Royal Albert Hall
BBC Proms: A Mass of Life, BBCSO, Elder review - a subtle guide to Delius's Nietzschean masterpieceTuesday, 19 August 2025
For Delius – then a young man, visiting Norway in the late 1880s to walk in its mountains – his first encounter with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra was nothing less than an epiphany. Already high on the grandeur of nature in a country defined by... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Anoushka Shankar 'Chapters' review - somehow, it workedWednesday, 13 August 2025
You can't explain stage presence like Anoushka Shankar’s. It just "is". When she steps out in front of a completely packed Royal Albert Hall, and utters a welcoming, exploratory, London-ish “Hi... welcome to my Prom… Oh, my God!”, a friendly... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Liu, Philharmonia, Rouvali review - fine-tuned Tchaikovsky epicThursday, 21 August 2025
Pianist Bruce Liu wasn’t the only star soloist last night, though he certainly had the most notes to play. Attention was riveted by at least five Philharmonia members and their maverick principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali as percussionist in a... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly griefWednesday, 20 August 2025
At first, I had my doubts about Puccini’s Suor Angelica in this concert performance at the Proms with Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra.With the big band (up to and including Richard Gowers’s organ) arrayed far behind the... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet review - super-sized polyphonic raritiesMonday, 18 August 2025
There’s a Proms paradox that’s familiar to Early Music fans. Some works are too challenging – too big, too expensive, too uncommercial, too obscure – to do anywhere else. The trouble is, the Royal Albert Hall is the absolute last place you’d want to... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Akhmetshina, LPO, Gardner review - liquid luxuriesTuesday, 12 August 2025
Water surged through this Prom from first spray to last drop. But there was nothing damp or diluted about Edward Gardner’s helmsmanship as he steered the London Philharmonic Orchestra through a succession of liquid rhapsodies: three from the early... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Láng, Cser, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer review - idiomatic inflectionsThursday, 07 August 2025
“Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night,” quoth Blake. Beethoven and Bartók knew both extremes, but Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra led us from the most dancing of Seventh Symphonies to the endless... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaljuste review - Arvo Pärt 90th birthday tributeFriday, 01 August 2025
Arvo Pärt was into his 40s before he made had his Big Musical Idea: simplicity. He has spent the subsequent half-century pursuing this ideal, largely through the religious choral music that has been dubbed Holy Minimalism. And in this year of his... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Kholodenko, BBCNOW, Otaka review - exhilarating Lutosławski, underwhelming RachmaninovThursday, 31 July 2025
According to the programme, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra is heard somewhere around the world every other week. In which case I’ve been unlucky in never having heard it live before, despite being a fan for nearly 30 years. So I was relieved... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Batsashvili, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth review - grief and gloryMonday, 28 July 2025
This Prom began in sombre and melancholic shades of grey. Then, as her encore, the superb Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili launched into Liszt’s Paganini étude, “La Campanella”, and bells of long-awaited joy rang around the Royal Albert Hall.... Read more... |
BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - spring-heeled varietyTuesday, 22 July 2025
It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many Shostakovich pops, the Ravel concerto and Walton symphony ahead sailed for deeper waters, And the... Read more... |
BBC Proms: First Night, Batiashvili, BBCSO, Oramo review - glorious Vaughan WilliamsSaturday, 19 July 2025
The auditorium and arena were packed – and the stage even more so, bursting at the seams with players and singers: the perfect set-up for a First Night of the Proms. This is traditionally an opportunity to programme a large-scale choral work, and... Read more... |
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