Interact & Reviews / Reviews

I generally agree with Moray's comments. The fusion of sitar and polyphony didn't really work - indeed in the first peice it sounded rather as if someone were playing 2 different CDs at the same time, although the plainchant was more succesful as the performers took it in turns rather than try to complement each other. Khan's improvisations on the themes in this piece were quite good, and the echoing off-stage voices added a lovely ethereal note.

The Messiaen was peformed fabulously, though the music itself is my idea of hell, and the soprano solo was spine-tingling. The final raga was magnificent and held the audience spellbound. Unfortunately, as Moray indicates, the quality of the amplification was poor, at times making the sound quite distorted, and that detracted from the experience. I'm not sure why the hall was so empty - I have been to 'cross-over' and 'fusion' Proms before and it has been almost full. Perhaps the mix of raga, Messiaen and Renaissance was just too eclectic.

Moray McConnachie
I had high hopes from the fusion of sitar and Northern European Renaissance polyphony which began Prom 63. It was Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble's CD Officium which first brought to a wide public the fusion of early music and improvisatory traditions (in that case jazz saxophone). If we had been hoping for the same searing experience in the first part of this concert, we were disappointed.

Neither choir nor Khan seemed comfortable together, which showed in the hand-overs between David Hill and Nishat Khan. There seemed also to be problems with tuning and tempo when choir and sitar were playing together, and a general lack of confidence. However, some spine-tingling moments emerged when the chants of a small group of female vocalists off-stage were by the sitar plangently imitated and amplified, which suggested that with more rehearsal time this experiment might have excited and delighted. Mr Khan has recorded a beautiful, meditative CD combining sitar and Gregorian Chant with the Ensemble Gilles Binchois, so perhaps this encounter might be tried again with better results.

That the choir independently had no problems with technique or confidence was comprehensively demonstrated by an excellent performance of Messiaen's challenging Cinq rechants, which benefited from some very good solo singing, particularly in the soprano register, and some terrific ensemble work around the piece's tricky and impressionistic rhythmic writing. Despite the technical difficulties, this was anything but a dry performance, and was delivered with enormous passion and commitment to an audience who thoroughly appreciated it.

There followed a night raga. It is hard to imagine a more suitable close to a late Prom. The Prommers were induced to sit down by Mr Khan (whose instruction that you cannot listen to music standing up may have surprised some of those intending to stand for Messiaen's 78-minute Turangalila Symphony the following day), and many sat or lay as streams of meditative explorations of a traditional Mughal raga followed. Perhaps sensing that at so late an hour too meditative a performance could be a dangerous thing to a sleepy audience, with the entrance of Rashid Mustafa Thirakwa's tabla the music became occasionally violent, with some explosive playing on both tabla. Mr Khan and Mr Thirakwa showed fine mutual understanding and anticipation, as they pushed the tempo to a climax, before the raga ended in a welter of ever-softening, ever-descending sitar notes. Again, this was very well received.

Although cross-cultural experiments have often been part of the Proms in recent years, and I am personally thoroughly in favour of them, the small audience at the Prom suggests that they may put off many. The enthusiastic response of those present suggests that the individual elements of this concert have an appreciative audience. When the sitar next appears at the Proms, its amplification (which I presume is necessary in the cavernous Hall) must be a lot better. Not louder, but better.