Proms
stephen.walsh
“The curse of Schumann,” remarked Prom director Roger Wright to me before Monday’s concert, bemoaning the fact that only (only!) 2,000 seats had been sold for the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s concert under Thomas Dausgaard - whereas Dausgaard's earlier Tchaikovsky/ Sibelius Prom had been jam-packed. But he was right: the Albert Hall is more than half empty with those numbers, and looks it. A pity. I can’t recall a better, more spirited, or indeed more interesting performance of any Schumann symphony than Dausgaard’s of the C major, No 2, and it absolutely deserved a full house.
Schumann Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It may have been the glossy, Labrador-like abandon of John Wilson and his fabulous orchestra, but barely two bars of the Oklahoma! overture had passed before I caught myself grinning and drifting into critical neutral. Richard Rodgers’ scores are built for a symphony orchestra, and the massed forces of over 50 strings, swollen brass and percussion sections, brought out their sweeping, sparkling best. There have been major international orchestras this season that have failed to muster half the energy and commitment Wilson drew from his players; the overtures and instrumental interludes (in Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Boy, did I want to enjoy this Prom. On paper it should have been the highlight of the season. Young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been making his mark in London as principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with several sensational performances of Bruckner over the past few years. Here he was for his Proms debut at the helm of his smart new orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Gergiev's old outfit). And joining him was one of the most intelligent of singers, Simon Keenlyside, in Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. What could go wrong?Effort was certainly not lacking. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a pianist, encouraged her muzzled instrument (a metal brace lying across its stringed body) to gnash away rhythmically and to dance amid the downpour. 1939 was when John Cage came up with this breathtakingly original, endlessly exhilarating work, First Construction (in Metal), that opened this late-night Prom. It was the most invigorating 10 minutes I've Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
From Russian “avant-garde constructivism” to Estonian minimalism via a jazz-inspired French concerto and the defiant originality of Scriabin – last night’s Prom from Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra had a lot of ground to cover. I can imagine few pieces more antithetical – in spirit as much as style – as the self-reflexive indulgence of Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy and Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No 4 with its meditative asceticism; it says much of Salonen’s persuasive energy that it was a dialogue rather than a squabble that ensued amongst this rag-bag of the 20th and 21st Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Russians can often get away with murder in concert. It's so ingrained within our Western psyche to believe that the Slav has culture, musicality, an innate aesthetic sensitivity pouring out of every toe that you could get a Russian to do the chicken dance and we'd all be ooh-ing and ah-ing about the passion of each wing flap, the brooding darkness of each wiggle, the searing, sarcastic quality of each clap. Not all Russians have a Russian soul. And some, like pianist Nikolai Lugansky at last night's Prom, display little sign of any soul at all. That's not to say that last night's Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Meditative experiences are hard to come by in the Royal Albert Hall. The twitching, scratching, fidgeting ticks of over 5000 people conspire to break your focus, to draw attention from the musical middle-distance back to the here and now. Last night’s two Proms – whether through programming, performance or just a happy chance of circumstances – both glanced into this distant space, briefly achieving that sense of communion peculiar to Proms audiences. As a birthday tribute to composer-mystic Arvo Pärt, it was fitting indeed.As he has already proved at ENO, Ed Gardner is a master of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
On paper it was a perfect Monday night programme – Scriabin’s extravagant sprawl of a First Symphony and Stravinsky’s The Firebird in its roomy original ballet score. A pairing of youthful 20th-century Russians conducted by the 21st-century Russian. Barely recovered from Sunday’s sensuous binge of Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Gergiev and the LSO promised some welcome hair of the dog. Yet by the time the inevitable Proms standing ovation shifted to its feet something was still lacking; mellow we certainly were. Intoxicated? Not even close.There’s something disarmingly Read more ...
David Nice
How did they do it? This was another Prom which looked almost too much on paper but worked hair-raisingly well in practice. It was a Vladimir Jurowski special: whizzing, clamorous demons versus introspective reveries, church bells bringing one witches' sabbath to an end, alarm bells kicking off another. And from the first rapid crescendo of the Musorgsky-Rimsky Korsakov Night on a Bare Mountain to the truly great Julia Fischer's much slower build of a cadenza in Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto and on to the final wind-up of Prokofiev's hellish Third Symphony, the performers held nearly Read more ...
David Nice
This was the Prom I’d earmarked as the most unmissable event out of this year’s 76. Starry attraction was the century-overdue UK premiere of maverick-mystic Dane Rued Langgaard’s Music of the Spheres, born for this of all venues. But the meshing of microscopic Ligeti with big stalwarts of the core repertoire, the marriage of legendary Danish choral singers with the country’s best orchestra and the presence of two live wires, violinist Henning Kraggerud and conductor Thomas Dausgaard, promised other fresh perspectives. Did they deliver? Truly, madly, deeply.This was the Prom I’d earmarked as Read more ...
David Nice
Swimming in the soup of the lesser late Romantics can be hard work. You get to admire the pretty variegated fish as you flounder, waiting to be buoyed up by a bigger idea. Then one comes along and nudges away so insistently that you nearly drown. Both extremes had to be borne in the first half of last night's Prom, with Ingo Metzmacher steering a supple course between the lazy devil of a Schreker operatic interlude and the placid blue sea of Korngold's Violin Concerto. The one interesting question that kept me afloat in viscous waters was: could he turn master oarsman and steer the superior, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Classic FM presenter and former Culture Minister David Mellor was his usual charming self in his column in this weekend's Mail on Sunday. Reviewing the Sondheim at 80 Prom, he found his enjoyment impaired by activity at the side of the stage. Or as he put it, "that distracting bloke on stage signing the performance". He is referring, of course, to Dr Paul Whittaker OBE, who had been engaged to sign the first ever Prom for the deaf.Readers of theartsdesk will be familiar with Whittaker's work. To recap, he is the highly distinguished founder of the Music and the Deaf charity. He was Read more ...