Classical Reviews
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 completely misguided. 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 choral shout (Carmina Burana). 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 to cello playing what Western horse riding is to the stiffly upright English version. 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 Shostakovich spectrum. And the effect was intensified last night by a particularly terse programme, delivered with unrelenting intensity. 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 answering, but by about ten minutes in the singing was just so damn good that I stopped worrying and learned, if not precisely to love, then to tolerate the foolishness going on around the music. 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 Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, including nine very vigorous double basses – where did the extra players come from? 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. 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 of J.R.R. Tolkien's version of the same narrative, The Story of Kullervo. Read more... |
Missa Solemnis, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, EdinburghSunday, 30 August 2015
This was a performance laden with contradictions. After last weekend’s gargantuan Grande Messe des Morts, the standard issue Edinburgh Festival Chorus seemed much smaller – but not really small enough. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra was in its augmented format, almost up to symphony orchestra size, but playing in its increasingly popular authentic style with very little vibrato and the crunchy sound of natural brass instruments. 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 doing it back in 1978, when I went to hear my first Mahler “Resurrection” and found myself too late in the queue for the best standing-place in the hall, stuck in the rafters for the one and only time (never again). Read more... |
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