Proms 2014 Prom 9: Brahms & Janáček by Brahms, Janáček, から (2014/2014), 導体 Valery Gergiev, Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom

One of choral music’s greatest works, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass is a passionate, secular oratorio celebrating nationhood and peace. By contrast, conflict is to the fore in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work that distils the drama of the composer’s relationship with Schumann and his wife Clara. Valery Gergiev conducts the London Symphony Orchestra, with soloist Barry Douglas. ‘In the tenor solo I hear a high priest,’ Janáček said of his Glagolitic Mass, ‘in the soprano solo a girlish angel and in the chorus our people.’ These elements,combined with organ and orchestra, yield a huge, passionate secular oratorio celebrating life, nationhood and peace. In the first half Barry Douglas, whose relationship with the Proms goes back almost 20 years, returns with Brahms’s elemental First Piano Concerto – a work that distils all the conflict of the composer’s relationship with the troubled Robert Schumann and his wife Clara.