thu 28/03/2024

Classical Reviews

Prom 42: Rachlin, BBCSSO, Volkov

David Nice

A second night of Sibelius symphonies at the Proms, packed to the rafters just like its predecessor. Exit Thomas Dausgaard, the tuba needed for the first two symphonies but not for the Third or – surprising given its pervasive darkness – the Fourth, and the air that had billowed around supremely supple performances.

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Prom 40: BBCSSO, Dausgaard

David Nice

From Sakari Oramo’s riveting Nielsen symphonies at the Barbican to Thomas Dausgaard kicking off the Proms’ Sibelius cycle, the two Nordic immortals are well served in their 150th birthday year. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, whose reins Dausgaard takes over from the great Donald Runnicles in 2016, may not have the sheer heft of the Berlin Philharmonic strings we heard earlier this year in Rattle’s Sibelius.

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Currie, RSNO, Gardner, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

David Kettle

On paper it looked like it would be very much a concert of two halves. James MacMillan’s energetic, glittering Second Percussion Concerto was unveiled last year and received its first UK performance in London last December, and it was getting its premiere in the composer’s homeland at this Edinburgh International Festival concert from its dedicatee, percussionist Colin Currie, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

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Prom 38: Osborne, BBC Philharmonic, Mena

Bernard Hughes

Pairing Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with John Foulds’ Three Mantras was a smart piece of programming: established modern classic and obscure novelty sharing an inspiration from Indian music and philosophy, and both perfectly designed for showing off a very fine orchestra to its best advantage.

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Prom 36: Hamelin, BBCSO, Roth

Sebastian Scotney

The pulling power of the BBC Proms was in action last night, as a virtually full Royal Albert Hall settled down at 6.30pm, and braced itself for 22 testing minutes of restless, angular, unforgiving 1960s Boulez.The audience had been lured in by the gentler fare that was to come in the second half, but Boulez's Figures - Doubles - Prismes, under the taut control of its pulse by François-Xavier Roth, definitely left its mark.

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Prom 33: Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Gardiner

Peter Quantrill

Sir John Eliot Gardiner has made great play for years with the idea that Beethoven’s Fifth is a revolutionary symphony in not only musical but political terms. Accordingly the first bars were a call to arms, taking no heed of a restless Proms audience, or the Albert Hall’s generous acoustic, ploughing into and then through the argument with the joyful fury of a class war demo breaking police lines.

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Prom 32: Bartlett, Elschenbroich, RPO, Whitacre

Bernard Hughes

The England cricket team recently went through seven Test matches alternating winning and losing, the longest such sequence in the history of the game. Eric Whitacre managed a similar, and similarly frustrating, series of hits and misses in his Sunday matinee Prom of American music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Prom 29: Bavouzet, BBC Philharmonic, Collon

David Nice

Yet another full Proms house sat down, and of course stood, for a rather strange six course meal which turned out not quite what the menu had led us to anticipate.

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Classical CDs Weekly: Nielsen, Terry Riley, Will Todd

graham Rickson

 

Nielsen: Complete Symphonies BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)

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Prom 24: BBCSSO, Runnicles

David Nice

You never quite know whether a new work by James MacMillan is going to veer towards the masterly or the overblown. His magnificent chain of concertos has arguably yielded masterpieces, but the Third Symphony at the Proms in 2003 sounded like an unwieldy impersonation of the monumental. Twelve years have passed, and he’s shied off writing a Fourth until he felt he had something to say.

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