Proms
Boyd Tonkin
This looked like a classic Prom in the grand old BBC tradition: two big but lesser-known pieces by pivotal figures (Schoenberg and Zemlinsky) played by a major non-metropolitan ensemble, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And so it proved, with powerful, refined and meatily satisfying versions of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid conducted by the NOW’s chief, Ryan Bancroft.Here, surely, where entertainment meets enlightenment, the Proms heartland used to lie. But, on a perfect July evening, the house was much sparser than it should have been Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The first night of the BBC’s 2024 Proms season was illuminated by the blazing brilliance of Isata Kanneh-Mason’s performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto and the world premiere of Ben Nobuto’s witty video-game-inspired Hallelujah Sim. Hong Kong born conductor Elim Chan presided over a vibrant, joyful evening in which apparent crowd-pleasers like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony were balanced by pieces that ranged from the sublime to the mischievously meticulous.The BBC Symphony Orchestra kicked off with Handel’s 1749 Music for the Royal Fireworks as an amuse bouche, which was rearranged in Read more ...
theartsdesk
So maybe there’s a bigger quota of popular Proms, leading Stephen Walsh to lambast what he sees as "junk" to avoid. It surely doesn’t matter. Among the 89 concerts, some of them beyond the Royal Albert Hall, the mix of old and new, middle-of-the-road and deeply serious, is as strong as ever. There’s no dumbing-down.A recent online article for a paper which should know better posits well-known classics as “lowbrow”. When it comes to Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini or Holst’s The Planets, there’s no such thing: these masterpieces are popular for a reason. Many Prommers will be Read more ...
Robert Beale
When it was first announced that Mark Elder was to become music director of the Hallé, I phoned a friend who knew him well from serving on his staff at English National Opera in earlier years. “He’s completely devoted,” he said. “He never does anything superficially, he’s always well prepared, he’s a good orchestra trainer, and he’ll last longer than other conductors.” It was a description and prediction that was amply fulfilled in the following quarter-century.And, with characteristic meticulous planning and awareness of what was right for the occasion, Sir Mark chose to present a European Read more ...
theartsdesk
A conductor who can now add "Gár" to his less flattering sobriquets may not have appeared as advertised at this year's Proms, but surely Chris Christodoulou can find a photo of him punching the air among his 43 years' worth of conductor portraits from "the biggest music festival in the world". We'll do without this time.For the past 13 of those years, Chris has given theartsdesk the benefit of images which may not have made the main cut but which are wonderfully revealing of commitment and idiosyncrasy. His selection for 2023, like the season itself which was a huge success both financially Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Bruckner's behemoth has always had its fervent champions – and its muttering sceptics. The 85-odd minutes of his Eighth Symphony, finally performed after major revisions in 1892, build into a titanic testament. Advocates read into it enough apocalyptic doom and gloom to make Wagner sound like Offenbach.Thank the gods, therefore, that the always-impressive Semyon Bychkov guided the BBC Symphony Orchestra through across these craggy Alpine peaks at the Proms with a listener-friendly finesse, even geniality. With its explosive timpani, tank-division horns and earth-trembling low strings, the Read more ...
David Nice
During his transformational time at the helm of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski conducted the complete Threepenny Opera in concert and two performances of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony which changed my mind about its being good only in parts. Last night’s interpretation made his fellow Russian’s late fantasy billow and soar, while Weill’s Little Threepenny Music opened with sheer stylish delight in the song/dance numbers framed by incisive austerity.That supposedly orchestral pianist so responsive to a genial Jurowski and the wind players of the Berlin Radio Symphony Read more ...
David Nice
Funfairs and dance music, old world and new, should have guaranteed a corker of a second Prom from the Boston Symphony Orchestra with its chief conductor, Andris Nelsons. Glitter it did; but wit, drive and violence took a back seat to showcase sophistication, at least from where I was sitting in the hall (always a necessary qualification)If Nelsons seems to have lost the spark of his vintage days with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, his polish fits the classy Boston band very well – there’s little of the brave new brashness of the New York Philharmonic from these players, though Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Few singers can match the exhilarating range of counter-tenor Iestyn Davies’ performances, whether it’s in the free-soaring clarity of his voice in rapid recitative-style passages or the white heat of intensity he brings to sustained notes.In this heady, captivating late-night Prom, he – together with the English Concert, inspirationally directed by Kristian Bezuidenhout (pictured below) – delivered a programme of Bach that was as linguistically fascinating as it was musically uplifting.The opening piece was the solo cantata Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, which Bach wrote in 1726 when he Read more ...
Prom 50: Samson, Academy of Ancient Music review - a gradual build in musical and dramatic intensity
Rachel Halliburton
1743 was the year in which Handel presented both the Messiah and Samson to Londoners – and for most audience members the merits of one clearly eclipsed the other. Fascinatingly it was Samson that was seen to be the more successful – after breaking box office records, with eight performances between its opening on 18 February and the end of March, it remained highly in demand for nine subsequent seasons.In an evening that built in both dramatic and musical intensity, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music took on the challenges of Handel’s epic about the Old Testament’s most Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Have Proms audiences heard it all before? Not by the longest of chalks. Remarkably, last night saw the festival’s first outing for a major work by Robert Schumann.True, an extract from his secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri once reached the Queen’s Hall – in 1909. But now Sir Simon Rattle, with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, had the chance to unroll the entire, sumptuously-threaded Orientalist carpet that Schumann completed in 1843.Based on a tale from the Irish poet Thomas Moore’s 1817 romance Lalla Rookh, this 100-minute hybrid – its blend of narration, solos and choruses Read more ...
David Nice
Chopin’s piano concertos and Strauss “symphonic fantasia” Aus Italien are young men’s music, bursting with inspired ideas, but baggy at times, hard to steer. Elgar’s In the South is up there with the mature Strauss tone poems – even if it couldn’t have taken the shape it did without them – but here the steering itself was the problem: missing the exuberance, the Philharmonia’s Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali stretched it on the rack.It was an odd Prom to win a packed house. Many audience members were Korean, come to see and hear Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the 2015 International Chopin Read more ...