BBC Proms: Ma, BBCSO, Robertson

Over the past six weeks of the Proms the BBC’s hard-working Symphony Orchestra has performed everything from Britten to Brahms, Verdi to Volans. Their Mahler with Ed Gardner was an operatic epic, their programme of English music for Mark Wigglesworth glowed with wit. Yet hearing their ragged and unlovely account of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony last night it was hard to remember their triumphs, hard even to remember the delicate account of Graham Fitkin’s new Cello Concerto that they delivered in the first half, so complete was their collapse.

Conceived as a programme of boundary-breaking works, Beethoven’s iconoclastic Ninth was paired with the world premiere of Fitkin’s concerto. Rejecting conventional virtuosity for a more exploratory dialogue between soloist and orchestra, the concerto also eschews movement divisions in a favour of a single, episodic structure.

Written with last night’s soloist Yo-Yo Ma in mind, Fitkin’s work develops like a series of textural variations, showcasing Ma’s range of tone colours and testing their relationship with different orchestral shades. The long, held notes that dominate the opening solo line are marked “warm”, “colder”, undermining the supremacy of pitch and placing the focus instead on quality of sound.

It’s an approach that demands a different listening process. The unfolding cantilena of the solo line stresses the melodic, the horizontal, but against the stillness of the cello it is the vertical harmonic arrival points, the junctions at which glassy cello harmonics encounter high wind cluster chords that draw the ear, forcing it to reinterpret the unchanging solo cello as contexts shift around it.

Yet among all this minimalist restraint and abstraction, some hints of Fitkin’s humour and humanity still remain. The first theme in the cello is bittersweet and folky, unmistakably English in character, while the central plucked section is a syncopated rhythmic scrum of a scherzo – a fight Ma gamely flung himself into, the filmy gestures of the opening long forgotten. If this sweet-tempered musical meditation is an anti-concerto, then its rebellion approaches with a smile and a minimalist hint of a wink.

The spectacle and scope of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony feels like a perfect fit for the Proms, yet the tricky Royal Albert Hall acoustic doesn’t necessarily seem to agree. It takes a special orchestra indeed to project the force needed by the opening Allegro if it is not to sound like a toy drum on a battlefield. Dynamics need to be recalibrated – fortes louder, pianos softer – if the contrasts are to survive the journey out into the arena. Here detail became lost in a non-committal wash of mezzo-forte, balance issues drowning certain themes while giving absurd prominence to accompanying motifs.

While David Robertson (pictured right), the BBCSO’s principal guest conductor, seemed to be giving a rather neat, incisive interpretation, the orchestra seemed either unwilling or incapable of following, catching his energy for a few bars before slipping back into confusion and torpor. Given that offstage bands can coordinate with the stage from up in the gallery there seems little excuse for the brass and string sections who perpetually bumped heads during transitional passages, with the music audibly rattling over the points each time they came together. Fourth horn and First Oboe (to a greater and lesser degree) were having off-nights, and by the time we reached the final movement the orchestra might as well have been in the pub in body as well as mind.

The arrival of the soloists and chorus (a team effort from the BBC Symphony and Philharmonia Choruses) prompted everyone to rally slightly, and it was the singers’ well-drilled impetus that carried us across the finish line. Iain Paterson’s pleading “O Freunde” (can the lines, “O friends, no more of these sounds! Let us rather sing something pleasant and full of joy” ever have been more aptly applied?) rang out with all the urgency the orchestra had lacked, and Toby Spence and Karen Cargill also gave life to Schiller’s joy, leaving only Christine Brewer an uncharacteristically shrill musical naysayer.

Perhaps the unfamiliar Fitkin absorbed too much rehearsal time, perhaps the orchestra were tired in this, their 10th Prom of the year – whatever the reason, this was perhaps the biggest musical disappointment of the season. I only hope that among the sold-out hall there weren’t too many for whom this was a first-time experience, a one-off experiment with classical music. In their shoes, I wouldn’t be coming back.

• Listen again to this Prom for the next seven days on the BBC Radio 3 iPlayer
• theartsdesk's pick of the Proms
• theartsdesk's BBC Proms 2011 complete listings