thu 23/10/2025

Classical Reviews

Prom 29: Tannhäuser, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Runnicles

David Nice

On the one occasion I went to Bayreuth, I made the mistake of seeing The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin after the best of Ring cycles. At the Proms we’ve had a week of serious Wagnerian withdrawal symptoms, so Tannhäuser was never going to feel like too much or too little of a good thing.

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theartsdesk in Verbier: Festival scales new heights

alexandra Coghlan

The moment when Alfred Brendel shuffled on stage during the Verbier Festival’s 20th Anniversary Concert not to play, but to turn pages for long-time colleague Emmanuel Ax, expressed everything that is so special, so extraordinary about this festival. Walking off together, arms around each other’s shoulders, these were not just international soloists, they were two great old men and two even greater musicians.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Timo Andres, Berlioz, Schoenberg

graham Rickson

 

Timo Andres: Home Stretch Timo Andres (piano), Metropolis Ensemble/Andrew Cyr (Nonesuch)

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Prom 26: Serkin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Knussen

David Nice

You wait years for a live performance to test whether Tippett’s Second Symphony is a masterpiece, and then two come along within six months. Both are due to the missionary zeal of the BBC Symphony Orchestra management, determined to give an overshadowed English composer a voice in Britten centenary year. But while Martyn Brabbins convinced me totally of the Second’s dynamic journey back in April at the Barbican, Oliver Knussen caught its rarefied sounds but not always its progressive sense...

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Prom 24: British Light Music

alexandra Coghlan

Reviewing last night’s Prom of British Light Music feels a bit like getting all AA Gill on your granny’s Victoria sponge. The collage of musical morsels from Bantock, Arnold, Coates and Elgar is music made with love, for pleasure, by composers who rated enjoyment over admiration. It’s music that smothers critical appraisal gently but firmly in its tweed-clad bosom, killing you with musical kindness.

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Prom 21: Hope, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Søndergård

Edward Seckerson

The “Turning Point” in Colin Matthews’ so-named orchestral piece is a change of attitude, a sudden seriousness of purpose, a great effort of will to stop moving and take stock of where it - whatever it is - is going. That Matthews did actually stop mid-composition because, precisely as the piece tells us, he wasn’t sure he was enjoying the ride anymore is one of those extra-musical bits of information that perhaps holds the key to understanding the motivation behind it.

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Prom 20: Götterdämmerung, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

Edward Seckerson

And so Wotan’s ravens flew home and at the twilight’s last gleaming the immortals were consumed by fire and water. All was finally and irrevocably redeemed by the power of love, and the most beautiful of all the leitmotifs in Wagner’s Ring rolled out across the Albert Hall like a benediction. It was a defining moment in Proms history, no doubt, and was greeted with a few moments of perfect - and I mean perfect - silence.

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Prom 19: Tristan und Isolde, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov

Sebastian Scotney

Such has been the justifiable flow of superlatives this week about the Berlin Staatskapelle's Ring conducted by Barenboim, the centrepiece of the BBC Proms' Wagner bicentenary celebration, it would have been easy to forget that the 2013 Proms season contains not just those four, but seven complete Wagner operas.

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Prom 18: Siegfried, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

Ismene Brown

The transformative power of the Royal Albert Hall at Proms-time never ceases to amaze me.

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Prom 17: Antonio Márquez Company, BBC Philharmonic, Mena

Jasper Rees

JThis year’s Proms have been accompanied by an unusual choral drone, a monotony of voices whinging about the prodigious heat at the Albert Hall. For one night only no one was complaining as the temperature gauge went up to something like 111. You’ve heard of the Hollywood Prom and Comedy Prom, the Gospel Prom and the Dalek Prom.

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