Classical music
Sebastian Scotney
Wisecracks can be profound. The late André Previn – who spent most of the period from his late teens to his mid-thirties working in film studios – once responded to a critic’s snub that the music of Korngold all sounded like Hollywood with the line: “No, Hollywood music all sounds like Korngold.”Last night’s Prom was under the title “The Warner Brothers Story” and its highlights came in works by the two European émigrés Korngold and Max Steiner. The programme showed quite how far-reaching the consequences were of Warner Brothers’ decision in the early 1930s, and at the beginning of the era of Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
July in Tuscany and the heat is intense. Oak-forested hills offer tempting shade; pale dust flies from the roads; in the houses curtains are drawn against the ferocious sun and around irrigated gardens the mosquitos are growing plump. If you love Italian sunshine, food, wine and chamber music, this is your ideal festival, as long as you pack some citronella. Its name: Incontri in Terra di Siena. The background to the event is both unusual and inspiring. In the 1920s the writer Iris Origo and her husband Antonio set up home in a sprawling villa, La Foce, overlooking the Val d’Orcia ( Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók: The Wooden Prince, Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/Susanna Mälkki (BIS)Bartók's The Wooden Prince is a one-off in the composer's output, an evocative, expansive ballet score that will surprise anyone who's been intimidated by his more abrasive music. Based on a scenario devised Béla Balácz, with whom Bartók had collaborated on Bluebeard’s Castle, The Wooden Prince is softer-edged, a verdant fairytale following a lovestruck prince’s pursuit of a princess. Frustrated at her disinterest, he creates a puppet substitute which is given life by a Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales’ second consecutive night at the Proms, accompanied by their associated National Chorus, ventured further out of the classical mainstream than the first. Where Wednesday night had seen a solid Germanic programme of Brahms, Wagner and Mozart Thursday saw a British world premiere and some enchanting Japanese music, alongside two meaty Russian classics. By one classic test this was an engrossing concert: the time flew by and I barely looked at my watch.Tōru Takemitsu’s Twill by Twilight of 1988 is a favourite of the Prom’s conductor Takaaki Otaka, and he Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Not every Prom has to push musical boundaries or bust concert conventions. On the face of it, last night’s programme from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (and National Chorus of Wales) stuck to a thoroughly traditional recipe. Two familiar 19th-century orchestral warhorses cantered out for the first half, followed by a beloved choral blockbuster delivered by massive forces who engendered a big, hearty, hall-filling – dare I say Victorian? – sound. So far, so retro – although it was a surprise to learn that Mozart’s Requiem has not graced the Proms nearly so often as you might have assumed Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra marked the first performance of composer Mieczysław Weinberg at the Proms, an important milestone in the recent surge of interest of his music. When Weinberg, a Russian composer of Jewish descent and Polish birth, died in 1996, he was little known in the West, and had fallen from favour in a post-Communist Russia that associated his music with its Soviet past. But a staging of his opera The Passenger at Bregenz in 2010, sparked a huge revival of interest, especially in Germany, Poland and Russia. This year marks the centenary of his birth, the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Ben Gernon is only 30 (and looks about ten years younger) but has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic since 2017. He really impressed in last night’s Prom but, after an exciting overture, things fell away a bit with an under-nourished Rachmaninov concerto and an enjoyable if not faultless second half of Tchaikovsky.The first item augured very well. Malcolm Arnold’s Overture Peterloo is an odd piece, but gripping. Written in 1967 it shows two sides to the composer at once: first an effortless melodist but also a musical experimenter. The first two minutes have a filmic, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
I’m not quite sure that I should review this Prom, since I performed in it. Before anyone summons the white coats, let me clarify. As the encore to a mind-expanding evening, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto returned to the stage with his band of folk musicians. He asked the audience to hum a sort of drone, and then sing open-mouthed, as they sung and played a traditional song. How did we do? OK, I thought. It made a fittingly unorthodox finale to a rule-flouting programme which will have delighted many ears but left some concert purists not just with open mouths, but jaws on the floor.How Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve all had the experience of wandering into a church, only to discover it filled unexpectedly with music: the choir rehearsing for Evensong, a local orchestra practising, a soprano and organist getting ready for a weekend wedding. This spirit of serendipity, of startling, incongruous beauty, is the essence of the Dordogne’s annual Itinéraire Baroque festival, which invites its audience to stray into the many small churches that cover the region, filling these dark, quiet Romanesque buildings with music and life.And this isn’t just any music. When pioneering harpsichordist and organist Ton Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Since time immemorial the Edinburgh International Festival has started with a juicy choral epic designed to show off the Festival Chorus and the opulent Usher Hall. So this performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony would normally have been billed as the opening concert. But the forces of democratisation and outreach have been at work. In recent years the festival has kicked off with a large scale free “opening event,” aptly mirrored by the popular free fireworks concert at the end.This year the grand opening event was in fact a concert on Friday evening by the very same orchestra as that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Isabelle Aboulker: Mélodies/Songs en français and in English Julia Kogan (soprano), Isabelle Aboulker (piano) (First Hand Records)Never heard of Isabelle Aboulker? Now in her 80th year, she's worked as a choral director and a singing teacher. She's written music for French films and television, concentrating on vocal music and opera since the 1980s. This smartly conceived double album allows us to sample what non-francophones have been missing. Soprano Julia Kogan’s winning advocacy of Aboulker’s music stems from a chance meeting with the composer in a Pyrenean village. Kogan is Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
It’s a curiosity of music that a performance can occasionally be better – more persuasive and impressive – than the work itself. Even Britten’s most devoted advocates would find it hard to rank the Piano Concerto among his masterpieces. In his account at the BBC Proms last night, however, Leif Ove Andsnes carved out a niche for the piece as a confident yet quizzical response to the genre, standing diffidently to one side.Yes, the opening Toccata sounded more than ever like fluent but second-hand Prokofiev; the following wrong-note waltz limped along as a poor cousin to the Spanish-accented Read more ...