Classical Reviews
Prom 21: Leleux, Aurora Orchestra, CollonMonday, 01 August 2016
The Aurora Orchestra’s gimmick at Prom 21 was the same as in the last two seasons: playing a major classical symphony from memory. This was touted as an “astonishing feat” by the concert’s on-stage presenter Tom Service but, although unusual, is it really that extraordinary? When I go to the opera I am not moved to congratulate the singers on performing without music. Read more...
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Prom 20: Roméo et Juliette, Monteverdi Choir, NYCoS, ORR, GardinerSunday, 31 July 2016
Like Prokofiev in his full-length ballet a century later, Berlioz seems to have been inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to bring forth his most compendious score. John Eliot Gardiner, who knows and loves every bar of light and shade in this great Berlioz kaleidoscope, offered even more of it than usual at last night's Prom. Read more... |
Prom 18: Mahler's Third Symphony, LSO, HaitinkSaturday, 30 July 2016
Few 87-year-olds would have the stamina to conduct over 100 minutes of Mahler. Bernard Haitink, though, has always kept a steady, unruffled hand on the interpretative tiller, and if his way with the longest of all the symphonies, the Third, hasn't changed that much since his first recording made half a century ago with his Concertgebouw Orchestra, there's still reassurance in the sheer beauty of the music-making. Read more... |
Prom 15: Chen, BBCSO, BBCSC, DavisWednesday, 27 July 2016
Programming a concert is a tricky business. Programming an entire Proms season almost unthinkably difficult. But even allowing for the odd evening of leftovers, those artists, anniversaries and concertos that just can’t be fitted in anywhere else, last night’s Prom 15 was a muddle. Read more... |
The Kingdom, Three Choirs Festival, GloucesterTuesday, 26 July 2016
The last time but one that the Three Choirs Festival was in Gloucester the main offering was Elgar’s oratorio The Kingdom, and there’s a kind of inevitability about the same work turning up again, same place, same occasion, six years later. After all, the Three Choirs has not survived for almost 300 years by a fidgety policy of constant renewal. Read more... |
Prom 13: London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, JurowskiMonday, 25 July 2016
The last time I heard Beethoven's setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy in the finale of his Ninth Symphony, it was as European anthem at the end of this May's Europe Day Concert, and everybody gladly stood. That hopeful occasion was distinguished by Andrew Manze's Rameauisation of the melody, stylishly played by Rachel Podger and the European Union Baroque Orchestra. Read more... |
Prom 11: Wilson, Creswell, BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, WigglesworthSunday, 24 July 2016
It's not often you think you detect a future Brünnhilde in a soprano performing a great Verdi role, but that was the case when American Tamara Wilson made her UK debut last autumn as a stunning Leonora in the ENO production of Verdi's The Force of Destiny. So would she sing the Ring? Not for 10 years at least, she said. Read more... |
Prom 9: Feola, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie, RhorerSaturday, 23 July 2016
It's never easy readjusting to the weird and sometimes wonderful acoustics of Albert's colosseum at Proms time, least of all when the first thing you hear there comes from a period-instrument band. Tuning in to Jérémie Rhorer's Le Cercle de l'Harmonie didn't take too long, however, while the urgent projection and diction of a splendid new Italian soprano on the block, Rosa Feola, did the hall proud. Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bruckner, Mahler, Nielsen, SchnittkeSaturday, 23 July 2016
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Prom 5: Missa Solemnis, BBCPO, NosedaWednesday, 20 July 2016
Even in a performance as well-organised as this one, masterminded by Gianandrea Noseda, there is still something of the codebook about the Missa solemnis. Its length and scale simultaneously attract devotion and repel the kind of affection drawn by earlier, spaciously conceived and more abstractly “spiritual” works such as the “Pastoral” Symphony and Violin Concerto. Read more... |
Bruckner: Mass No. 3 in F minor Soloists, Bavarian Radio Choir, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Robin Ticciati (Tudor)Pages
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