Jennifer Koh

Financial Times
By Alastair Macaulay
August 17, 2022
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BBC Proms review — Missy Mazzoli’s spells make the orchestra dance

Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts violinist Jennifer Koh and the Philharmonia Orchestra © Mark Allan

Sunday at the Proms brought the European premiere of a new violin concerto, Procession, by the American composer Missy Mazzoli. Monday brought the British premiere of a three-part orchestral work, Time Flies, by British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. What the two works had in common was narrative intention. Did the music in performance convey this in the programme?

Mazzoli’s concerto, played by the violinist Jennifer Koh with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, is in five parts, casting the soloist “as a soothsayer, sorcerer, healer and pied piper-type character, leading the orchestra through five interconnected healing spells”. Much of this was vividly apparent. The score made striking, magical contrasts between spectral highest notes and lowest depth-charges, with surging portamenti between the two extremes.

Keen, darting dance rhythms and a range of orchestral colours distinguished “St Vitus”, the second section, but the whole score was so theatrically atmospheric that I could easily imagine it becoming ballet music. The final three sections, however, merged into one: though I was happy listening, the programme had encouraged us to hear them as “O My Soul”, “Bone to Bone, Blood to Blood”, and “Procession Ascending”: I’m not sure many listeners would have known which was which.

Mazzoli’s Procession was sandwiched between excerpts from two of the best-known of all ballets: seven items from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, 11 from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. I’ve heard both of these hundreds of times, but Rouvali’s conducting rekindled my delight in them, with gorgeously sensuous playing from the Philharmonia. He plays fabulous games with tempo: a sudden pause, brilliant accelerations and decelerations. These would trip up any unprepared ballet company, and yet the exceptional vigour of these performances is the lifeblood of theatre.

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