Prom 45: Schoenberg, Knussen, Henze, Stravinsky

A great bear of a man with a proudly bushy beard, Oliver Knussen reminds me more and more of Brahms. He and the BBC Symphony Orchestra open this concert with Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, once the future of music, now almost a century old. Schoenberg is one of those blamed by those who think it all went wrong at the turn of the last century, although if they bothered to listen properly they'd notice the Viennese part of the Second Viennese School. Nostalgic memories of older Austrian music is an integral part of Schoenberg's aesthetic, and Knussen and the BBC SO brought this out beautifully in a delicate, poised performance.This is wonderful music, passionate, urgent and beautiful (yes, beautiful). It's probably too much to hope at this stage that Schoenberg will ever be popular, but isn't it about time people stopped being scared of him?

It's obviously a day for lookalikes, as with her long blonde hair and blue and white dress, violinist Leila Josefowicz reminds me of no-one so much as Alice. Quite appropriate, as it turns out, as Knussen's Violin Concerto (as all his music) is filled with a quicksilver wit that seems to breathe much the same air as Lewis Carroll. I've long admired Knussen as a composer; he's far from prolific, but everything he produces seems so beautifully judged, expertly crafted and heartfelt without ever becoming overwrought.

I've only started really listening to Henze's music recently, so this was a welcome part of the programme. Sebastian im Traum has the same Tippett-ish feel to some of it as I've previously noted (though considerably more tautly argued than that composer's somewhat more diffuse music), and for a brief moment there even seems to be a hint of Elgarian wistfulness there, which leaves me to reflect on how curious it should be that a composer so much in his own tradition should sound so English.

What can be said about The Rite of Spring? Everything and nothing. It's one of the lodestones of the past century, the last piece that everyone agrees about, as someone wiser than me said, and casts a shadow over anyone who wants to write this stuff we inaccurately call classical music. But really, in the face of it, it's better to shut up, as a good performance leaves discussion unnecessary. This was one of those performances, rugged, rough, violent, full of that contradictory sense that this is the birth of Modern Music, and also a monument that defies all who stand before it.

Henze

There are some things that just seem to pass you by, and Hans Werner Henze has been one of them. I've long been aware of his existence, of course, and his position as one of the few significant composers to emerge from Germany since the war, as well as one not afraid to confront his homeland's past, but somehow his actual music has failed sink into my consciousness. So coming across a score of his Seventh Symphony while engaged in cataloguing the oversized score shelves in the library where I work* seemed to be a sign that I should have a listen, and I now wish I'd paid attention earlier. It's something of a shock to come across something so recent (he wrote it in 1983-4) that engages so directly and seriously, and without any ironic distancing, with the European symphonic tradition that stems from Haydn and Beethoven. All the more remarkable coming from a German composer, who must I suppose feel the weight of such a history even more than most of the rest of us. It's an immediately engaging piece, that's nevertheless clearly a weighty, meaty beast. If you like the sort of eclectic, not-quite-tonal style of such composers as Tippett (whose politics also find an echo in Henze), this is well worth a listen, and I shall certainly be hunting down more of his music.

One thing though: the CD cover is a truly horrible design. I know the sort of person most likely to buy a Henze CD probably isn't going to be put off or attracted by the cover, but really, couldn't they have made the effort?

* A startling number of these scores seem to come from the same two or three publishers, and be composed by people born within a few years of each other. A monument to a certain era in 20th century music...