Prom 63: BBC Singers & Nash Ensemble / Brabbins &Amp; Cleobury, Royal Albert Hall. London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->
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Your support makes all the difference.Predominantly slow, soft and, in his later work, often extremely long, Morton Feldman's compositions pose challenges to both performer and listener - above all, in establishing the right context for music that otherwise can seem merely tedious and insubstantial. Until this late-night Prom, however, it had never occurred to me that the Royal Albert Hall could provide an answer.
Admittedly, Feldman's Rothko Chapel, of 1971, is not among those more than hour-long late pieces, and its culmination in a melody on solo viola, which, to many English ears, evokes Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, is not typical. But the work's ruminative choral humming (there's no text), folksy viola, and murmuring or chiming celesta and percussion require a conducive atmosphere in which to contemplate its subtle unfolding.
The violist Paul Silverthorne, celesta player Ian Brown, percussionist Richard Benjafield and the BBC Singers, plus the vocal soloists Amy Freston and Kim Porter, all under Martyn Brabbins, achieved just the right balance of precision and sensitivity to mood, an abundance of steely control still yielding just the right, rapt aura: magical in the cavernous spaces of the Albert Hall around 11pm. The composer's extremely low, but arguably aspirational, dynamics were not, however, always in evidence.
This performance was an apt demonstration of the power that Feldman's music can have under the right conditions. It was also another instance this season of a seminal American work of the 1970s receiving its overdue Proms premiere.
Brief words only for the preceding works in this curious but inventive programme. Gyorgy Kurtag's bizarrely (and expensively) scored Songs of Despair and Sorrow was exquisitely done by Brabbins and his colleagues: dynamic, bleak and moving all in a 20-minute span. Schumann's Four Songs for double chorus, much less than this composer's best but worth a hearing, were finely captured by the BBC Singers under Stephen Cleobury.
BBC Proms to 9 September (020-7589 8212; www.bbc.co.uk/proms)
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