Proms
Prom 2: Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, PappanoSunday, 17 July 2016
The Royal Opera’s Boris Godunov production made the short trip from Covent Garden to South Ken for the company’s appearance at the 2016 Proms. The opera (here in its original 1869 version) is a good choice for concert presentation: as Antonio... Read more... |
First Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Oramo, Gabetta, BorodinaSaturday, 16 July 2016
The first notes of the first night of the Proms weren’t the ones expected. Instead of either “God Save the Queen” or simply the start of the Tchaikovsky, the “Marseillaise” rang out into the Royal Albert Hall, the Tricouleur projected in coloured... Read more... |
Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC, BBC FourSaturday, 12 March 2016
Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Pierre BoulezThursday, 07 January 2016
David Nice writes: it hardly seemed possible, but a pivotal figure in the 20th century music scene has died, two months short of his 91st birthday. As composer, Boulez now seems not so much a game-changer as a constant innovator in one of many... Read more... |
Last Night of the Proms, BBCSO, AlsopSunday, 13 September 2015
“A rich and eclectic sequence of works” was the promise made in this evening’s concert programme. It certainly was that, with the Last Night festivities taking in new and old, well-known and obscure, plus a handful of celebrity soloists for good... Read more... |
Sticky fingers: Conductors at the 2015 PromsSunday, 13 September 2015
Every summer at the BBC Proms the world's greatest conductors are captured in the waiting lens of Chris Christodoulou. His official portraits are sent out to the press straight after most concerts. But at the end of the two-month festival he... Read more... |
Prom 73: VPO, BychkovFriday, 11 September 2015
Every Proms season needs a late-romantic rarity to envelop its audience in a bewitching spider-web of sound. This year’s candidate was of more than passing interest, the incandescent Second Symphony of Franz Schmidt, scion of the Austrian Empire –... Read more... |
Prom 72: Kraggerud, BBCSO, LittonThursday, 10 September 2015
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark attended Nielsen’s 150th birthday concert earlier this year in Copenhagen’s glorious new concert hall. Her grandparents were there at the premiere of Nielsen’s blithest work, his cantata Springtime in Funen on 1921. Our... Read more... |
Prom 70: Lugansky, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, TemirkanovTuesday, 08 September 2015
Russian classics evening at the Proms? It could be what Alexandra Coghlan, writing about Prom 69, described as “another night at the musical office”. But given the masters in charge of two masterpieces fusing storytelling with symphonic sweep and... Read more... |
Prom Chamber Music 8: Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk TrioTuesday, 08 September 2015
She is habitually called “the violin star” but this was Nicola Benedetti in the role of dedicated chamber music player, thoroughly prepared and hard at work. Any expectations that she might play in a flamboyant or limelight-seeking way proved... Read more... |
Prom 69: Balsom, BBC Concert Orchestra, LockhartMonday, 07 September 2015
You can see the logic to the programming of this year’s Free Prom: famous opener with a good tune (Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre) to help wash down the new commission (Guy Barker, The Lanterne of Light), before we all get down to business with a nice... Read more... |
Prom 68: Yo-Yo Ma plays BachSunday, 06 September 2015
When was the last time you saw a classical soloist wearing a suit and tie on stage? It was the only formal thing about Yo-Yo Ma’s solo Prom last night – a delicious visual anachronism, at odds with the American’s laid-back performance style that is... Read more... |
