Classical Reviews
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Runnicles, Royal Albert HallThursday, 05 August 2010
Being a great Mahler conductor is all about going the extra distance: the near-inaudible pianissimo, the seismic crescendo, the rhetorical ritardando; the accelerando that borders on reckless, the tempo change that crashes the gear-shift, the general pause that becomes a gaping chasm. Mahler took all the trappings of Austro-German music to the edge and back. His most successful interpreters do likewise. So, on the evidence of this Prom performance of the... Read more...
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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Runnicles, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 04 August 2010
What a quintessential Prom: a quartet of works by English composers which aspire to international status, and in three cases wholly succeed, performed by the BBC's Scottish orchestra at world-class level under its homegrown but deservedly globetrotting chief conductor Donald Runnicles. And doing what the Albert Hall, if handled properly, assists in doing best - not the... Read more... |
Aimard, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Nott, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 03 August 2010
It was a huge irony that the focus of last night's Proms programme was the musical duet: the concerto, the waltz, the visual-aural duet of a Ravel tone poem.
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Coco Chanel & Igor StravinskyMonday, 02 August 2010
She glides on the arm of a tail-coated swain into an elegant Belle Epoque drawing room. Music swirls, eyes swivel. And no wonder. Her thin black dress hugs a gamine frame, a look of masculine confidence rests on her face. Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, better known to all and sundry as Coco, is making an entrance. Another one. Read more... |
Stephen Sondheim at 80, Royal Albert HallSunday, 01 August 2010
Everybody in the business says don’t think Sondheim is easy. I’ve seen galas where big names stumbled in under-rehearsed numbers, and last night Bryn Terfel and Maria Friedman slipped and almost fell on the same banana skins that had done for them in a hastily semi-staged Sweeney Todd. Not enough to matter, though, and they rightly brought the house down. And the show as a whole? Read more... |
Australian Youth Orchestra, Elder, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 31 July 2010
The stage of the Royal Albert Hall has a rather unfortunate habit of making orchestras seem incidental. Stretching endlessly across, one of the world’s largest organs by way of backdrop, even the most generous conventional ensembles take on Lilliputian proportions. Youth orchestras, with their Romantic scale and do-or-die attack, often emerge best from this encounter, as the Simón Bolívar and Gustav Mahler ensembles have recently proved. Framed by eight double basses and five horns, the... Read more... |
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Boyd, Royal Albert HallFriday, 30 July 2010
The banquet's laid, the host is absent but the guests can still relish the first-class fare in his memory. Sir Charles Mackerras was perhaps looking down happily in the company of Mozart and Dvořák as another oboist-turned-conductor like himself, Douglas Boyd, put his beloved Scottish Chamber Orchestra players buoyantly through their paces. The special late-night... Read more... |
Josefowicz, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Knussen, Royal Albert HallThursday, 29 July 2010
"Stockhausen's festive overture from 1977 opens the programme," declared the Proms website cheerily. Come again? Festive? Stockhausen? From my limited but largely enthusiastic knowledge of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen - much of which is about as festive as Auschwitz - I assumed that this must either be a big misunderstanding or a lively, perhaps German, joke. It was both. Read more... |
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi, Hahn, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 28 July 2010
If the bust of Sir Henry Wood that watches over the stage of the Royal Albert Hall had come to life, Commendatore-like, during last night’s concert, I can’t help feel that he would have been smiling. Beethoven nights – once a popular Proms fixture – have lately fallen off the calendar, but alongside various nods to tradition have this year returned. Read more... |
Zacharias, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert HallMonday, 26 July 2010
The Proms listings are full of concerts a bit like the one last night that seem to offer up, on paper, little of real burning interest: no big names, no star foreign orchestras, no intriguing rarities, no new works, nothing beyond one hard-working BBC orchestra and a few staple classics (a Strauss family waltz-medley and some Schumann) that could be rattled off by any professional orchestra blindfold. Be warned: these are the concerts that are most likely to transfigure your evening, stir...
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