Royal Albert Hall
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... |
Prom 66: Uchida, LPO, JurowskiSaturday, 05 September 2015
After the broad, lyrical Shostakovich Tenth Symphony Andris Nelsons presented at the Proms last week, Vladimir Jurowski’s austere and unrelenting Eighth came as a shock. The two performances were equally fine, but at opposite ends of the... Read more... |
Prom 65: Coote, English Concert, BicketFriday, 04 September 2015
What was a stunningly good Alice Coote recital doing trapped inside an A-level Theatre Studies project? I’m not sure that Being Both – the semi-staged sequence of Handel arias originally commissioned by the Brighton Festival – ever came close to... Read more... |
Prom 62: Barton, OAE, AlsopWednesday, 02 September 2015
A concert of Brahms chamber music I could understand, especially given a balance between early and late. An evening of orchestral Brahms, with or without voices, needs much more special pleading. It didn’t get nearly enough last night. An expanded... Read more... |
Prom 60: Denk, San Francisco Symphony, Tilson ThomasMonday, 31 August 2015
One astonishing creature was missing from the cavalcade of meerkats and whatnot featured in Sunday afternoon’s Life Story Prom introduced by Sir David Attenborough. I mean, of course, the species known as henricuscowelliensis. Or otherwise, plain... Read more... |
Prom 58: Kullervo, BBCSO, OramoSunday, 30 August 2015
Last night's Proms performance of Sibelius's Kullervo symphony was radiant, unforgettable, but there has also been a pure coincidence this past week which is simply too good to pass over unremarked: Thursday also saw the first-time publication... Read more... |
Prom 57: Pires, COE, HaitinkSaturday, 29 August 2015
It’s hardly surprising that at the grand old age of 86 Bernard Haitink can pack them in at the Albert Hall so that there’s no room left in the Arena and those still queueing 10 minutes before the concert have to go up to the Gallery. But he was also... Read more... |
