Review: BBC PROMS: RAVEL’S PIANO CONCERTO FOR THE LEFT HAND, Royal Albert Hall

A slightly curious evening lay in wait with this Prom, performed by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the guiding baton of Chief Conductor Mark Wigglesworth. Shostakovich, Ravel and Walton are all familiar names to the classical music enthusiast, but the pieces themselves don’t appear to have anything to link them; that it’s the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death and the 150 years since Ravel’s birth is possibly as close as we’re going to get.

It’s not mandatory, of course, to have an overarching theme - but it is often more satisfying to have some way of connecting everything that’s performed in one concert.

The Shostakovich Suite for Variety Orchestra was actually a set of the composer’s pieces that was put together by his friend and collaborator Levon Atovmyan; it comprises a selection of compositions for films - he was quite prolific across his career, scoring anything from propaganda films to screen adaptations of Shakespeare. As well as excerpts from The Adventures of Korzinkina, The First Echelon and The Gadfly, there is also music from his ballet The Limpid Stream.

It’s a terrifically fun collection, and stands in stark contrast to the rest of Shostakovich’s canon. Consisting of eight movements, the individual pieces range from marches to dances (“Waltz 2” will be familiar to even the most casual listener) and culminate in a finale that brings everything together in a triumphant conclusion. That this suite calls for plenty of accordion and xylophone probably tells you everything you need to know.

Commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein (brother to the philosopher Ludwig), Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was born of necessity; Wittgenstein was a promising young pianist when he was called up to serve in the First World War, a conflict in which he lost his right arm to amputation. This didn’t deter him from resuming his career after the war, and he commissioned several works from a variety of composers.

It’s remarkable, then, that until last night Wittgenstein was the only one-handed pianist to have performed Ravel’s concerto - and that just so happened to be at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of the Proms in 1951. Nicholas McCarthy is a rising star in the music world, with several huge achievements under his belt already, and he described it as a “real privilege” to pick up the baton from Wittgenstein in performing this piece.

The concerto itself is an extraordinary piece of work, with the orchestra starting off in the lower registers (just as a left hand typically would for a two-handed pianist) and gradually blooming through the introductory section. A combination of Ravel’s writing and McCarthy’s playing ensures a rich and textured sound emanates from the piano; speed and accuracy on the keys, plus good pedalwork, seems to be crucial here.

Alexander Scriaben’s Nocturne was chosen as McCarthy’s encore piece, as it was the first piece of left-hand repertoire he ever played. It’s a beautiful piece that deserved to close the concert rather than end the first half - McCarthy’s mastery of the keys was absolutely spell-binding.

It was a spirited performance of Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with a special mention for James Bower and Richard Cartlidge on the timpani. However, I couldn’t help but feel that this would have been better served to opening the concert rather than being the second half, as it was the least engaging of all of the compositions on the programme.

Overall, this was another excellent offering from the Proms, and definitely left me keen to find out more about the left-hand repertoire - it would be fantastic if this could become a regular part of the Proms, especially with Nicholas McCarthy around.

The BBC Proms run at the Royal Albert Hall until 13 September