Prom 61: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orch/Rattle review – rich and rewarding Adès, graceful Bruckner

It’s a brave composer that goes head-to-head with Anton Bruckner in his bicentenary year, especially when a German band is in town. That Thomas Adès’s Aquifer, led by Simon Rattle making his first Proms appearance as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, held its own is a testament to two of Britain’s most consistently original talents.
Aquifer, here receiving its UK premiere, takes its name from an underground layer of permeable rock through which water seeps and flows. Adès’s music duly oozes and gushes, with string lines that echo waveforms, brass tectonics that slither and slide, and woodwind that seems to bubble up through the cracks.
Rattle unerringly located the music’s sweet spot, teasing out its effervescent hues – like the propulsive opening dappled with tubular bells and vibraphone – and honing its climaxes. It can be urgent, but it can be jaunty too, with a recurring horn theme that John Williams might be proud to call his own. One thing that’s certain, though, it’s seldom still. And for all the surface flamboyance, it’s a rich, rewarding and thoroughly mature work that feels tantalisingly familiar even when it’s being entirely novel.
Rattle’s subsequent onstage presentation of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s gold medal to the deserving, yet endearingly taciturn composer capped a memorable first half.
Performances of Bruckner symphonies can sometimes feel predictable, the only question being just how loud and drawn-out do you like your climaxes? Not here. Rattle has peered deeply into the score of the “Romantic” Fourth Symphony and discovered something fresh and new. The result was an interpretation that was light on its feet and imbued with a grace and lucidity rarely associated with this composer.
Instead of channelling Wagner, whose influence looms over Bruckner’s Third Symphony, Rattle brought out the Brahms in the Austrian composer’s music, his knack for orchestral balance and musical storytelling impeccable. The orchestra was elegance personified, their elfin touch sending shivers up the spine in what must be some of the most daring pianissimos ever heard in the Albert Hall, let alone in a Bruckner symphony. And yet the tension never flagged in a truly remarkable performance that held the audience spellbound.