PROM: The Met Orchestra plays Strauss
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor
Elza van den Heever Soprano
Richard Strauss – the sole composer featured in tonight’s Prom – has always been
something of a Marmite taste. Criticism (particularly of Strauss’s early works)
extends from Alma Mahler and Cosima Wagner through to the present day.
Fortunately I am very fond of both Marmite and Richard Strauss.
The New Yonk Metropolitan Opera’s Met Orchestra under the beautifully fluid baton
of conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin were on home territory with the first two items,
firstly Der Rosenkavalier – Suite. Particularly noteworthy was the fine and beautiful
handling of the legato passages with strings that soared and sang interspersed with
descending punctuation from the harp and celeste.
The final scene from Salome introduced soprano Elza van den Heever. It was
unfortunate that the enormous orchestra overpowered her on a few occasions as
she brought the piece to life with a heart-wrenching performance, finding every
nuance of pathos and anguish as the opera reaches its grotesque conclusion.
Strauss’s score moves from the atonal to the lushly lyrical at a whim, utilising the
extremes of the orchestra (very high pitched timpani, contra bassoon and bass
clarinet at the bottom of their register), all deftly handled.
Post-interval the Met orchestra moved away from opera suites and accompaniment
to Ein Heldenleben. Most apparent here was a sense of drive in a particularly
forceful and muscular statement of the opening theme in Eb and throughout the first
section to its cliff-hanger ending. The snarling and grumpy critics, portrayed by the
wind tenor and bass tubas in fifths rattled along at great pace before giving way to
the beautiful violin solos, played by leader Benjamin Bowmanwith molto glissando to heighten the emotion still further . The repeat and merging of the themes at the
end, weaving solo violin and horn with haunting cor-anglais calls brought a
tremendous (in all senses) end, brought the concert to a resounding conclusion.
The American sound – tight and clean throughout – works particularly well in the Royal
Albert Hall’s cavernous acoustic. It is often not so much the notes themselves but the
space around them that marks a performance: for example the impressive use of
lifted bows and articulated tonguing gave plenty air and light in what can, in lesser
hands, become all-out noise.
In all, I enjoyed it as much as I do Marmite!
