Short of rolling around the podium like a delirious pig in a mudbath, Sir John Eliot Gardiner couldn't have hidden his enjoyment of the warm, plush sounds and well-upholstered vibrato of this wonderfully old-fashioned orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, less well at last night's Prom. As he embarked on one of the broadest, most unashamedly Romantic openings to Dvořák's Eighth Symphony I have ever heard, I wondered what the hell his years of all-out warfare on modern performance techniques had been about. Was Sir John doing a Kim Philby? Was the period movement's greatest propagandist defecting live on Radio 3? And might there be an encore of "Erbarme dich" for seven swannee whistles?
classical music reviews
igor.toronyilalic
A great deal of scepticism greeted the release of a new Beethoven symphony cycle from Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra in the mid-2000s. Would this lot really be able say anything that hadn't already been said by the hundred or so other cycles? Could anyone really find anything very new or fresh to say about these warhorses? The answer then was yes. And the answer last night in their Prom's performance of Beethoven's Ninth was also a resounding yes. Hardly surprising if you'd heard Vänskä's Bruckner the night before or his Sibelius cycle earlier this year. In Vänskä-land even stale buns come fresh.
igor.toronyilalic
One usually has to wait until the fourth movement of a Bruckner symphony before one gets a decent, foot-tappin', knee-slappin' polka to dance to. But at last night's Prom Osmo Vänskä was jitterbugging - and, I think, even moonwalking - from the off, swinging his classy Minnesota Orchestra into the Fourth Symphony's opening fortissimo brass triplets like they were a seasoned jazz band, and making Bruckner boogie. Not the easiest of things to get this granitic old Austrian bumpkin to do.
David Nice
Which of the following has the thorniest dissonance: an early 18th-century dance-drama by Rebel, a symphony by Bizet, a concerto by Poulenc or a new work by South African composer Kevin Volans? If you think it's a trick question, you'll guess the right answer: the earliest. And which of the four sounds the least fresh and novel? My own take on that is the most recent.
edward.seckerson
When Mark-Anthony Turnage presents a piece called Hammered Out, that’s pretty much what you expect to hear. Prior to starting work on this co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Turnage was quoted as saying, “I don’t want to write an old man’s piece.” The trouble is that this 15-minute juggernaut for large orchestra sounds like an elder statesman – ie the symphony orchestra – masquerading as a mover and shaker: or to be brutally frank, an old swinger in urgent need of a hip replacement. As a seasoned Turnage fan, I hesitate to say that there’s more than a hint of clapped-out about Hammered Out.
Ismene Brown
To be interestingly disappointed isn’t bad - it’s being uninterestingly disappointed that is. This was an intriguing Prom with a full house, possibly because of Hélène Grimaud’s presence in the Ravel piano concerto, as well as Vladimir Ashkenazy on the podium. Surely it wasn’t for Scriabin’s Third Symphony, unheard here for almost 80 years? Or perhaps Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier is so well beloved that even a dubious orchestral suite made from it lures the thousands?
stephen.walsh
“The curse of Schumann,” remarked Prom director Roger Wright to me before Monday’s concert, bemoaning the fact that only (only!) 2,000 seats had been sold for the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s concert under Thomas Dausgaard - whereas Dausgaard's earlier Tchaikovsky/ Sibelius Prom had been jam-packed. But he was right: the Albert Hall is more than half empty with those numbers, and looks it. A pity. I can’t recall a better, more spirited, or indeed more interesting performance of any Schumann symphony than Dausgaard’s of the C major, No 2, and it absolutely deserved a full house.
alexandra.coghlan
So it might not have had quite the star power of the Proms’ Sondheim concert, or the edgy cool factor of the likes of Sweeney Todd or Assassins, but A Celebration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, with its classic numbers from Oklahoma, The King and I and The Sound of Music, proved that this unfashionable, pre-ironic musical duo still know how to put on a show. A packed Royal Albert Hall crowd were all but dancing in the aisles (though perhaps hip-replacements may have accounted for this restraint) after a couple of hours in the company of so many old musical friends.
igor.toronyilalic
Boy, did I want to enjoy this Prom. On paper it should have been the highlight of the season. Young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been making his mark in London as principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with several sensational performances of Bruckner over the past few years. Here he was for his Proms debut at the helm of his smart new orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Gergiev's old outfit).
igor.toronyilalic
A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a pianist, encouraged her muzzled instrument (a metal brace lying across its stringed body) to gnash away rhythmically and to dance amid the downpour. 1939 was when John Cage came up with this breathtakingly original, endlessly exhilarating work, First Construction (in Metal), that opened this late-night Prom. It was the most invigorating 10 minutes I've had at the Proms so far.