BBCSO
Justine Elias
It's hard to criticise a movie that opens with a shot of an Allied G.I. spitting and urinating on a Nazi insignia, but that moment of smug satisfaction (Nazi punks must die!) is fleeting. Nuremberg, written and directed by James Vanderbilt, has more on its mind than self-congratulation.
Drawing on Jack El-Hai's book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" and other biographies and autobiographies, Nuremberg focuses on the complex prosecution of Hitler's second in command, Herman Goering, and 21 other top Nazi officials.
Where its esteemed predecessor, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-header of the RPO playing Respighi, Milhaud and Vaughan Williams at 11am and an evening concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and massed choirs in Gipps, Grieg and Bliss.The matinée (★★★★) was a set of three cityscapes, depicting Rome, Rio and London. Respighi’s The Pines of Rome is a terrific orchestral showpiece, low on memorable musical content but high on vivacity, gorgeous in its Technicolor scoring and performed here with pizzazz by the RPO, especially in the second and fourth movements. After the rumbustious opening Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The auditorium and arena were packed – and the stage even more so, bursting at the seams with players and singers: the perfect set-up for a First Night of the Proms. This is traditionally an opportunity to programme a large-scale choral work, and last night that was Vaughan Williams’s seldom heard Sancta Civitas. Of course it’s seldom heard, with its huge orchestra expanded to include organ, piano and off-stage trumpet, baritone soloist, massed choir behind the orchestra and children’s choir in the gallery – plus a blink-and-you-miss-it tenor solo at the end that must command the highest Read more ...
David Nice
Actually it was a Thursday evening to Saturday experience, but what riches in seven concerts. The only Britten I heard was one of the Six Metamorphoses after Ovid as I approached the Red House on a hot Saturday morning, just too late for that pop-up performance, but in time for Berio. The old guard of composers made a mixed impression, but one of several highlights was to discover how imaginative the new generation is proving in six world premieres.The two biggest contemporary triumphs rested partly in the infinitely adaptable voice of tenor Allan Clayton, one of the four “Festival Read more ...
David Nice
Not to be overshadowed by the adrenalin charges of the Budapest Festival Orchestra the previous evening, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska gave a supercharged triple whammy of masterpieces. They even had a pianist to match the Budapesters’ Igor Levit, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. He seemed as delighted with Stasevska and the players as they were with him; the post-performance embraces spoke volumes about communicative kindred spirits.Was it worth assembling a full BBC Symphony Chorus and two soloists as well as large orchestra for the first 18 minutes? Read more ...
David Nice
At the end of an exhausting week in which Holocaust Memorial Day struck a more urgent note than ever as fascism started tearing through the USA, parts of this concert were bound to hit hard. That they did so to the power of 100 was thanks to the extraordinary impact of Jakub Hrůša, now recognised as one of the greats by British audiences as he waits to take up the full-time reins at the Royal Opera. The BBC Symphony Orchestra burned for him in fullest focus.Shostakovich’s Eleventh is one of his symphonies which require special pleading (which is much better than bad, the only adjective to Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“Bold, ambitious, and good for the sector.” So said Charlotte Moore, the BBC chief content officer, who currently earns £468,000, in March last year as she defended plans to close the BBC Singers as part of a package of swingeing musical cuts masked – as usual – as a high-principled strategic rethink.Well, what a difference a year, or rather 18 months, makes. Last night, the world’s first permanent radio choir celebrated its centenary – the “Wireless Choir” began to broadcast from Savoy Hill on 2 October 1924 – at a packed Barbican Hall. It greeted the great survivors’ arrival with the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Passage Secret – music by Bizet, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel, Aubert Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle (piano duet) (Alpha Classics)There are many reasons to acquire this disc of French piano duets, one being the inclusion of the Feuille d’images by one Louis Aubert (1877-1968). A composer, pianist and teacher, Aubert sang the “Pie Jesu” in early performances of Fauré’s Requiem, and Ravel dedicated the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales to him. Auber’s delightful five-movement work is ripe for rediscovery, one of its quirks being the technical demands of the lower duet part, the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Dalia Stasevska is a persuasive advocate for new music, as presented on her new album Dalia’s Mixtape. She combines a puppyish enthusiasm with a salesman’s eloquence – beneath which sits a steely self-confidence in her own artistic vision. The Mixtape is a collaboration between Stasevska, the BBC Symphony Orchestra (of which she is Principal Guest Conductor) and Platoon, an artist-led label that is part of the Apple Music family. I visited their studios in north London last week to speak to Dalia about the project and what it means to her.Dalia’s Mixtape (reviewed below by Graham Rickson) Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antonio Pappano: Complete Symphonic, Concertante and Sacred Music Recordings Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Warner Classics)Exploring this compendious 27 CD box set has been a lot of fun. Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra began life in 1908, "the first orchestra in Italy to devote itself exclusively to the symphonic repertoire”. The group has enjoyed a much higher international profile in the last few decades, much of the credit due to Antonio Pappano, the orchestra’s Music Director from 2005 to 2023. We get 27 discs here containing an impressively broad range Read more ...
David Nice
How do you get five thousand plus people into the Albert Hall to hear two Sanskrit-based rarities by British-born composers? Simple: place the Elgar Cello Concerto in between them. Here was another daring Prom programme that totally worked, not least since cellist Senja Rummukainen, compatriot of the BBC Symphony Orchestra much-loved Finnish chief conductor Sakari Oramo, proved as sensitive as him and his players to the elusive core of what's surprisingly become a popular classic.At first it seemed as if this interpretation was going to be the polar opposite of the one I'd heard previously, Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The first night of the BBC’s 2024 Proms season was illuminated by the blazing brilliance of Isata Kanneh-Mason’s performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto and the world premiere of Ben Nobuto’s witty video-game-inspired Hallelujah Sim. Hong Kong born conductor Elim Chan presided over a vibrant, joyful evening in which apparent crowd-pleasers like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony were balanced by pieces that ranged from the sublime to the mischievously meticulous.The BBC Symphony Orchestra kicked off with Handel’s 1749 Music for the Royal Fireworks as an amuse bouche, which was rearranged in Read more ...