Proms
Prom 50 review: Josefowicz, Clayton, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla - personality in every barTuesday, 22 August 2017
Everything you may have read about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla's wonder-working with her City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is true. Confined to a Turkish hospital bed when their first Prom together took place last August, I wondered from the radio... Read more... |
Proms 47, 48 & 49 review: Reformation Day - superlative Bach as the bedrockMonday, 21 August 2017
Reformation Day, Luther 500 - in Proms terms it can only mean Bach, the alpha and omega of music, flourishing roughly two centuries after the Wittenberg Nightingale nailed his 95 theses to the church door. Those of us who headed home on Saturday... Read more... |
Prom 46 review: Gurrelieder, LSO, Rattle - gorgeous colours, halting movement in Schoenberg's monsterpieceSunday, 20 August 2017
From sunset to sunrise, across aeons of time, usually flashes by in Schoenberg's polystylistic epic. Not last night at the Proms: Simon Rattle is too much in love with the sounds he can get from the London Symphony Orchestra - here verging on a... Read more... |
Proms 37 / 38 review: Latvian Radio Choir, Gavrylyuk, BBCSSO, Dausgaard - numinous Rachmaninov triptychMonday, 14 August 2017
So it was Rachmaninov night at the Proms, but with a difference: a trinity of works sacred and profane, the first two introduced by the Latvian choir due to perform the third singing harmonised Russian Orthodox chants of the kind on which the... Read more... |
Proms 34 & 35 review: Oklahoma!, John Wilson Orchestra - music triumphs, words and drama sufferSaturday, 12 August 2017
Only one thing could equal the "wow!" factor of seeing and hearing a youngish Hugh Jackman launch into “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’“ at the start of the National Theatre’s 1998 staging of Oklahoma!: John Wilson and his orchestra trilling and... Read more... |
Prom 33 review: Davidsen, Gerhardt, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds - Nordic music glowing with colourFriday, 11 August 2017
Goodness the BBC Philharmonic plays well for John Storgårds. The orchestra’s chief guest conductor has a lovely easy manner on the podium – all curved gestures and loose arms, and the result is a partnership that brings the absolute best out of the... Read more... |
Prom 31 review: La Damnation de Faust, Gardiner - Berlioz tumbles out in rainbow coloursWednesday, 09 August 2017
The road to hell is paved with brilliant ideas in Berlioz's idiosyncratic take on the Faust legend. John Eliot Gardiner proved better than anyone in last night's Prom that this splendidly lopsided "dramatic legend" can only be weakened by its many... Read more... |
Prom 30 review: Bournemouth SO, Karabits - pagan fire and thunderTuesday, 08 August 2017
A Prom of unrelenting momentum began promisingly with Beethoven, and the false start that opens his First Symphony. On this showing, Kirill Karabits has coached his Bournemouth musicians in the classical repertoire with a dash and flair that brings... Read more... |
Prom 29 review: BBCSO, Bychkov - Musorgsky's Khovanshchina sears in concertMonday, 07 August 2017
"Ura!" as soldiers cry in Russian epic opera's last fling, Prokofiev's War and Peace: supertitles have arrived at the Proms, after much special pleading here and elsewhere. They're needed more than ever in Musorgsky's typically quirky survey of... Read more... |
Prom 26 review: Frang, Power, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Järvi – fire and air from a crack teamFriday, 04 August 2017
Before reuniting us in high spirits with a pair of much-loved old friends, Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and Brahms's Second Symphony, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi at the Proms took us into a darker, and unexpectedly... Read more... |
Prom 24 review: Crebassa, Philharmonia, Salonen – thrilling performance of Adams masterpieceThursday, 03 August 2017
The title of John Adams’s Naive and Sentimental Music is a bit of a tease. Read literally it promises – or threatens – unsophisticated mawkishness, though that is the last thing it delivers. But maybe it was this title, alongside relatively... Read more... |
Prom 23 review: OAE, Christie - scintillating drama in Handel's Israel in EgyptWednesday, 02 August 2017
How do you make a venerable warhorse frisk like a coltish show-pony? Hire William Christie as the trainer. In a performance of scintillating drama and crystal-clear definition, the past master of Baroque revival and re-invention coaxed the Orchestra... Read more... |
