: Chris Christodolou Photograph: Chris Christodolou

Simon Holt's collaboration with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, since he became its composer-in-association in 2008, has resulted in some of his most striking recent scores. The latest of them to be premiered is a concerto, Morpheus Wakes, which Holt composed in 2011 for the principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud.

This 15-minute portrait of the shape-shifting Greek god of sleep, first "thawing out of a slow, dark-hued and quite sparse permafrost-covered landscape" and later "hankering for release", according to Holt, pushes even Pahud's astonishing virtuosity to the limit. In the first of the two movements, he plays an alto flute, often at the very top of its range, before taking up the standard instrument for the second, while the two flutes in the orchestra (which lacks violins) extend that sound world with piccolo and bass flute.

Heard live in the Albert Hall, the music seemed elusive, fragile and almost insubstantial, but the Radio 3 broadcast gave a much better sense of the world that Holt builds around the solo instrument in the opening movement, in which a cimbalom adds a threatening edge to some of the textures, and the lower strings leave the flute suspended in its own space. The second movement sets off in a glitter of glockenspiels, and is interrupted by a manic cadenza, which recalls Messiaen's flute writing, and eventually unites the soloist with the orchestral flutes to ensure the ending is suitably brilliant.

Thierry Fischer, a flautist himself before he settled for the podium, conducted, surrounding Holt's piece with French music, Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and La Valse, and Duruflé's Requiem, which owes just a bit too much to Fauré's example, but was performed here with Ruby Hughes and Gerald Finley as the soloists, and the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the National Youth Choir of Wales.

• On BBC iPlayer until 24 August. The Proms continue until 13 September. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms

 

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