Royal Albert Hall
Prom 58: Salome, Deutsche Oper Berlin, RunniclesSunday, 31 August 2014
So here’s where I join the ranks of Old Opera Bores by declaring this Salome, Nina Stemme, the best I’ve seen since Hildegard Behrens in 1978, and this Salome as in Richard Strauss’s Wilde opera from Donald Runnicles and his Deutsche Oper Berlin... Read more... |
Prom 53: Brahms Symphonies, Budapest Festival Orchestra, FischerWednesday, 27 August 2014
About 10 minutes into the Brahms Third Symphony I wanted to check a name in the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s programme. I dared to turn a page. Bad idea. Such preternatural stillness had settled over the sold-out Royal Albert Hall that the gesture... Read more... |
Prom 52: Budapest Festival Orchestra, FischerTuesday, 26 August 2014
The first of this year's two Proms by the Budapest Festival Orchestra had looked like a rather strange confection, on paper at least. With eleven scheduled contributions, and only two of them destined to make it into double figures, its timings had... Read more... |
Prom 50: Weilerstein, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, BělohlávekMonday, 25 August 2014
Even as orchestras began to sound more and more alike, there was the Czech Philharmonic. And many of its notable characteristics remain to this day: a modest, homespun quality, warm and engaging and full of bright-eyed distinction in the woodwinds.... Read more... |
Prom 46: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, BarenboimThursday, 21 August 2014
By the time we got to the end of this Prom, with four of the five encores – the whole of Bizet’s Carmen Suite – cannily crafted to bolster the short official programme, most of the rightly euphoric audience had forgotten the most unsatisfying first... Read more... |
Prom 34: Piemontesi, BBCNOW, SøndergårdTuesday, 12 August 2014
Some things that spread like wildfire, like ebola and wildfire itself, are not good news at all. But performing Nielsen’s symphonies? That’s another matter entirely. In the next concert season, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia both... Read more... |
Prom 33: Schwizgebel, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, GardnerMonday, 11 August 2014
After the European Union Youth Orchestra hit unsurpassable heights last week, the Proms plateau of excellence remained available to another youth carnival of weird and wonderful 20th century monsters. If the EUYO showed us that Shostakovich’s... Read more... |
Prom 29: Grosvenor, Goode, BBC Philharmonic, NosedaSaturday, 09 August 2014
“That,” she said, “is what it must be like when you enter heaven.” And I knew just what my wife meant. The organ was in full regalia, revelling in the marshmallow glory of the chorale theme in Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony, with the orchestra... Read more... |
Prom 28: D'Orazio, Clayton, BBCSO, OramoFriday, 08 August 2014
All kinds of narratives were at play in this Prom from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Sakari Oramo - and perhaps the truly adventurous programmer might have double-deployed Rory Kinnear, dispassionately chronicling Stravinsky... Read more... |
Prom 27: Trusler, BBCNOW, Wigglesworth/Inspire Workshop, Royal Albert HallThursday, 07 August 2014
A full day began and ended with Elgar the European, or rather the citizen of the world. After all, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, played with panache by 180 young musicians in a morning meet-up, owes its swagger to the "Cortège de Bacchus"... Read more... |
Prom 26: European Union Youth Orchestra, London Voices, PetrenkoWednesday, 06 August 2014
The symphony – that structural pillar of classical music – found itself under siege last night at the Proms. Both Berio’s Sinfonia and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony assault and subvert, reshape and reimagine the genre, puncturing the Victorian... Read more... |
Prom 24: BBCSSO, Runnicles/Solemn Vigil of Commemoration, Westminster AbbeyTuesday, 05 August 2014
Despairing in the depths of the Second World War, Richard Strauss turned to Mozart’s string quintets as well as the complete works of Goethe for evidence that German culture still existed. Vaughan Williams might well have done the same for his... Read more... |
