Elgar
David Nice
The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius, this ostensibly more clear-cut oratorio has less sense of form; it's fragmentary or modern, according to taste. I doubt, even so, if a better argument could be made for it than that from last night's team and its keen guide, Martyn Brabbins – a more flexible shaper, let's be honest, than the admirable champion of the work he was replacing, Mark Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The BBC put social and ethnic diversity at the heart of this Last Night programme. The concert opened with a new work, by Daniel Kidane, called Woke, and the first half was dominated by the music of black and female composers. In the second half, mezzo Jamie Barton waved a rainbow flag during her "Rule, Britannia!" The Proms is clearly in the vanguard for inclusivity among classical music organisations, although the fact that Kidane stood out as one of the only non-white members of the huge audience suggests there is still a long way to go.Woke is a dynamic concert opener, energised by Read more ...
David Nice
Let's be clear: this was a Prom of world-class works by English composers, not a conservative concert of English music. Politically speaking, Elgar was one of the few on the right, but how different inwardly, speaking through the poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy and singing with his own reminiscences in The Music Makers of timeless art that outlives the fall of empires and individual fates. How moving it was, then, to welcome back Dame Sarah Connolly after her very public statement about her recent operation for breast cancer. The most passionate of Remainers, she might have worn a more pronounced Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Cellist Raphael Wallfisch thinks outside of the box. His concert repertoire spans the popular concerto choices – the Elgar, the Dvořák – but he doesn’t stop there, and makes a point of seeking out the lesser-known and the little-heard. He has a particular taste for English cello concertos of the 20th century, and his advocacy has revived the fortunes of cello works by Bliss, Bax, Moeran, and particularly Gerald Finzi, his performance of the Finzi Cello Concerto a surprise hit of the 2001 Proms.His recording projects are equally adventurous. By the end of this year, Wallfisch will have Read more ...
David Nice
Vladimir Jurowski is always a conductor for making connections, so one wonders why Brahms's Second Piano Concerto wasn't the first-half choice in this programme from the start (the advertised original had been the much stormier No 1). The sleight-of-hand wit of its effervescent finale came not only as the usual surprise after the philosophical reflections of its first three movements, but also made a bridge to two great portraits of very different wags, Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel and Elgar's Falstaff.It seemed almost too good to be true that Yefim Bronfman shared Jurowski's balancing act Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Among the greatest violin concertos in the repertoire, the Elgar is far too rarely performed. One of the reasons is its huge dramatic scale and almost hour-long duration – Sakari Oramo wisely programmed it here with Dvořák’s relatively modest Seventh Symphony, but this was still a long concert. Another reason is the superhuman demands it makes on the soloist, of virtuosity, but also of subtle structural thinking, and ultimately, of sheer stamina.So we owe Nicola Benedetti a debt of thanks for her advocacy here of (arguably) Elgar’s greatest work. Her reading was bold and forthright, but Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
No successor has yet been named to Vladimir Jurowski as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic, so it is interesting to note that Edward Gardner is making several appearances with the orchestra this season. The two conductors are similar in their dynamic approach and brisk, efficient tempos. But where Jurowski focuses on detail, drawing exceptional clarity from the ensemble, Gardner seems more impulsive, structuring the music with similar care, but punctuating to greater dramatic effect with surprisingly emphatic tuttis. This concert, of Beethoven, Elgar and Mahler, demonstrated an Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
You start off fighting it. Those arpeggios, the insistent reduction, simplification, repetition, the amplification of the smallest gesture into an epic. Then something happens. Somewhere among the slow-phase patterns pulsing on ear and eye, you surrender to Glass-time and the hypnosis is complete.Akhnaten is opera as therapy, as cocoon, as mindfulness exercise, clean as Marie Kondo’s living room and every bit as consoling. When you reduce your musical possessions to the barest minimum (hell, even the violins get jettisoned in this deliciously grainy score, along with the surtitles) you throw Read more ...
graham.rickson
Joe Cutler: Elsewhereness (NMC)The titles drew me in. Karembeu’s Guide to the Complete Defensive Midfielder is a great name for a piece, Joe Cutler tangentially inspired by the great French footballer’s passing skills to create a brilliant ten-minute work for saxophone and jazz group. Players jostle, separate and regroup before a solemn, imposing coda. And, having just read about actor Dominic West’s performance in BBC1’s Les Miserables, it's cool to learn that Cutler's Irish-tinged piano trio McNulty does actually have links to West’s troubled character in The Wire. The music’s Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Jerusalem! This fact-studded story of 20th century British music told us that the nation's unofficial national anthem, Hubert Parry’s setting of William Blake’s poem, originated in 1916 as a commission from the “Fight for Right” movement. Officials wanted a grand piece of music to boost morale (following the law of unintended consequences, Parry saw to it that Jerusalem became a rallying song for the suffragettes, too). The work of Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams was also enlisted to boost the national spirit. Even bureaucracy recognised the potential of music to uplift, encourage, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
National feeling – in music, as anywhere else – depends on choice, not blood. This BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican to mark the centenary of Poland’s rebirth as a nation never felt remotely like a feast of aural jingoism. In fact, its most explicit and whole-hearted invocation of Polish tunes and styles came not from a native son but from (who else?) Edward Elgar. He wrote his little-played Polonia in 1915 to aid relief efforts for refugees after the Great War had (yet again) sent German and Russian boots crashing bloodily over Polish soil.Amid its suitably stirring nods to Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder’s first concert in the Hallé Thursday series for 2018-19 was on clearly mapped Hallé territory – Richard Strauss and Elgar. They have a reputation, and a tradition, of playing these composers’ music very well. They’ve already recorded Elgar's Second Symphony and, judging by the microphones around the platform, they’re doing the same right now with Strauss’s Don Quixote.The soloists were their own principals, cellist Nicholas Trygstad (pictured below) and viola player Timothy Pooley. Though it won’t be discernible in any purely audio document of the occasion, they and their Read more ...