Six recruits to the latest cohort of New Generation Artists were unveiled by the BBC last night. And by a happy coincidence an existing New Generation Artist, French viola player Lise Berthaud, making her Proms debut, was the eloquent soloist in Walton’s Viola Concerto. Scything effortlessly through the thickets of semi-quavers in the non-stop second movement, she also exploited the amber hues of the instrument’s lowest register in the surrounding ones.
Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony in F minor is the least ingratiating of the nine he wrote. The composer wasn’t sure he really liked the sound it made. I have to admit I found something crude about those jaw-crunching dissonances at the start and end. But there’s no skating around them, and Andrew Litton pulled few punches in his spirited account with the BBC Symphony Orchestra that tapped into the bluff Falstaffian and demonic elements alike.
Harrison Birtwistle’s Exody maps a journey through one of his beloved labyrinths. There are false starts, culs-de-sac and the occasional sense of having been there before. But Litton led us through, relishing the sombre textures en route to the ambivalent ending, overcast with doubt and pregnant with promise.
The BBC Proms run until Saturday (bbc.co.uk/proms)
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