Royal Albert Hall
Boyd Tonkin
Poor Oberon! An opera scorned so long as weird and silly,A mash-up of outlandish tales all chucked in willy-nilly.Now brave Sir Mark (the Elder one) rides out to save its name. On Albert Hall’s broad field, will he win immortal fame And glorify the final work of Carl Maria Von Weber – Or leave the Prommers fretting over so much wasted labour?OK, I’ll stop there. Timothy Knapman’s new narration for Oberon replaced the original dialogue by James Robinson Planché – universally dismissed as a calamitous botch – with corny, witty jingling heptameters that irresistibly Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Last night’s Prom saw two beloved favourites – Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony – prefaced by a fairly unknown quantity. This was Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s rediscovered Fairy-Tale Suite, written for radio by the German composer in 1950 but never performed until 2001. Unmistakably haunted by war-time nightmares, it takes us spine-tinglingly deep into some truly menacing woods. Sadly, the magically gifted Alina Ibragimova – soloist in the Mendelssohn – had to fight her way through thickets of her own as Elena Schwarz allowed a robust and well-muscled BBC Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
On paper, this Prom looked like a well-stocked display-case for collective choral virtues. Baroque wizard Peter Whelan (pictured below) led the Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a rare first-half outing for the intensely dramatic Miserere in C minor by the Bohemian contemporary of Bach and Handel, Jan Dismas Zelenka. The second gave us the dependable vocal glories of Haydn’s “Nelson” Mass, retrospectively named for the Admiral after he (with Emma Hamilton in tow) visited the Esterházy court in 1800.
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David Nice
Had you been at John Wilson's Respighi spectacular on Friday, or heard it on BBC Radio 3/watched it on BBC Four, you might have perceived last night's journey up and down Richard Strauss's Bavarian alp as an extension of Albert Hall possibilities, complete with vast orchestra, offstage bands and full-blaze organ. While Wilson skilfully ran the gamut from ferocious blazes to the subtlest watercolour sketches, Edward Gardner encouraged the London Philharmonic Orchestra to go deep beneath the surface of Eine Alpensinfonie and takes its time in the long lines admiring the wonder of nature. Read more ...
David Nice
You never quite know what to expect from the acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall. It was hard to credit the total focus Kazuki Yamada drew from his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra right from the start of Poulenc's Sinfonietta - a precision which carried through to an exhilarating performance of the Concerto for Two Pianos with a stunning sibling duo. Adams' now-classic choral blockbuster Harmonium, on the other hand, sometimes benefitted from the halo of sound, but the combined masses of the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and the CBSO chorus couldn't give us many of the words of John Donne Read more ...
David Nice
Forget Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with bells, cannons and military bands (most people have, but it was my introduction to the Albert Hall as a child). Respighi's raucous festivals, sparkling fountains and various pines of Rome are where the real spectacular action is, with more music and poetry than Tchaikovsky found in that occasional piece. Who better than John Wilson and his superorchestra Sinfonia of London to urge the cavalcades and weave the magic in the ultimate Proms blockbuster? Surprisingly, it's not the first time the tall and massive order of all three sets of symphonic Read more ...
David Nice
Noble intentions and two talented true individuals faced a few obstacles in this admirably-planned Prom. Gianandrea Noseda looked set to reduce the Behemoth aspect of Beethoven's Ninth, especially given a phenomenal, fleet approach to its offspring Mahler Two with a youth orchestra in Georgia back in 2019, but Royal Albert Hall acoustics sometimes got in the way (at least from where I was, towards the back of the hall). And while Jessie Montgomery in These Righteous Paths managed to pay homage to the writing of her late mother Robbie McCauley, pioneer of the Black theatre movement, as well as Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Aaron Copland’s gleaming, monumental Fanfare for the Common Man was written to mark the USA’s entry into World War II. Those thunderous drums and soaring trumpets symbolised the moment when America formally announced itself as the greatest power in the world and its most ardent champion of democracy. How poignant, then, to hear it as a resonant opening to this year’s BBC Proms, in a programme that celebrated America’s 250th anniversary while reminding us that we no longer know what this superpower stands for. Nonetheless, in the moment, the crashing tam-tam and the crescendoing brass provided Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall comeback concert on Sunday, 23 April 1961 has often been lauded as "the greatest night in show business history", though that judgment surely depends on where Garland sits in one’s personal pantheon. Elvis’s made-for-television 68 Comeback Special, the king lean in leather, must be up there, and likely Sinatra at Madison Square Garden in 1974. Whatever, the sold-out performance featured some 25 standards, Garland backed by a 40-piece orchestra conducted by Mort Lindsey. Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton, and Julie Andrews were in the audience. The album, Judy at Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed new album Flying with Angels, there was a warm and generous welcome for singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy’s opening five-song set, drawn from her first two albums, The Eternal Rocks Beneath and The Pendulum Swing, and featuring a preview from the third, These Frightening Machines, due in March.The new song is “Matches”, about the witch trials, but a springboard, too, to broader and wider concerns that persist and exist beyond historical time. They Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Critics (including this one) casually refer to John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London as an all-star outfit, an army made up of generals. This week I was able to see, and hear, exactly what that means. A few days ago, in Scotland, I marvelled at flautist Adam Walker’s agility and versatility in his outstanding performances with the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at the Lammermuir Festival. Yesterday, on the penultimate night of the Proms, there he was again with the Sinfonia, a stand-out soloist in key passages from Strauss’s tone-poem Don Juan and, above all, in the complete version, Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-header of the RPO playing Respighi, Milhaud and Vaughan Williams at 11am and an evening concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and massed choirs in Gipps, Grieg and Bliss.The matinée (★★★★) was a set of three cityscapes, depicting Rome, Rio and London. Respighi’s The Pines of Rome is a terrific orchestral showpiece, low on memorable musical content but high on vivacity, gorgeous in its Technicolor scoring and performed here with pizzazz by the RPO, especially in the second and fourth movements. After the rumbustious opening Read more ...