The London Philharmonic’s single Prom this year was a concert to stir up wanderlust: four works all vividly evocative of far-flung places. Bookended by vivid depictions of the sea, it also brought the chance to hear a piece inspired by a very different body of water: The Rose Lake, Michael Tippett’s swansong, completed by the 88-year-old composer in 1993.
The Rose Lake was written after Tippett visited Lake Retba in Senegal, where a particular kind of algae turns the water pink. Spare, translucent music links thickly textured episodes that evoke the idea of the lake itself singing through the day – a slow, expansive melody that changes yet remains essentially the same. It’s not often performed – partly because of the demands on the percussionists and the sheer amount of hardware it requires to create Tippett’s otherworldly soundscape. Ranged along the back of the Albert Hall stage, next to every other percussion instrument you can think of, was a long line of three dozen rototoms: tuned drums a bit like miniature timpani. Two of the LPO’s percussionists darted back and forth along this line, arms whirling and sticks flying, looking from a distance like panicked spiders but hitting their marks to weave gossamer melodic effects. Even if the piece itself has the occasional longueur, it sounded glorious here as conducted by Edward Gardner.
Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, conjuring up an imagined, exotic Asia, marked the Proms debut of the recently anointed star mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina. Her singing shone, riding above the orchestra with seeming ease; and yet for all this power she seemed more the wide-eyed innocent than the indulgent dreamer. Perhaps in this huge hall a more operatic approach would have captured more of the songs’ sensuousness. The orchestra, however, had this covered, here and throughout, Gardner blending sonorities seamlessly with forensic attention to detail. Sibelius’s 1914 tone poem The Oceanides evoked both far horizons and a sense of fairytale; the first movement of Debussy’s La Mer went from uneasy, tense dawn music to a midday blaze. The best music about the sea is not just waves and water but time, space and, above all, light.
• Listen again on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 13 September.
