Royal Albert Hall
Sebastian Scotney
Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has a joyous hunger for communication through music. She sometimes seems to dance through it. This was at its most vivid when she lunged towards BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra leader Laura Samuel to invite her to start the encore at the end of the first half of Saturday’s Bartók Roots Prom, “Baladă și Joc” (ballad and dance), a duo for two violins by György Ligeti.This friendly challenge – gleefully accepted – was made in the spirit of bringing the energy and vitality of folk fiddling into the formal arena of classical music. As Kopatchinskaja has said in a Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Minds in Flux is the largest of this season’s Proms commissions, and last night it afforded a rare chance for UK audiences to hear work of George Lewis outside the often insular new-music and avant-garde improvisation circuits. As a trombonist-provocateur, Lewis (pictured below) was thumbing a nose at German new-music festivals the best part of half a century ago with a fellow African-American experimental composer, the saxophonist Anthony Braxton, doubtless to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. His blurring of boundaries – between composition and improvisation, jazz and classical, Read more ...
David Nice
Now that you've found her, never let her go. I hope that’s the mantra among players of the Chineke! Orchestra and their Artistic and Executive Director Chi-chi Nwanoku – leading the double basses last night – after this Prom with Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell. With her dancing spirit and focused stick technique regularly at the helm, this team could develop the real musical character that has eluded them under less dynamic and personable figures.An entire programme of works by Black American and British-based composers only fitfully hit the mark in a generous first half – you Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Simon Rattle and the LSO marked the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death with a concert of three “symphonies”. In fact, the programme had little to say about Stravinsky’s relationship with symphonic form: his early E flat Symphony was omitted, and the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the opening work, is not a symphony in any accepted sense. The programme was rather an opportunity to hear some of Stravinsky’s more obscure orchestral works. Given that obscurity, it was good to see a full house at the Albert Hall. What was the draw – Rattle? If so, his premature departure in 2023 is going to Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
For many years, first as a punter then latterly as a reviewer, I have sat in the section of the Royal Albert Hall stalls near stage right, under the BBC Radio broadcast box, knowing that that is where they sit the composers being premiered at the Proms. This means, among other things, that you have to be discreet in voicing opinions about new pieces, and to avoid staring too pointedly.This week I will find the boot on the other foot as I make an appearance at the Proms as a composer, my new piece Birdchant featuring in the BBC Singers’ concert on 19 August. It is, needless to say, a lifetime Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I was looking forward to this Prom by the Manchester Collective, an exciting young group founded in 2016, which has quickly established a reputation for innovative presentation of contemporary repertoire. And while I found the playing excellent, demonstrating the commitment and intensity of the performers, I had some reservations about the programme, particularly some questions of proportion. It felt a bit out of balance.There was a nice mixture of in-your-face music – the equivalent of getting stared down by an Indian fast bowler – and a more genial second half. String ensembles often try to Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
This delectable Prom hid behind the title "To Soothe the Aching Heart" the failsafe concept of a programme of the world’s favourite opera extracts, plus some. Take six British opera stars – three sopranos, two tenors and a mezzo – and assign them the business of comforting us all.Whether you felt soothed by what followed wasn’t really the point; this was a gulp-it-down sundae of a Monday night, a feast of indulgence in which the singers, who probably needed comforting too after more than a year of cancelled contracts, simply gave everything, mixing, matching and sometimes hitting the high Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
What does it mean to be Classical? It’s the question award-winning Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has consistently asked in a career that has collided music from Bach to Debussy, presenting them as part of a single conversation and continuum. Here, in a striking BBC Proms debut, he continued to probe and challenge, with a little help from the Philharmonia Orchestra and Paavo Järvi.A late substitute for the Philharmonia’s new music director Santtu-Matias Rouvali (a casualty of pandemic travel logistics), Järvi was able to present the programme unchanged, preserving the careful logic that Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
We finished with a pure Hollywood moment when John Gilhooly – as Chair of the Royal Philharmonic Society – popped up after the warm applause to announce that the Society had awarded its gold medal to Vladimir Jurowski. Oddly, Covid rules meant that the actual handover took place backstage. So Jurowski leaves the London Philharmonic Orchestra after 14 years as principal conductor– to lead the Bavarian State Opera in Munich – armed with the gong formerly bestowed on Brahms, Barbirolli, Bernstein, Barenboim and Brendel (that’s just the Bs). Richly merited, of course, and last night’s farewell Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s nobody’s fault, but – try as they might – the BBC Proms can often feel rather middle-aged. Whether it’s the lumbering albatross of a building, the ushers in their dated, casino waistcoats or the tone of zealous jollity (Have fun! But silently and according to the rules!), it somehow all adds up to a lack of freshness, spontaneity. Thank goodness for Aurora Orchestra.Nicholas Collon’s ensemble has taken a one-off novelty – an orchestral performance from memory – and made it an annual festival fixture. There’s a formula, of course, but thanks to Collon himself and co-presenter Tom Service Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
In this most atypical Proms season this was actually an archetypal Proms programme: a world premiere: a neglected masterpiece and a good solid 19th-century symphony for those put off a bit by the first two. But this American-themed programme never felt run of the mill. There was a palpable energy in the hall, for both audience and orchestra, to be in the same space again. And if the extended applause at the end seemed a bit indulgent – each section, nearly each player having their own curtain-call – it was clearly born of the thrill of a return to live concert-making.The BBC National Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In a normal year, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain descends mob-handed on the Royal Albert Hall for a Prom that complements the sheer quality of the young musicians’ work with joyful, raucous, roof-raising quantity. I recall a Turangalîla symphony in the other Olympic season of 2012 that rocked all Kensington with its heaven-storming, gold-medal exuberance. This summer, with caution still the proper watchword, the NYO has built its admirable “Hope Exchange” programme into a series of steps into the musical future.They begin with the members' personal dreams and ideals, and grow Read more ...