Classical Reviews

Last Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Alsop

Gavin Dixon Sunday, 13 September 2015

“A rich and eclectic sequence of works” was the promise made in this evening’s concert programme. It certainly was that, with the Last Night festivities taking in new and old, well-known and obscure, plus a handful of celebrity soloists for good measure. The audience was predictably ebullient, generating the kind of atmosphere you only get at the Last Night of the Proms.

Prom 75: The Dream of Gerontius, VPO, Rattle

alexandra Coghlan Saturday, 12 September 2015

And so it ends – with angels and archangels and “heart-subduing melody”. The Proms might not officially finish till tomorrow night, but this penultimate concert is always the true close of the season, and what better or more fitting an ending – especially on this most poignant anniversary – than Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Prom 73: VPO, Bychkov

David Nice Friday, 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 – born in what is now Bratislava, three-quarters Hungarian, an embattled cellist in the Vienna Philharmonic during Mahler’s tenure. The orchestra now wants to do him proud again, thanks to the very centred championship of Semyon Bychkov.

Prom 72: Kraggerud, BBCSO, Litton

David Nice Thursday, 10 September 2015

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark attended Nielsen’s 150^th 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.

Prom 70: Lugansky, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Temirkanov

David Nice Tuesday, 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 one deservedly popular standard, there was no chance of that.

Prom Chamber Music 8: Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio

Sebastian Scotney Tuesday, 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.

Prom 69: Balsom, BBC Concert Orchestra, Lockhart

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 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).

Prom 68: Yo-Yo Ma plays Bach

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 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.

Prom 66: Uchida, LPO, Jurowski

Gavin Dixon Saturday, 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.

Prom 65: Coote, English Concert, Bicket

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 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.