The acoustic space of the Royal Albert Hall is notoriously problematic, but when music is specifically written with it in mind, as the pieces by Judith Weir and Brett Dean in this BBC Prom were, it’s quite another matter. Weir’s Moon and Star, premiered at the Proms in 1995, is an imaginative setting of a typically elusive, but evocative, poem by Emily Dickinson. With its brass (including four trumpets) echoing round the rafters and celestial-sounding percussion twinkling away, the cosmic elements of the score are ideally realised in this space. The BBC Singers once again proved eloquent advocates.
Dean’s The World’s Wife, a setting of five poems from Carol Ann Duffy’s delightfully bizarre collection of that title, was a BBC co-commission, receiving here its world premiere. Like Moon and Star, it’s resourcefully scored, but although the text is declaimed by a solo voice, it’s no more intelligible than in Weir’s piece. The problem may have been exacerbated by Claire Booth’s fast vibrato. But the sheer invention of the piece, together with the soaring, expressive voice of Booth, for whom it was written, were sufficiently compelling to make one hope for future performances.
