Classical music
David Nice
While we wish the great Mariss Jansons a speedy recovery, no-one of sound heart and soul could be disappointed by his substitute for the two Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Proms, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose supreme art is to show the score's construction in the face, with gestures to match. Some of us, on the other hand, weren't quite so happy that Shostakovich's Fifth replaced a deeper, richer symphony, the mighty Tenth. But Nézet-Séguin was as sure of intent and as attentive to dynamic possibilities in this as he had been in Beethoven's Second, even if the Munich orchestra might not, by Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Hello sun, hello great whales, hello choral counterpoint. If there is a more life-enhancing work than Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, I’ve yet to hear one. Its sheer joie-de-vivre was a felicitous arrival at the Proms, where it really ought to be a regular fixture. Our Haydn seekers were the BBC Philharmonic under its brand-new principal conductor Omer Meier Wellber (pictured below with soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon) – he assumes his post this month – together with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, which recruits 16- to 25-year-olds from all over the country to sing at the festival. Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Our greatest Berlioz scholar, David Cairns, has called Le Damnation de Faust “an opera of the mind’s eye, not of the stage,” and I’ve certainly never seen a production that successfully staged its curious, episodic, actionless mixture of set piece, romantic brooding, and flickering cinematic imagery. I missed Richard Jones’s recent Glyndebourne effort, but it sounds as if he had partially to reconstruct the score to fit it to a theatrical concept at all. One might say QED. In fact La Damnation is one of Berlioz’s most (one could risk saying few) perfectly designed scores; and as the Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Messiaen’s language of juxtaposition over development was always susceptible to the “greatest hits” phenomenon that began to suffuse his music with contented wonder during the 1970s. While younger colleagues were throwing toys out of the pram and marbles at walls during the late 1960s, he was putting heart and soul into a synoptic concert rite – part concerto, part cantata, all-consuming – based on the Transfiguration of Jesus. Not for the first or the last time, Messiaen then used a cycle of quasi-improvisations for his own instrument, the organ, to keep the well from drying up. The Read more ...
David Nice
In the Netherlands, Mark Wigglesworth is already a musical legend for his work with Dutch youth orchestras. Hopefully, in addition to the year and a bit when he wrought miracles at English National Opera, he will become so in the UK after his training of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. That culminated in last night's Prom, with more than a little help from co-inspirer Nicola Benedetti. It's worth beginning at the very end to note how, 12 years on from the (then) Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's game-changing Prom with Gustavo Dudamel, the NYOGB not only Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: The Piano Quartets The Primrose Piano Quartet (Meridian)Schoenberg complained that performances of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet never pleased him (“the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you hear nothing from the strings”). You suspect that he’d have approved of this recording, the Primrose Piano Quartet’s John Thwaites using an 1870 Viennese piano made by Johann Streicher. Brahms owned and loved an identical instrument. Plus, the other players use gut strings, easier to balance against a lighter-toned keyboard. This is a thrilling, volatile performance: historically Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
By happenstance, this Prom was fully topical, with Debussy’s languorous Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune fitting for one of the hottest days in London’s history, and the “Infernal Dance” from Stravinsky’s Firebird mirroring the infernal political dance taking place simultaneously in Downing Street.The official connection between three of the four items was that they were introduced to British audiences by Henry Wood among the “Novelties” he threw at his audiences, between oodles of Beethoven and Brahms. In each case he spotted a winner, and last night they were presented in exemplary Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This year’s Proms for children were entitled “Off to the Moon”, and audiences were invited on a musical space voyage to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. The format was a mix of orchestral music, kids’ programmes on big screens and CBeebies presenters keeping the show rolling. Grumpy adult pedants in the audience would have found plenty to complain about, the orchestra was amplified, and the music was barely mentioned, but the young audience was attentive throughout and clearly enjoyed every minute.Top billing among the CBeebies stars went to Justin (everything was on first name terms Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Eighty years ago this summer, Neville Chamberlain’s indifference to the peoples of Czechoslovakia – “a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing” – reaped its harvest of total war. These days, we have no excuses for not knowing a lot more. And the opening concerts of this year’s BBC Proms have shown why we should. After the first-night offer of Dvořák and Janáček, yesterday saw an all-Bohemian rhapsody, with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto the elegant appetiser for a hearty, full-flavoured main course dished up in the form of Smetana’s complete Ma Vlást. Under its Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
A new commission, a Romantic tone poem and a choral spectacular – standard fare for the First Night of the Proms. Traditionally, the First Night sets out the themes for the season ahead, but the rationale behind much of this programme was paper-thin. Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was included because Henry Wood had conducted it, part of a series featuring pieces Wood introduced to the UK. Dvořák’s The Golden Spinning Wheel was played because Henry Wood had not conducted it, a Proms first performance “reflecting Wood’s fondness for expanding the repertoire”. So the Czech theme turned out to be a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Stewart Goodyear: Callaloo, Piano Sonata; Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue Stewart Goodyear (piano), Chineke! Orchestra/Wayne Marshall (Orchid Classics)Callaloo is Stewart Goodyear’s indecently entertaining suite for piano and orchestra, the title referring to a mixture of diverse elements. Goodyear alludes to having grown up in a polyglot, multicultural Toronto, also taking inspiration here from his Trinidadian heritage. Specifically a recent encounter with the country's Carnival tradition (“I was exposed to Calypso music for two weeks straight, riveted every second”). Visceral excitement Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's been much the same trajectory over the past few years for many of us: look through the Proms prospectus, feel a bit disappointed that there isn't more of the rich and rare, be won round when it comes to the performances. After all, you're probably never going to get better than Martha Argerich in Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony from the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by 90-year-old Bernard Haitink in his last official UK concert, or Semyon Bychkov taking charge of the Czech Philharmonic in Shostakovich.Always remember, too, that for many it will be a first Read more ...