Classical Reviews
BBC Proms: Douglas, BBC Symphony Orchestra, DausgaardMonday, 22 August 2011
Having been away in remote mountain places, I hadn't heard that the BBCSO's chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek was taking a month off to recover from a virus. So it was a bracing last-minute shock to find the man stepping up to the podium to conduct Wagner's Meistersinger Prelude not the orchestra's wise Hans Sachs but a Walther von Stolzing in conducting terms, tipped unexpectedly by one source outside the BBC as Bělohlávek's successor. Lean and hungry Dane Thomas Dausgaard... Read more...
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BBC Proms: London Sinfonietta, BBC Singers, Atherton, Cadogan HallSunday, 21 August 2011
Sirs Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies have now been at each others’ heels for almost 60 years. First, the composers were students together at the Royal Manchester College of Music. Then, once their careers began flourishing they kept rubbing against each other in concert programmes. Inevitable, really: the same organisations commissioned them; they were the Twin Peaks of British Modernism. Even now, for old times’ sake, the pair can’t escape each others’ shadow. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Ax, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, HaitinkSaturday, 20 August 2011
"O, reason not the need!” cries Shakespeare’s King Lear, insisting on certain unquestioned rights. The phrase came to me listening to Bernard Haitink conducting Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto and Fourth Symphony last night. The 82-year-old Haitink does not question the need for this music - and I’m not sure that’s entirely right. I want the imperative there, I want to feel the urge to be born in those musical paragraphs that Brahms wrote with such generous largesse. To reason the need gives... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Ax, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Haitink/ Hewitt, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ManzeSaturday, 20 August 2011
Brahms, Brahms, Brahms, Brahms, Brahms, and one work dedicated to Brahms by Schumann. That's right: it was Brahms night at the Proms. No scary new works. No discombobulating new interpretative glosses - dear old Bernard was our guide. Nothing to ruffle the feathers or impede the thirsty ways of the professional champagne-quaffers in the sponsor boxes. Nothing to fear or disturb that is, except for around a dozen LEDed vulvas garlanding the stage. Read more... |
BBC Proms: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov/ Viktoria Mullova, Matthew BarleyFriday, 19 August 2011
Landscape painting may be dominated by the Dutch. But in music it is the Austrians who know best how to evoke the majesty of the great outdoors. In the first of last night's two Proms, one of the most awesome of Anton Bruckner's snow-capped symphonies, number five in B flat major, accompanied a new high climb through the Tyrol from fellow Austrian Thomas Larcher for two great musical off-pisters: violinist Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Batiashvili, Philharmonia Orchestra, SalonenWednesday, 17 August 2011
An all-Russian prom with two masterpieces centre stage and a remarkably compelling young violin artist brought in a packed house last night. Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lisa Batiashvili have already recorded Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, and the bond between them was evident in a delicate yet deeply searching performance of this melancholy, epic work with Salonen's orchestra, the Philharmonia. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Wang, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, LittonWednesday, 17 August 2011
Roger Wright’s reign as director of the BBC Proms has luckily spared us some of the more desperate themed programming that ran through the seasons in Nicholas Kenyon’s day. "Music and Shakespeare", I remember; music and the sea; and one year of Spain, Spain and Spain. I never wanted to hear another castanet again. But individual concerts still need careful planning. And if you’re hunting for a convenient hook, the name of Serge Koussevitzky – fiery Russian conductor of the Boston Symphony... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Swan Lake, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, GergievMonday, 15 August 2011
The fact that the world’s most popular ballet score had never, until last night, been performed in full at the Proms says something about the lowly regard in which musical circles long held composition for ballet. The fact that the Albert Hall’s capacity audience bayed six times for Valery Gergiev’s return to take their appreciation of his and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s performance of it last night says something about it being about time that musical circles stopped being so... Read more... |
BBC Proms: BBCSO, BBCSC, BBC Singers, WigglesworthSunday, 14 August 2011
To lose one performer (to misquote Oscar Wilde) may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose three begins to look like carelessness. With last night’s Prom killing off soloists faster than you can say Sinfonia da Requiem there are few who wouldn’t have forgiven a comfortably adequate sort of Sunday evening. As it was, however, despite the loss of Christopher Maltman, John Mark Ainsley and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, the combined BBC Symphony, Chorus and Singers under... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Tim Minchin, Kit and the Widow, Beardyman, BBC Concert OrchestraSaturday, 13 August 2011
It has been, we can safely agree, a truly terrible week. Art, culture, call it what you will, is unequal to the task of diagnosing a nation’s ills, let alone curing them. But on a night such as the inaugural Comedy Prom, it comes equipped with healing balm. This evening was maybe not perfect. There were wrinkles, little bits here and there that didn’t quite work. But the Saturday night that the BBC Proms gave over to the business of laughter could not have been more opportune. Read more... |
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