Pet Shop Boys

BBC Proms
Royal Albert Hall, London SW7

4/5

THE decision by Roger Wright to invite the Pet Shop Boys to premiere a new work at the BBC Proms was a brilliant act of inclusion, opening the prom doors to experimentation, and the chance that something untried might work.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s A Man From The Future is based on the life, and for some, suspicious death of Alan Turing, who ironically helped defeat fascism, only then to become a victim, like many others, of historical, state-controlled abuse of gay men in Britain.

Juliette Stevenson’s otherworldly voice brings to life poignant extracts from Andrew Hodges’s touching biography on Turing, leaving Tennant’s trademark romantic realism to take flight in the bitter-sweet songs of defiance and anger sung by the BBC Singers as a reply to Stevenson’s spoken word.

Tennant is modestly a part of the singers throughout while Lowe controls the digital cipher, striking a brilliantly layered balance between electronic atmospheres and the instruments of the BBC Concert Orchestra, with hidden beats, mood swings and a slight touch of dance music.

The sum from across this eclectic mix of elements, in the spirit of Turing, succeeds as a unification of feelings between man, machine and instrument and what is thought of, hidden or known in the spoken word.

Aside from the personal politic nature of A Man From The Future , Prom No 8 was a show of how Tennant and Lowe’s use of harmony and melodic range can transcend popular music and move within orchestral forms and to this effect their Overture To Performance and Angelo Badalamenti’s guest arrangement of Four Songs In A Minor, sung by Chrissie Hynde were delightful, especially for Love Is A Catastrophe and when Tennant joined in for the duet for the socially uncomfortable but ever so entertaining (You Pay My) Rent.

Runs to September 13 2014. Box office (0845) 401-5040. Promming tickets at £5 are available daily, arrive early.

PETER LINDLEY