Classical music
Sebastian Scotney
Hugh Masekela used to give advice for concerts like this one: “If you haven’t got tickets, turn yourself into a cockroach.” Every seat for Aurora Orchestra’s Beethoven’s Ninth by Heart Prom had already sold out on the first morning when season booking opened back in May, and the queue for returns at the Royal Albert Hall last night must have had well over a hundred people in it.This performance, preceded by an illuminating, engaging and amusing 45-minute “musical and dramatic exploration”, was a reminder of quite how far Aurora has grown in confidence and stature, and has evolved its Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Bach’s St John Passion came into the world just three centuries ago, in Leipzig at Easter 1724. This year’s Proms shower of manna from musical heaven continued with a consummately polished, sensitive and – ultimately – very moving birthday performance by Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan.Their profound familiarity with the work, and proficiency in all its idioms, bred not routine slickness but an inward intimacy that serenely bridged the gap between the liturgical rituals of the German Baroque and the music drama of today. For all his historically-informed scholarship (right Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
This year’s Proms programme initially gave rise to some now-customary sneers about predictability, banality and dumbing down. Well, it all depends on where you sit, and what you hear. And my seats have witnessed one absolute humdinger after another. Last night, Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus partnered with three exceptional soloists to deliver Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with a commitment, intensity and, above all, ferocious attention to detail that made it an occasion to remember, and to celebrate. To call this performance “operatic”, given Pappano’s Read more ...
Simon Thompson
People hold lots of different opinions about the European Union, but there’s really only one acceptable opinion to be held about the European Union Youth Orchestra; namely, that they’re brilliant. Their visit to the Edinburgh International Festival consisted of two hour-long concerts, but the hundred musicians, aged 18-26, hailing from 27 countries, crammed more artistry and brilliance into those two concerts than some orchestras manage in a season.Sure, the tone wasn’t always there, and occasionally you could notice a lack of maturity. The violins sounded rather too bright for Elgar’s " Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My three Proms so far this year have all featured regional BBC orchestras conducted by women, all excellent, and it surely reflects well on the Proms management that they have done so much to address this gender imbalance in recent years. In last night’s Prom 36 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra were led by the New Zealander Gemma New, who navigated a programme of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Bonis with élan, good humour and a gorgeous black frock coat.Before doing my research, the name Mel Bonis would have suggested an Australian Olympic athlete, or Californian surf champion, but she was in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Fauré: Requiem, Gounod: Messe de Clovis Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet (Alpha-Classics)It was as an avid fan of the short story author Saki that my eye was drawn to the title of Gounod’s Messe de Clovis, although the Clovis here is the 14th century king of France, who became, like Joan of Arc, an emblematic figure for the French people after defeat by Prussia in 1870. Paired with a recording of Fauré’s Requiem, which are ten-a-penny, this seems to be the only available recording of the Gounod, whose music I have become more interested in over the last couple of years. Gounod was Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When you stop to think about it, Schwanengesang is a pretty ridiculous thing. Schubert’s final song cycle was famously put together by his publishers after his death, and so it’s barely a cycle at all. Therefore, unlike Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, there’s no story and, even worse, the lurches in mood between the songs are so extreme that they can become absurd.I reflected on that several times while watching Ian Bostridge singing it during this EIF Queen’s Hall recital, because his identification with the songs and their meaning seemed so complete that he could drag the audience into Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
This Prom by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Nil Venditti featured a first half of Welsh composers, including the belated Proms debut of Karl Jenkins at the age of 80. It’s a sign of how Proms programming has evolved over the last 30 years that either of them gets a look-in and, even if I had some mixed feelings about their pieces, it can only be a good thing that they are now being heard in this festival.The second half featured someone who has waited even longer than Jenkins for a first Proms outing – Louise Farrenc, who died in 1875 – alongside a guy called Ludwig van Beethoven, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra first performed at the Proms – to a rapturous welcome – in 2003. For two decades the visits, and the audience rapture, have continued, while the region of most WEDO players’ birth now looks, this hideous year above all, more steeped in blood and hate than ever. Said and Barenboim never intended the orchestra, with its core element of young Arab and Israeli musicians later augmented by players from neighbouring lands, as some kind of soppily high-minded peace project. Rather, they sought a way of creatively Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When you’re running a three-concert residency, you can afford to take a few repertoire risks, to programme a few things that might be close to your heart but which won’t pack in the punters.That must be the reason why the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s EIF residency included Hans Rott’s First Symphony in its first night and in this, its last, Dvořák’s Te Deum and Josef Suk’s Asrael symphony, works close to Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša’s heart but which don’t resonate so much with British audiences.Predictably, therefore, the Usher Hall was only half full for both of those concerts (their middle Read more ...
David Nice
Let’s begin at the end. Can the Paris Olympics' closing ceremony offer anything as classy or joyous as 260 musicians aged 13 to 18 singing the French carol-plus-farandole finale of Bizet’s L'Arlésienne music?* This encore also made Proms history as a unique riposte to the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s instrument-twirling Bernstein “Mambo”. And what a sequel to a Mahler One brimming with energy, masterfully negotiated by conductor Alexandre Bloch.Range rather than cohesion was the name of this supremely high-spirited game. Wagner's Overture to The Flying Dutchman underlined the discipline: Read more ...
graham.rickson
Arthur Bliss: Works for Brass Band Black Dyke Band,/John Wilson (Chandos) I’ve really got into the music of Arthur Bliss over the last couple of years, aided by Paul Spicer’s authoritative 1923 biography. I had always had Bliss in my head as a stuffy old establishment buffer, but he was far from that, although he did end up as Master of the Queen’s Music. As a young man – having fought with distinction in WWI – he was quite the radical, and an early composer for film, most notably in the groundbreaking Things To Come. Above all, what emerged from the biography, was a grounded, contented Read more ...