Classical Reviews
Prom 19: Tristan und Isolde, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BychkovSunday, 28 July 2013
Such has been the justifiable flow of superlatives this week about the Berlin Staatskapelle's Ring conducted by Barenboim, the centrepiece of the BBC Proms' Wagner bicentenary celebration, it would have been easy to forget that the 2013 Proms season contains not just those four, but seven complete Wagner operas. Read more...
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Prom 18: Siegfried, Staatskapelle Berlin, BarenboimSaturday, 27 July 2013
The transformative power of the Royal Albert Hall at Proms-time never ceases to amaze me. Read more... |
Prom 17: Antonio Márquez Company, BBC Philharmonic, MenaFriday, 26 July 2013
JThis year’s Proms have been accompanied by an unusual choral drone, a monotony of voices whinging about the prodigious heat at the Albert Hall. For one night only no one was complaining as the temperature gauge went up to something like 111. You’ve heard of the Hollywood Prom and Comedy Prom, the Gospel Prom and the Dalek Prom. Read more... |
Notes from the Inside with James Rhodes, Channel 4Thursday, 25 July 2013
Most of us could compile soundtracks to our lives. We’d probably save our favourite songs and pieces for the worst bits. Pianist James Rhodes was sectioned in his twenties and maintains that a visitor who smuggled in an iPod stuffed with classical music helped to save his life. He’s refreshingly candid though, admitting slyly that “listening to a piece of Bach isn’t going to fix everything". |
Prom 15: Die Walküre, Staatskapelle Berlin, BarenboimWednesday, 24 July 2013
Things may be falling apart, a storm now rages but new broods of humans and demigoddesses have been fathered by chief god Wotan, who has undergone a Doctor Who like transformation from Iain Paterson into Bryn Terfel. Read more... |
Prom 14: Das Rheingold, Staatskapelle Berlin, BarenboimTuesday, 23 July 2013
Swimming around in the Rhine is what most of us wanted to be doing on the hottest day of the year. A cooling, riverbed low E flat from Daniel Barenboim’s Berlin double basses, and then the staggered horn entries announced we were going to be in the finest sonic hands for two and a half hours – or nearly 15, if the colossal Proms Ring is to be accounted in its full, four-night glory. Read more... |
Proms Saturday Matinee 1/Proms Chamber Music 2Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Yes it’s Wagner Week at the Proms, and just up the road in the Royal Albert Hall there are dwarves and giants enough to rival Comic Con, and enough noise to silence any objection and obliterate all competition. Even the greatest of musical excess needs a counterbalance, however, and it comes in the form of the Proms’ chamber music events. Read more... |
Prom 13: National Youth Orchestra of America, GergievMonday, 22 July 2013
Youth orchestras do well at the Proms. Built to the same sprawling scale as the Royal Albert Hall, their energy is also a natural fit for the relentlessly enthusiastic Proms audience. The Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the Aldeburgh World Youth Orchestra, our own National Youth Orchestra – year after year we marvel at the skills of these young musicians and come away with new demands to make of our professional ensembles. Read more... |
Prom 12: Accademia di Santa Cecilia Chorus and Orchestra, PappanoSunday, 21 July 2013
It’s a dilemma of anniversary years, and never more so than with Wagner’s and Verdi’s 200th birthdays: do you stick to the masterpieces or try and bring the rarities to life? No-one would have minded, I suspect, if Antonio Pappano and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia forces he has raised to the level of one of the world’s great ensembles had reprised their peerless Verdi Requiem. Read more... |
Gabriel, Shakespeare's GlobeSunday, 21 July 2013
If there’s a more thinly written, loosely structured and hammily acted play than Samuel Adamson’s panorama of Purcell’s London, then I have yet to endure it. Baffling, because this is the writer who brought us Southwark Fair, a lively depiction of the local scene which never so much as hinted as the village-institute clichés and banalities piled high here in a production by Dominic Dromgoole which does little to finesse the sorry situation. Read more... |
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