A memorable evening at the Proms, just a few days after our previous memorable visit. A rare midweek booking for us, but the promise of Evgeny Kissin, Zubin Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra was too tempting to miss.
Again we had The Duchess (Janie’s mum) with us.
The programme was two big pieces:
- Frédéric Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor
- Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)
I hadn’t seen Evgeny Kissin before but had heard about him. Janie thought he was excessively flamboyant – a complaint she has about many star pianists.
Anyway, here is a video of Mehta conducting Kissin performing an extract from this piece some years later – this time with the Israel Philharmonic rather than the Bavarian State Orchestra:
The Duchess thought Kissin’s cadenzas were absolutely wonderful but she thought him “rude” or “self-centred” doing encores ahead of the interval on a night with such a long programme. Takes one to know one.
The encores were Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat major and Scherzo in B flat minor, seeing as you asked…
…OK, you didn’t ask. But my mum loved that Polonaise and she would have got all excited about the young Evgeny Kissin had she been there and heard him play it a bit like this:
In truth, we did hear some people saying that they would have to leave before the second half, because they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get home, which was a real shame for those people.
While stretching our legs during the interval, we ran into my cousins, Angela and John Kessler, who were very keen on Kissin and also eagerly looking forward to seeing Zubin Mehta and the Bavarians wrestle with Anton Bruckner for 80 minutes or so after the interval.
The Duchess seemed most displeased that we had run into some people that we knew, preventing her from being the centre of attention for five minutes or so.
The Bruckner was certainly worth the wait. I had seen this symphony performed several times before but sense that this evening was the best performance I have seen.
Here is an extract of Mehta conducting the Bruckner Symphony, but on this occasion with the Berlin Philharmonic rather than the Bavarian State Orchestra.
Returning to our memorable evening, here is Erica Jeal’s review of that evening from The Guardian. Good to see Kissin and Mehta getting three stars while Whitney Houston only got two.
Kissin Jeal Guardian 11 Sep 1999, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Geoffrey Norris in The Telegraph was not so sure about Kissin:
Kissin Telegraph Norris 10 Sep 1999, Fri The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
While Michael Kennedy in the Sunday Telegraph seemed less sure about Zubin Mehta than we were, comparing him, perhaps unfavourably, with Bernard Haitink and Günter Wand. I’m a lucky fellow, as I have seen all three of them conduct Bruckner 8.
Mehta Telegraph Kennedy 12 Sep 1999, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Knowing that the concert would finish late and that we both had an early start the next day, I sense that we did not go out to dinner after this one. Janie had probably prepared some cold compilations for us to munch, with a glass of wine, when we got home.
Janie also very sensibly had arranged for Jill Wooton to come and give us both a massage at home on the Friday evening. Two nights out with The Duchess in five days, with plenty of work in between, we sure both would have needed the massages and sure both had earned them.
Diary says that we went to Andrea’s BBQ party on the Saturday evening (a rather good one at her house in Shepherd’s Bush, if I remember correctly) and then to Mum & Dad’s for tea on the Sunday. We didn’t hang about back then.