Proms
Richard Bratby
Viennese operetta is like that other great Central European treat, goulash. It comes in many forms. In Vienna it’s coffeehouse comfort food; in Slovenia they add bacon for a smoky tang. And in the marketplaces of Transylvania it comes in bubbling iron cauldrons, practically fluorescent with paprika. But it’s all goulash. You know it when you taste it, and all that matters is that it tastes good. And when it’s really good, it tastes even better when warmed through and dished up second time around.Which is by way of saying that I can’t honestly get too worried about the authenticity or Read more ...
David Nice
“Did you bring any Bach?” was not a question to ask of Jonathan Scott before he launched into his jaw-dropping Prom on the Royal Albert Hall's 1871 Henry Willis organ – the largest in the world at the time. augmented in its 2002-4 overhaul to 9,999 pipes. What Stokowski did for the Toccata and Fugue in D minor Moore achieved, in reverse as it were, for four orchestral classics in a feat of stamina live on Saturday evening.Circumstantial swings and roundabouts in this fairground turn were plentiful: what you lost from not being there to hear the hall shake and reverberate you gained from the Read more ...
David Nice
So the bubble of reactionary brouhaha over the Last Night of the Proms quickly burst: there can be no argument about singing “Land of Hope and Glory” or “Rule, Britannia!” when they’re to be presented in their original Proms forms (Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, where the tune preceded the words the composer so disliked, and Henry Wood’s 1905 Fantasia on British Sea Songs, all orchestral – only later did Malcolm Sargent rearrange the closing anthem to go with a solo voice). Apart from the death threats to conductor Dalia Stasevska and her family, what’s most lamentable is that Read more ...
theartsdesk
As two weeks of livestreamed Proms begin tonight, we just want to be there in the Royal Albert Hall. The exuberance of our lead picture tells one story of a Prom which had to be witnessed live to be believed: the annual visit of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain last year, with brilliant Auerbach and Prokofiev under Mark Wigglesworth, and much-loved Nicola Benedetti uniting with them in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.Chris Christodoulou is always in a unique position, usually putting his camera unnoticed through the velvet curtains at the top of various sets of stairs to the Albert Read more ...
theartsdesk
What a difference a year makes. Live Proms will be back from Friday, but the very essence of the world's biggest music festival will be missing: the audience, and especially the Prommers whose rapt attention while standing has taken so many visiting orchestras by surprise. No doubt the rapport between conductor and players will be electric at times, but the third point of what Britten called the "magic triangle" of composer, performers and audience will be notable by its absence.Even so, the peerless Chris Christodoulou will be there to capture the essence of performance in action. Read more ...
David Nice
It seems a shame that large-scale organisations can’t be more flexible when government guidelines shift. True, the arts couldn’t jump at two days’ notice when outdoor events were licensed by our ever-vacillating government. The BBC Proms could have adjusted, but it seems the programme is now carved in stone – mostly archive material until the end of August.No need, either, for the drive-in set up English National Opera is promising at Alexandra Palace in September. I can’t say that the idea of Puccini’s La bohème, the most perfectly proportioned opera in the repertoire, being filleted to 90 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 ...
Boyd Tonkin
For a few seconds last night, the Royal Albert Hall turned into London’s biggest – and cheesiest – disco. At the end of the Ball movement in the Aurora Orchestra’s dramatised version of the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz’s tipsily lurching waltz climaxed in a lightshow that sent a galaxy of glitterball stars swirling through the auditorium. You can’t exactly stage a symphony – even one as theatrical as this – as you can an opera. Still, conductor Nicholas Collon and directors Jane Mitchell and James Bonas – abetted by designers Kate Wicks and Will Reynolds – did their utmost to make the work’ Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Blame it on the box set. The four Bach Orchestral Suites fit neatly together as a recording project. They used to fill out the four sides of a double LP back in the early stages of the baroque revival. Completists and collectors could rejoice then, and with many more versions to choose from, they still can now. But are these pieces, which were never intended to be played one after the other, varied enough to make a satisfying and convincing concert? Not really.The first problem is a nagging propensity to hang around in D major. Two of the four suites – so half of the set in the versions Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Semyon Bychkov was a surprising choice to take over the Czech Philharmonic last year, a conductor with few obvious connections to Czech music. But on the strength of this visit to the Proms, they make a good team. Bychkov communicates fluently with the players, conveying power and passion, and detail too, but without any overt theatrics at the podium.The Czech Philharmonic has a burnished tone, well projected and filling the Albert Hall, but more with colour than with weight. There is an elegant and lyrical flow to everything the strings play, which Bychkov is able to harness and shape. The Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Known as "Heldenmommy" to her fans on Twitter, Christine Goerke is a Wagner soprano of and for our time. You won’t find her recordings on the major-label behemoths but her reputation is built on two decades of producing the goods night after night at opera houses across the US, notably the Metropolitan in New York. On the other side of the Atlantic, her Brünnhilde has filled the Usher Hall through the course of a four-year Ring cycle at the Edinburgh Festival.Having seen the world end north of the border 10 days ago, Goerke reprised the Immolation Scene to bring a Wagner Night at the Proms to Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Weirdly enough, it was “Tea for Two” that definitively proved her class for me. As a second encore to Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, after a mesmeric transcription of that composer’s Vocalise, Yuja Wang’s goodbye treat channelled the mighty Art Tatum with a scrupulous respect for the jazz master’s timing and phrasing. Sometimes, the Beijing-born megastar still finds herself the target of critical opprobrium on the grounds that serious musicianship really doesn’t mix with such a glittery and flamboyant stage personality. Well, tell that to the Abbé Liszt – or to Rach himself, for that Read more ...