Storm, Stress and Rapture at the Proms

Omer Meir Wellber - Quincena Musical Wiki Image

A dancing Omer Meir Wellber conducted the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, one of Europe's leading orchestras, with brio, acuity and panache at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall last Friday.

Wellber, a former Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted the DKam, as it is affectionately nicknamed, from the harpsichord for Haydn's Symphony No. 44 in E minor.

Not for Wellber any sense of reverence for period instrumentation; rather he trusted his own judgement in leading a stripped down orchestra for this beautiful Haydn piece which embodies the bracing rhythms, lyrical melodies and dramatic silences typical of the 'Storm and Stress' movement.

The conductor played trippingly before springing up like a jack-in-the-box - pirouetting this way, then that - to conduct from above the keyboard.

The prolific and devout Catholic Haydn composed six Masses between 1796 and 1802. These, along with his two late oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, combine faith, Enlightenment ideals and a Romantic sense of the sublime.

Tonight's Symphony No. 44 is nicknamed 'Trauer' or 'Mourning'. As an old man, Haydn is said to have asked for the piece to be played at his own funeral. It was duly performed at a memorial concert in Berlin.

High Romanticism continued in Max Bruch's lush and ever-popular First Violin Concerto. Wellber followed the young Swedish soloist Daniel Lozakovich like a hawk from the podium, stirring to animate a now more populous DKam in its musical ripostes to the ravishing solo violin. The concerto concluded with a sunny Allegro, full of fast fingerwork and evocative of Hungarian folk dance music.

Lozakovich had gladly surveyed the orchestra during his moments of rest in the concerto but Wellber virtually had to manhandle the modest soloist to take the audience's rapturous applause. He responded with the sensitive Romance from Henryk Wieniawski's D minor concerto as an encore.

Sketched out in less than a week during a period of white-hot inspiration in 1841, Robert Schumann's Fourth Symphony is the extrovert complement to his calmer, recently completed 'Spring' Symphony.

Impressively conducting with neither score nor baton, Wellber conducted an exhilarating and excitingly paced interpretation of the work from DKam with dramatic hands and his dancing body.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will play Haydn's Nelson Mass as part of their programme at the Proms at the Albert Hall this coming Sunday 9th August at 7pm.

All of the Proms are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and, in addition to any tickets which may remain, promenade tickets are always released from 9.30am on the morning of each Promenade performance.