Classical music
David Pickard
As anyone who has been trying to steer an arts organisation through the pandemic will tell you, the greatest challenge has been uncertainty; learning to live with the unknown and the unexpected. When we planned this year’s Proms, I would have said the “safest” concerts were our two solo organ recitals, but we had to replace the organist in both cases – one had quarantine challenges; the other broke their arm. On the other hand, I might have expected problems getting an orchestra in from all over Europe (Mahler Chamber Orchestra) or being able to honour our commitment to bring Tristan Read more ...
David Nice
You don’t expect a great orchestral string section to be born overnight, yet under the circumstances of the Proms Festival Orchestra’s rapid creation and only three rehearsals of three hours each, this was more than good, with detailed articulation demanded and delivered. You also wouldn’t have expected, until it was announced a few weeks back, a big Mahler symphony in a slimmed-down Proms season.What a cause for celebration beyond the sheer feat of freelance musicians coming together, many after a long performing silence (which also meant, mostly, Mahler’s too). What we should perhaps call “ Read more ...
David Nice
After 14 years as principal conductor, Vasily Petrenko has left the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in top-league shape. The players must be as thrilled as we are that his successor, Venezuelan Armenian Domingo Hindoyan, carries the flame, catches the spark, call it what you will, with a distinct personality of his own, combining clariy and elegance in baton-wielding with a very watchable physical freedom. This Proms programme was well-tailored to presenting the new incumbent and the skills of each orchestral department in equal measure, and the star soloist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Turns out John Wilson was playing the long game from the start. The dynamic British conductor eased his way into Proms schedules in 2007, establishing his John Wilson Orchestra as an annual festival fixture just two years later. Film music from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Broadway musicals, Bernstein and more all arrived gleaming – freshly polished and ready for their close-up. But, over a decade later, it turns out that Wilson was just prepping the musical ground, as this game-changing concert made abundantly clear.The Proms debut of Wilson’s Sinfonia of London was always going to be one to Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Choral singers have suffered more than most from erratic and irrational Covid prohibitions while riskier mass pursuits have gone ahead. So when one of the world’s great choirs returned to the Proms with the conductor who has guided them for over half a century, the sense of occasion was palpable. Last night the Monteverdi Choir numbered 30 – not huge by Royal Albert Hall standards – but the joyfully exultant music that they made filled the dome with a boundless grandeur. Sir John Eliot Gardiner led his singers and the English Baroque Soloists through a programme that nicely reflected the mood Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Composer George Benjamin has dazzling talent, but he is difficult to showcase. He is not a naturally extrovert type, and most of his projects take years to formulate, and only come about through collaboration with close and trusted performers. But this Proms programme cleverly exploited that trait, presenting a varied portrait of the composer through his many friendships and collaborations. Benjamin himself conducted, leading the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for many years, also giving a concerto with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, another regular collaborator, as part of a Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has a joyous hunger for communication through music. She sometimes seems to dance through it. This was at its most vivid when she lunged towards BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra leader Laura Samuel to invite her to start the encore at the end of the first half of Saturday’s Bartók Roots Prom, “Baladă și Joc” (ballad and dance), a duo for two violins by György Ligeti.This friendly challenge – gleefully accepted – was made in the spirit of bringing the energy and vitality of folk fiddling into the formal arena of classical music. As Kopatchinskaja has said in a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Imants Kalniņš: Complete Symphonies and Concertos Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala and Māris Sirmais (Skani)If the eye-catching box design doesn’t attract your attention, the first track on CD 1 will, an extract from the veteran Latvian composer Imants Kalniņš’s 1973 score to the popular Latvian film Blow, Wind. Based on a folk song and lushly orchestrated, it could pass for a slice of Vertigo-era Bernard Herrmann, at least until the electric guitar solo starts. It makes for a perfect appetiser. Skani haven’t arranged Kalniņš’s seven symphonies in chronological order, so to Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Minds in Flux is the largest of this season’s Proms commissions, and last night it afforded a rare chance for UK audiences to hear work of George Lewis outside the often insular new-music and avant-garde improvisation circuits. As a trombonist-provocateur, Lewis (pictured below) was thumbing a nose at German new-music festivals the best part of half a century ago with a fellow African-American experimental composer, the saxophonist Anthony Braxton, doubtless to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. His blurring of boundaries – between composition and improvisation, jazz and classical, Read more ...
David Nice
Now that you've found her, never let her go. I hope that’s the mantra among players of the Chineke! Orchestra and their Artistic and Executive Director Chi-chi Nwanoku – leading the double basses last night – after this Prom with Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell. With her dancing spirit and focused stick technique regularly at the helm, this team could develop the real musical character that has eluded them under less dynamic and personable figures.An entire programme of works by Black American and British-based composers only fitfully hit the mark in a generous first half – you Read more ...
Joseph Phibbs
The music Britten composed in his twenties occupies a special place in his output. Even among his detractors there are some who begrudgingly concede that this early period is somehow different: fresher, more extroverted and daring, perhaps less driven by serving a purpose (or “being useful”, in the composer’s words).As a Britten fan since my teens, I’ve always been captivated by the expressive depth, technical brilliance, and sheer beauty of practically all his music. His handling of the orchestra has, in particular, had a big influence on how I’ve approached my own works in this medium over Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Simon Rattle and the LSO marked the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death with a concert of three “symphonies”. In fact, the programme had little to say about Stravinsky’s relationship with symphonic form: his early E flat Symphony was omitted, and the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the opening work, is not a symphony in any accepted sense. The programme was rather an opportunity to hear some of Stravinsky’s more obscure orchestral works. Given that obscurity, it was good to see a full house at the Albert Hall. What was the draw – Rattle? If so, his premature departure in 2023 is going to Read more ...