Royal Albert Hall
Prom 32: Bartlett, Elschenbroich, RPO, WhitacreMonday, 10 August 2015
The England cricket team recently went through seven Test matches alternating winning and losing, the longest such sequence in the history of the game. Eric Whitacre managed a similar, and similarly frustrating, series of hits and misses in his... Read more... |
Prom 29: Bavouzet, BBC Philharmonic, CollonSaturday, 08 August 2015
Yet another full Proms house sat down, and of course stood, for a rather strange six course meal which turned out not quite what the menu had led us to anticipate. While it was obvious that the rare and expensive bird dishes were going to be quickly... Read more... |
Prom 25: Orfeo, EBS, GardinerWednesday, 05 August 2015
English choirs and early music ensembles have a bad reputation for stiffness, formality – nothing wrong with the music, just the presentation. But with this dramatic and Italianate Orfeo, John Eliot Gardiner, his English Baroque Soloists and... Read more... |
Prom 24: BBCSSO, RunniclesTuesday, 04 August 2015
You never quite know whether a new work by James MacMillan is going to veer towards the masterly or the overblown. His magnificent chain of concertos has arguably yielded masterpieces, but the Third Symphony at the Proms in 2003 sounded like an... Read more... |
Prom 23: Verdi's Requiem, BBCSSO, RunniclesMonday, 03 August 2015
A weekend of extremes at the Proms took us from stark solo Bach on Saturday to the massed forces of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, gathered under Donald Runnicles for Verdi’s Requiem. As a showcase... Read more... |
Prom 22: Piemontesi, Aurora Orchestra, CollonSunday, 02 August 2015
What would you expect of an ensemble performance played from memory? That the odd lapse, entirely understandable over the span of a 40-minute symphony, would be more than offset, perhaps, by gains in intimacy and flexibility as the players could... Read more... |
Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach (II)Sunday, 02 August 2015
While Friday night’s triptych of solo Bach began and ended in a sombre, contemplative place, the arc created for the second sequence by pairing the final sonata for solo violin with the second and third partitas is altogether more dramatic. In... Read more... |
Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova plays BachSaturday, 01 August 2015
I can’t be alone in often leaving a Proms violin concerto convinced that the Bach encore was the best bit. The Royal Albert Hall is a chameleon space, capable of dwarfing the largest orchestra and muting the weightiest of Wagnerian singers, but also... Read more... |
Prom 17: Hallé, ElderFriday, 31 July 2015
Roger Wright may be gone from the BBC Proms, replaced for now by a committee, but his legacy lives on. His zeal to recover areas of English musical culture that may be considered the festival’s birthright resulted last night in a first Proms... Read more... |
Prom 16: Late Night with Radio 1, Pete TongThursday, 30 July 2015
After years of pussyfooting around pop, hoping the Pet Shop Boys will write something in a passable classical idiom, the Proms has embraced the most euphoric popular genre of all - dance - to its bosom. Pete Tong, long-standing Radio 1 presenter and... Read more... |
Prom 14: Prokofiev Piano ConcertosWednesday, 29 July 2015
Gergiev’s programme for this concert raised eyebrows when the Proms were announced: all five Prokofiev piano concertos, presented in chronological order, over the course of a long evening. As it turned out, he had some good reasons for his plan. The... Read more... |
Prom 13: Josefowicz, BBCSO, MälkkiTuesday, 28 July 2015
A packed Albert Hall told an instructive story: programme Holst’s The Planets at the Proms and you can dare to do anything in the first half. Besides, though it will be a red letter day when we don’t have to put “women” in front of “conductors”, the... Read more... |
