Royal Albert Hall
David Nice
Nominally, this was a programme of three symphonies. The first, though, sounded like music re-cut and pasted from a very British film and the second was a suite, albeit impressively reworked, from an opera. The real deal, Brahms’s Third, is a very personal masterpiece, more inward than outward looking, and that, too, may have been why Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s latest Prom with her City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was less electrifying than its predecessors.Would “the Gipps Second Symphony” have made a reappearance had its composer been called Ralph and not Ruth? She is remarkable for her Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Two nights after the Scottish Chamber Orchestra had brought the first great E flat major symphony to the Proms – Mozart’s 39th – a serendipitous change of programme on Tuesday gave us the second: Haydn’s “Drumroll”. An equally serendipitous change of conductor saw Ben Gernon get the evening off to a deceptively simple start: no fancy-dan cadenza from the BBC Philharmonic’s timpanist, just enough of a flourish to get everyone’s attention as Haydn probably had in mind. Then the happy-face Dies Irae of the introduction’s theme, bassoon and basses nicely to the fore, and it was soon clear that Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The Proms are back, even if they don’t yet feel remotely normal. With audiences timid about mass events, and about a third of the arena roped off to protect a TV camera mounted on something vaguely resembling a diplodocus, yesterday’s seemed less of a Prom than – well, a decent concert on a wet Monday night.This fifth Prom of the season had lost both its original star attractions, cellist Sol Gabetta and conductor Elim Chan, who had each withdrawn for logistical travel reasons. Enter Guy Johnston and Ryan Bancroft to save the day, though, and the programme remained as planned, fresh, varied Read more ...
David Nice
Did absence from Albert’s colosseum from early September 2019 until now and a roof-raising finale hoodwink many of us into thinking Dalia Stasevska’s interpretation of Sibelius’s Second Symphony among the greats? Having listened to it again on the BBC Radio 3 iPlayer this morning, I'm convinced not; this was the real deal. Without that guarantee, a BBC Symphony Orchestra on top form would not have entrusted its second Finn – Stasevska is its Principal Guest Conductor – with the music of a composer (their composer) its Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo has already presented with unsurpassable Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
The Royal Albert Hall – 150 years old this year and with a commemorative £5 coin to prove it – is a great space for many kinds of spectacle but has done few favours for ballet. I make an exception for Derek Deane’s in-the-round Swan Lake, if only on the grounds of its having been seen by 750,000 people many of whom might never have set foot in an actual theatre. Many more ballet productions – even those carefully refigured for that giant O – have lost the fight with the capacious auditorium.So it was bold of Dame Darcey Bussell to book the venue for her big ballet charity gig. The aim Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The Aurora Orchestra’s trademark expertise in playing symphonies from memory arguably reached new heights this week as they tackled Beethoven’s Seventh, first in performances with a live audience and then, yesterday, in an empty Royal Albert Hall for what’s left of the Proms. The programme opened with a new co-commission from the British composer Richard Ayres, who, like Beethoven himself, has had a struggle with deafness. Entitled No. 52 (Three pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven: dreaming, hearing loss and saying goodbye), this was an unnerving and at times moving world premiere. Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Unlike the other two Proms I’ve reviewed this season, last night’s by the Philharmonia did not have any bells and whistles when it came to the staging, nor did it explore the edges of the repertoire. But the repertoire choices were good: progressing from the chamber orchestra forces of the first two pieces to finish with Mozart’s last and beefiest symphony, although Mozart at his beefiest is still no Bruckner.The originally-billed Esa-Pekka Salonen withdrew from the concert and his late replacement was Paavo Järvi (pictured below). He clearly enjoyed himself, conducting with a wry smile Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In what would have been the year her father, the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar turned 100, sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar pays tribute to him and builds on his legacy in this online Prom. The pre-recorded first half saw Shankar collaborate with electronic producer, composer and performer Gold Panda for a half hour long continuous piece, Variations. Written in response to her experiences of her father as a teacher, recordings of Ravi Shankar’s instructions on how to perform ragas were sampled, with Anoushka’s playing demonstrating his insights. The piece soon evolved into a Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In a year of absences and separations, here was another one we had to bear. Built around a programme of Baroque double concertos, last night’s Prom should have brought Nicola Benedetti and Alina Ibragimova together in a violin super-duo that promised marvels. In the event, a family bereavement kept Ibragimova away from the audience-free Royal Albert Hall. Yet, and again in the phoenix-from-the-ashes spirit of the arts in 2020, the improvised solution proved an uplifting delight. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, which backed the soloists, has always sounded like a band of stars. Its Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
In reviewing Sunday night’s LSO Prom I was impressed by the innovative and exciting programming and that was also a hallmark of Tuesday’s Prom, although this was more true to form for the London Sinfonietta. Since its inception the Sinfonietta has sampled both ends of the contemporary spectrum and everything in between, and that was the case here. The theme was “city life” but the music was also united, as the conductor Geoffrey Paterson said, by having pulse – and sometimes more than one at the same time.The most pulsing – if not pulsating – piece was Philip Glass’s Façades and actually the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Viennese operetta is like that other great Central European treat, goulash. It comes in many forms. In Vienna it’s coffeehouse comfort food; in Slovenia they add bacon for a smoky tang. And in the marketplaces of Transylvania it comes in bubbling iron cauldrons, practically fluorescent with paprika. But it’s all goulash. You know it when you taste it, and all that matters is that it tastes good. And when it’s really good, it tastes even better when warmed through and dished up second time around.Which is by way of saying that I can’t honestly get too worried about the authenticity or Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Sunday night’s Prom by the London Symphony Orchestra was Simon Rattle’s 75th and surely his strangest. But, in his best style, it was eclectically programmed, balancing novelty with tradition, responded imaginatively to the restrictions in place, and was very well played in the circumstances. These circumstances allowed for more inventive programming than would normally be entertained, but the biggest irony was that the spatial effects that would have sounded so amazing in the hall were only possible because the hall was empty.The required distancing between players became the basis of the Read more ...