Classical Reviews

Prom 36: Hamelin, BBCSO, Roth

Sebastian Scotney Thursday, 13 August 2015

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.

Prom 33: Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Gardiner

Peter Quantrill Monday, 10 August 2015

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.

Prom 32: Bartlett, Elschenbroich, RPO, Whitacre

Bernard Hughes Monday, 10 August 2015

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.

Comment

Prom 29: Bavouzet, BBC Philharmonic, Collon

David Nice Saturday, 08 August 2015

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.

Classical CDs Weekly: Nielsen, Terry Riley, Will Todd

graham Rickson Saturday, 08 August 2015

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

Prom 24: BBCSSO, Runnicles

David Nice Tuesday, 04 August 2015

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.

Prom 23: Verdi's Requiem, BBCSSO, Runnicles

alexandra Coghlan Monday, 03 August 2015

A weekend of extremes at the Proms took us from stark solo Bach on Saturday to the massed forces of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, gathered under Donald Runnicles for Verdi’s Requiem. As a showcase for the kinds of repertoire the awkward Royal Albert Hall really does do well, it was pretty nigh perfect.

Southrepps Sinfonia and Soloists, Southrepps Festival

David Nice Monday, 03 August 2015

It only takes one outstanding musician with links to an out-of-the-way place to gather his or her top-notch friends and give a mini-festival of international quality. They’re springing up all over the UK: guiding lights that come to mind are violinist Anthony Marwood in Peasmarsh and tenor Toby Spence at Wardsbrook Farm.

Prom 22: Piemontesi, Aurora Orchestra, Collon

Peter Quantrill Sunday, 02 August 2015

What would you expect of an ensemble performance played from memory? That the odd lapse, entirely understandable over the span of a 40-minute symphony, would be more than offset, perhaps, by gains in intimacy and flexibility as the players could look around and phrase together, respond to a conductor’s nudge and turn on a sixpence.

Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova plays Bach (II)

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 02 August 2015

While Friday night’s triptych of solo Bach began and ended in a sombre, contemplative place, the arc created for the second sequence by pairing the final sonata for solo violin with the second and third partitas is altogether more dramatic. In Ibragimova’s ordering we opened with the monolithic D minor Partita, warming through the C major Sonata before ending joyfully with the E major Partita.