Royal Albert Hall
David Nice
A monstrous celebration prefaced by thunderous organ chords is always going to be more the Albert Hall’s kind of thing than a comic opera viewed through the wrong end of the telescope. So Strauss’s Festival Prelude kicked off a first half of 150th birthday celebrations in more appropriate style than last week’s Der Rosenkavalier. Unfortunately what it ushered in worked less well up to the interval; but then there was Elgar’s Second Symphony to redeem all with heart and soul, the best possible visiting card for a golden-age Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko.You could Read more ...
David Nice
The sprightly tread of Handel’s Queen of Sheba, attended by two wonderful Turkish oboists, wove the most fragile of gold threads between full orchestral exotica and Rameau motets of infinite variety last night. Not that any more links need be found: it’s the addition of the late night events which turns the Proms into a real festival, not the mere concatenation of concerts you might find in the main orchestral season. And no-one could have asked for a higher level of engagement last night from either Austrian live wire Sascha Goetzel and his amazingly high level Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night's Prom offered an intriguing mixture of French music both sacred and profane, with a British world premiere as its centrepiece. Duruflé’s pious Requiem rubbed shoulders with Ravel’s wordly homages to the Viennese waltz, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and La Valse. Perhaps the most intriguing element was the least familiar, the world premiere of Simon Holt’s flute concerto Morpheus Wakes, written for the soloist Emmanuel Pahud, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Thierry Fischer.Simon Holt (b.1958), whose work often has a mythological starting point, describes Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
Sir Roger Norrington, 80 this year, produced a masterful St John Passion in the first of his two appearances at this year’s Proms, built around his excellent Swiss chamber orchestra and the Zürcher Sing-Akademie.Predictably, one of the main highlights was tenor James Gilchrist (pictured below). He hasn’t become a one-man Evangelist industry by chance: the ringing tone, faultless diction and projection are his stock-in-trade, but the magic lies in the subtlety of his delivery and master storyteller’s engagement with the text. The distaste when Jesus is struck by the officers; the shivers of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The Forties and Fifties, seen through the eyes of Shostakovich and the Pet Shop Boys, were the historical centre of gravity for last night’s courageously broad Proms programme. Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a gently serialist folk exploration from 1937-8, introduced the era, with the Soviet composer’s 10th Symphony and the Pet Shop Boys’ retro biography of Alan Turing (**) offering markedly contrasting interpretations through their depictions of Stalin and the Enigma-decoding, convicted homosexual mathematician.Tavener’s Gnosis, opening Prom 7 (****), was the exception. Through a setting of Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
If last year’s Ring cycle triumphantly proved that world-class opera can be done at the Albert Hall, this Rosenkavalier suggests that the less epic end of the repertoire isn’t such a sure thing. That is not to say that this performance was dud, far from it; rather that its few problems were venue related. Balance was the main issue, though Robin Ticciati did a great job of whipping the London Philharmonic Orchestra into a passionate frenzy in the Prelude and then taking things down a notch and keeping them there to avoid engulfing the voices. The audience will have had a different experience Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was a rare outing by the World Orchestra for Peace, which has performed fewer than 20 concerts since the death of its founder Sir Georg Solti in 1997. UNESCO had designated this BBC Prom as "The 2014 Concert for Peace", the definite article implying a uniqueness which - according to rumour - is because concerts planned for Munich and Aix failed to get beyond the planning stage. It drew a respectable house to the Royal Albert Hall, which looked about three-quarters full.This has been a week in which world peace has seemed like a very distant ideal indeed, in which the news has been Read more ...
David Nice
“And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” To fill the Albert Hall – where a sizeable number of participants are standing, of course, in the best place – as handsomely as this, and as clearly, takes some work. Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra know how to manipulate the space to best effect, and Elgar’s oratorios, of which The Kingdom is the third and last, are among the few works which mostly benefit from the warm halo it places around the sound.I only wish this one had been The Kingdom’ Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
What a difference a change of cast can make to a show. On Wednesday night I saw Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta as the titular lovers in English National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Albert Hall (see below for that review). Last night it was the turn of ENB’s other Royal Ballet emigrée, Alina Cojocaru, and guest star Friedemann Vogel of Stuttgart Ballet.Rojo and Acosta impressed me with their star power, and the intensity of their partnership, but left me feeling curiously un-tragic. Cojocaru and Vogel, on the other hand, had me spellbound like it was the first time I’d ever seen the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With their self-conscious blend of flamenco, Latin and pop creating the improbable-sounding Catalonian rumba, the Gipsy Kings, who played to an ecstatic Royal Albert Hall last night, are one of the pioneers of the world music genre. Their contribution has just been recognised by the Grammys, where they shared this year’s World Music prize (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo) for their new album Savor Flamenco.Formed from two groups of brothers, the Reyes and the Baliardos, who celebrate 25 years together this year, they now live in Provence, but both families are originally from Spain. The Reyes’ Read more ...
Tim Cumming
And so Dylan’s tour of European theatres, opera houses and concert halls ended on Thursday night at the Royal Albert Hall, his first dates here in 46 years. I’ve seen him plenty of times over the past 30 years. This was the best of them. Dylan’s found a way to use his voice again, and his group is so nuanced to its needs, it’s a pure pleasure to hear. Charlie Sexton plays a warm and refined lead, not rock'n'roll at all, and there’s a quiet glow between all the players; it’s as if they’re facing the same way, looking at the same colours.Appropriately, "Things Have Changed" opens it up as the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
This year I’ve sat through Carrie Cracknell’s Wozzeck dry-eyed, seen a handful of Mimis take their last consumptive breath without so much as a tremor, even heard Shostakovich’s shattering Symphony No. 13 without obvious emotional distress. I was beginning to think I was getting irretrievably jaded, hardened; then a bunch of Welsh kids with ukuleles and a folk trio from the Highlands came along and everything changed.Music education in the UK has never been more embattled, more fragile. The music centres across the country that gave my generation that first addictive taste of ensemble music- Read more ...