Anja Bihlmaier’s Proms programme put Mosaic, Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde into one evening with the Philharmonic Orchestra. Jamie Barton and Clay Hilley carried the Mahler work, and Bihlmaier called it “both a work about saying farewell and a celebration of being fully present in the moment.”
The shape of the concert did the heavy lifting. Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 is in F sharp minor and carries the nickname Farewell, while Mahler’s song-symphony stretches its emotional reach across one song of joy and the final trio and duo. That gave the programme a clear arc, not a grab-bag of pieces.
Mosaic and Farewell
Asteristh Sloane story aside, the evening’s most useful programming choice was the pairing of Bushra El-Turk’s Mosaic with Haydn’s Symphony No. 45. The first gave the concert a contemporary opening; the second supplied the historical reason for the farewell idea, with players leaving the stage as their parts ended. That structure made the concert legible even before Mahler arrived.
Haydn’s score is the one that quietly changes the room. Once the music starts behaving like an exit plan, the audience is listening for subtraction, not excess, and the piece’s F sharp minor profile keeps the mood taut rather than decorative. For a Proms crowd, that is a sharper proposition than a simple greatest-hits sequence.
Jamie Barton and Clay Hilley
Jamie Barton and Clay Hilley were the vocal centre of Das Lied von der Erde, with Barton described as the promised star of the evening even though she was harder to catch from the side. That matters in a hall this size: projection is not just about volume, but about how the voice lands from different seats.
Clay Hilley’s presence also carried extra weight because he had earlier sung Tristan with Pappano and the LSO earlier in the summer. Here, the Mahler line asked for a different kind of control, and the review treated the balance between the two singers as one of the concert’s main tests rather than a decorative feature.
Bihlmaier’s Philharmonic
Bihlmaier left before the final trio and duo in Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, a move that kept the focus on the score’s built-in gesture of departure rather than on a conductor’s final salute. The Philharmonic woodwind responded with supreme character in Youth, and Jennifer Galloway’s oboe contributions began with Der Einsame in Herbst.
Alex Jakeman and David Pyatt made poetic, haunting contributions, and the programme was described as totally satisfying. For listeners deciding whether this Proms concert was worth their attention, that is the verdict that counts: not a loose sequence of big names, but a tightly argued evening where the farewell idea held from El-Turk through Haydn to Mahler.
