Proms
Prom 33 review: Davidsen, Gerhardt, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds - Nordic music glowing with colourFriday, 11 August 2017
Goodness the BBC Philharmonic plays well for John Storgårds. The orchestra’s chief guest conductor has a lovely easy manner on the podium – all curved gestures and loose arms, and the result is a partnership that brings the absolute best out of the... Read more... |
Prom 31 review: La Damnation de Faust, Gardiner - Berlioz tumbles out in rainbow coloursWednesday, 09 August 2017
The road to hell is paved with brilliant ideas in Berlioz's idiosyncratic take on the Faust legend. John Eliot Gardiner proved better than anyone in last night's Prom that this splendidly lopsided "dramatic legend" can only be weakened by its many... Read more... |
Prom 30 review: Bournemouth SO, Karabits - pagan fire and thunderTuesday, 08 August 2017
A Prom of unrelenting momentum began promisingly with Beethoven, and the false start that opens his First Symphony. On this showing, Kirill Karabits has coached his Bournemouth musicians in the classical repertoire with a dash and flair that brings... Read more... |
Prom 29 review: BBCSO, Bychkov - Musorgsky's Khovanshchina sears in concertMonday, 07 August 2017
"Ura!" as soldiers cry in Russian epic opera's last fling, Prokofiev's War and Peace: supertitles have arrived at the Proms, after much special pleading here and elsewhere. They're needed more than ever in Musorgsky's typically quirky survey of... Read more... |
Prom 26 review: Frang, Power, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi – fire and air from a crack teamFriday, 04 August 2017
Before reuniting us in high spirits with a pair of much-loved old friends, Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and Brahms's Second Symphony, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi at the Proms took us into a darker, and unexpectedly... Read more... |
Prom 24 review: Crebassa, Philharmonia, Salonen – thrilling performance of Adams masterpieceThursday, 03 August 2017
The title of John Adams’s Naive and Sentimental Music is a bit of a tease. Read literally it promises – or threatens – unsophisticated mawkishness, though that is the last thing it delivers. But maybe it was this title, alongside relatively... Read more... |
Prom 23 review: OAE, Christie - scintillating drama in Handel's Israel in EgyptWednesday, 02 August 2017
How do you make a venerable warhorse frisk like a coltish show-pony? Hire William Christie as the trainer. In a performance of scintillating drama and crystal-clear definition, the past master of Baroque revival and re-invention coaxed the Orchestra... Read more... |
Prom 22 review: Pygmalion, Pichon – theatrical take on Monteverdi's VespersTuesday, 01 August 2017
As the lights dim the choir turn their backs on the audience. A spotlight picks out a single singer. With one hand aloft he leads the male voices through the “Pater Noster” and “Ave Maria” in a stern and stately plainchant. Then suddenly the full... Read more... |
Prom 20 review: Hough, BBCPO, Wigglesworth - towards the light fantasticMonday, 31 July 2017
Romantic concerto, contemporary work, classical symphony: it's a common format at the Proms, but not usually in that order. Both David Sawer's 1997 firework The Greatest Happiness Principle and Haydn's ever-radical Symphony No. 99, sharing a light-... Read more... |
Prom 16 review: Osborne, BBCSSO, Volkov - scintillating piano concerto premiereThursday, 27 July 2017
Expectations ran high for this first performance of Julian Anderson’s piano concerto, and they weren’t disappointed. Taking its title from a book of the same name by Andre Malraux, The Imaginary Museum goes on a journey around the world over the... Read more... |
Prom 14 review: BBCSSO, Wilson - illusion after illusion from musical conjurerWednesday, 26 July 2017
A packed Royal Albert Hall on a Tuesday night for a programme of 20th-century English music. Have the nation’s concert-goers come over all prematurely patriotic? Is Holst’s The Planets really that much of a draw? Or could the crowds have more to do... Read more... |
Prom 13 review: Rana, BBCSO, Davis – Malcolm Sargent tribute lacks punchTuesday, 25 July 2017
Ten days ago I reviewed the First Night of the 2017 Proms. Last night I was back at the Royal Albert Hall to hear the First Night of the 1966 Proms. This time-capsule experience was courtesy of a re-enactment of Sir Malcolm Sargent’s 500th Prom, in... Read more... |
