Classical music
Ismene Brown
The Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin has long been damned faintly by two facts - that he is the husband of the Bolshoi prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and that he was for a long time the president of the Russian Composers' Union in the USSR. These two things were plenty enough to remove discussion of him from the musical arena to the seething forum of politics where every Soviet composer's actions were given intense non-musical scrutiny both inside and outside the USSR.Recently, however, Shchedrin - now 78 and long hardly heard in Russian and European concert halls coming to terms with Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Amazingly, the Vale of Glamorgan Festival has been on the go for more than 40 years, and has got better and better as it has gone along. Until recently, any kind of mould-breaking musical enterprise was likely to collide with the entrenched interests of the Taffia, the Cardiff and County Club, the Welsh Arts Council and the Land of Song.John Metcalf, the festival’s founder and guiding spirit, has somehow managed to thread his way through this hostile territory, and established a festival which is today the pride, if not of Cardiff, at least of Llantwit Major, 20 miles away on the south Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It must have been with a leaden heart that the BBC Proms planning team realised that 2010's Last Night would fall plumb on 9/11. How to reconcile all the traditional Brit triumphalism and singing of Jerusalem with the rather more contemporary need to reconcile all, whether out of Jerusalem or not? They did, and full marks for a delicate balancing-act of culture politics and a moving occasion last night (admitted by one who had spent a lifetime avoiding the Last Night of the Proms).Booking Renée Fleming, for one, was a canny move. She is most people’s favourite American soprano, gorgeous to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Part 2 @bbcproms. The madness begins. Ms Derham has not switched gowns in the interval. No sign of Titchmarsh, for which we must give thanks.The "traditional" necklace of laurels for Sir Henry Wood's bust. Wonder if he'd welcome his head being polished by a pink rag.How do they pick these pieces? Apols but the Marche joyeuse did not fill this tweeter with joy. On the other hand, here's Renée plus a mike.Not many sopranos can address an audience like Renée F. America's sweetheart sings Czech stuff now: back to her rootsWhile Renée continues blowing a hole in the Read more ...
David Nice
Two years after its first festive spree of 100 events, Kings Place has become the most congenial of all London's concert-hall zones in which to hang loose. On Friday afternoon I could have trotted happily between Russian piano classics, youth jazz and storytellers. I stayed with pianist Mikhail Rudy and cellist Alexander Ivashkin because I was intrigued to know how Rudy's stamina would hold out from a monument of the Russian repertoire in the first concert to a punishing transcription in the third.The answer was that he simply got better as the challenges accumulated. Must be honest and say I Read more ...
theartsdesk
Chris Christodoulou has been honing his focus on conductors in past Proms seasons to wonderful effect, but this year has produced a galaxy of master portraits that outdoes even the immortal cartoons of Gerard Hoffnung in entertainment value. We’ve featured many of them throughout our reviews of two months of Proms. Here Chris makes his selection of favourites. Click on a picture to enter the slideshow. All pictures © Chris Christodoulou.
alexandra.coghlan
Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers are something of a musical enigma. Neither their true pitch nor order of movements, their origins, nor even whether they were intended as a complete sequence is known for certain, prompting scholar Denis Arnold to conclude that, “to perform it is to court disaster”. Such a grim augury however has done little to discourage musicians, and in this, their 400th anniversary year, Monteverdi’s Vespers have been ubiquitous. Crowning a year of performances across the country, John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir – pioneers of the work, and the first ensemble to Read more ...
David Nice
Maybe it's a truism that most instrumental music, at least before World War One, aspires to the condition of song. Few have gone farther in that respect than the composers of the three purely orchestral works in last night's Prom. Add to the mix a conductor of impeccable operatic credentials who knows how to draw intimate vocalising from his players, a promising lyric-dramatic pianist and one of the most unusual great soprano voices of our time, and an evening of singing heartbreak was the result.It must have been difficult to know which of these private worlds to throw to the Albert Hall Read more ...
David Nice
As the glorious parade of British orchestras at the Proms has showcased, it's never been a better time for the native music scene across the board. Now the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, currently enjoying a honeymoon period with its Music Director of two seasons Andris Nelsons, has taken another step towards consolidating its post-Rattle reputation. Edward Gardner (pictured above in ENO rehearsal by Chris Christodoulou), currently doing wonderful things at English National Opera, is to take up the post of Principal Guest Conductor in September 2011.It's been a good year for both Read more ...
theartsdesk
Next to choose some favourite books is conductor Peter Phillips, whose touring lifestyle can make "summer reading" something of a year-round phenomenon. When Phillips founded the vocal ensemble the Tallis Scholars in 1973 it was a hobby among university friends – a “haphazard” group, as the director himself describes it. Decades later, with more than 1,000 concerts and 50 disks to their credit, both the group and its members have grown up into professionals at the head of their field.Specialising in Renaissance polyphony at a time when such music was not only unfashionable but almost entirely Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It was one of those moments that every conductor (and orchestra) dreads: “The Procession of the Sage” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is in rip-roaring full cry, percussion grinding and scratching, high trumpet screeching – but Daniele Gatti, it would seem, loses a bar somewhere and gives his Orchestre National de France a premature cut-off, leaving the entire brass section between a rock and a hard place. Stop or play on? An ignominious collapse ensues – as big a blunder as I’ve heard in any professional concert in years. Who says The Rite of Spring no longer has the capacity to shock? Read more ...
David Nice
Is that asking a lot? Probably not, considering what's already been achieved at this year's BBC Proms. Looking back on it, last night felt implausibly rich yet gloriously digestible, too, at least in retrospect. I couldn't have predicted that I would be so swept away by the jam-packed wonders that came from Jean-Christophe Spinosi's Ensemble Matheus and their soloists. But I did know that Denève was fairly certain to deliver the goods, on the strength not only of a spectacular Philharmonia concert earlier this year but also from an RSNO Prom two seasons back which sagged a bit with Stephen Read more ...