Royal Albert Hall
Prom 2, Walker, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - sensuousness and subtlety in excelsisMonday, 18 July 2022
Had Claudio Abbado conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a major Elgar orchestral work – and to my knowledge he never saw the light about the composer’s due place among the European greats – it might have sounded something like last night’s “Enigma”... Read more... |
Prom 1, Verdi's Requiem, BBCSO, Oramo review - introspective sorrow and consolation between the blazesSaturday, 16 July 2022
Any sensitive festival planner knows to begin the return to a new normal with something soft and elegiac – reflecting on all we’ve lost and mourned these past two years, as well as what we’re facing in the world now. Just over a fortnight ago, at... Read more... |
BBC Proms 2022 preview - big is beautiful againThursday, 14 July 2022
Remember how, back in the summer of 2020, we all wondered if large-scale symphonies would be back in the repertoire any time soon? I pessimistically predicted a decade of slow orchestral reconstruction.Yet right at the beginning of the 2021-2 season... Read more... |
The Car Man, Royal Albert Hall review - grand scale drama and decadenceMonday, 13 June 2022
Ever since his re-staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne has managed to update the art of storytelling through dance steps and gesture in a way that others have struggled to achieve.This new re-working of his 2000 dance-noir, The Car Man... Read more... |
Patti Smith, Royal Albert Hall review - a wild ride from a musical legendWednesday, 06 October 2021
Patti Smith has been making rabble rousing punk rock for half a century. She’s spent a lifetime on the road with rock stars and poets, surfing the charts, bringing music and wisdom to the people in myriad ways from beatnik to mainstream and now here... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, Terfel, RPO, Philharmonia Chorus, Petrenko, RAH review - an anniversary feastWednesday, 22 September 2021
75 years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it’s sobering to reflect that without this one person’s hubris and sheer cantankerousness, British musical life would be a whole lot worse off. Beecham, who fortuitously... Read more... |
Podium odes to joy: conductors at the 2021 BBC PromsSaturday, 18 September 2021
They must have been especially overjoyed to be back in front of (or with back to the greater part of) a live audience. But inspiring musicians is what conductors are there to do on the night, and what you see in the top image is what we got from the... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Arcangelo, Cohen, BBC Proms review – journey to the end of nightFriday, 10 September 2021
No disrespect to Sakari Oramo and his colleagues in tomorrow’s farewell jamboree, but I wonder whether this performance should have featured as the Last Night of the Proms. After all its terror, grief and sorrow, the St Matthew Passion ends with... Read more... |
Through hoops and hurdles to sheer joy: BBC Proms Director David Pickard on a season like no otherFriday, 10 September 2021
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... Read more... |
Proms Festival Orchestra, Wigglesworth, BBC Proms review - brilliant work in progress, perfect AdagiettoThursday, 09 September 2021
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... Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, RLPO, Hindoyan, BBC Proms review - wood magic and swashbuckling show-offsMonday, 06 September 2021
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,... Read more... |
Chiejina, Sinfonia of London, Wilson, BBC Proms review - a musical arrival for a special favouriteSunday, 05 September 2021
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... Read more... |
