Royal Albert Hall
Jessica Duchen
Hello sun, hello great whales, hello choral counterpoint. If there is a more life-enhancing work than Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, I’ve yet to hear one. Its sheer joie-de-vivre was a felicitous arrival at the Proms, where it really ought to be a regular fixture. Our Haydn seekers were the BBC Philharmonic under its brand-new principal conductor Omer Meier Wellber (pictured below with soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon) – he assumes his post this month – together with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, which recruits 16- to 25-year-olds from all over the country to sing at the festival. Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Messiaen’s language of juxtaposition over development was always susceptible to the “greatest hits” phenomenon that began to suffuse his music with contented wonder during the 1970s. While younger colleagues were throwing toys out of the pram and marbles at walls during the late 1960s, he was putting heart and soul into a synoptic concert rite – part concerto, part cantata, all-consuming – based on the Transfiguration of Jesus. Not for the first or the last time, Messiaen then used a cycle of quasi-improvisations for his own instrument, the organ, to keep the well from drying up. The Read more ...
David Nice
In the Netherlands, Mark Wigglesworth is already a musical legend for his work with Dutch youth orchestras. Hopefully, in addition to the year and a bit when he wrought miracles at English National Opera, he will become so in the UK after his training of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. That culminated in last night's Prom, with more than a little help from co-inspirer Nicola Benedetti. It's worth beginning at the very end to note how, 12 years on from the (then) Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela's game-changing Prom with Gustavo Dudamel, the NYOGB not only Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
By happenstance, this Prom was fully topical, with Debussy’s languorous Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune fitting for one of the hottest days in London’s history, and the “Infernal Dance” from Stravinsky’s Firebird mirroring the infernal political dance taking place simultaneously in Downing Street.The official connection between three of the four items was that they were introduced to British audiences by Henry Wood among the “Novelties” he threw at his audiences, between oodles of Beethoven and Brahms. In each case he spotted a winner, and last night they were presented in exemplary Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This year’s Proms for children were entitled “Off to the Moon”, and audiences were invited on a musical space voyage to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. The format was a mix of orchestral music, kids’ programmes on big screens and CBeebies presenters keeping the show rolling. Grumpy adult pedants in the audience would have found plenty to complain about, the orchestra was amplified, and the music was barely mentioned, but the young audience was attentive throughout and clearly enjoyed every minute.Top billing among the CBeebies stars went to Justin (everything was on first name terms Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Eighty years ago this summer, Neville Chamberlain’s indifference to the peoples of Czechoslovakia – “a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing” – reaped its harvest of total war. These days, we have no excuses for not knowing a lot more. And the opening concerts of this year’s BBC Proms have shown why we should. After the first-night offer of Dvořák and Janáček, yesterday saw an all-Bohemian rhapsody, with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto the elegant appetiser for a hearty, full-flavoured main course dished up in the form of Smetana’s complete Ma Vlást. Under its Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
A new commission, a Romantic tone poem and a choral spectacular – standard fare for the First Night of the Proms. Traditionally, the First Night sets out the themes for the season ahead, but the rationale behind much of this programme was paper-thin. Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was included because Henry Wood had conducted it, part of a series featuring pieces Wood introduced to the UK. Dvořák’s The Golden Spinning Wheel was played because Henry Wood had not conducted it, a Proms first performance “reflecting Wood’s fondness for expanding the repertoire”. So the Czech theme turned out to be a Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's been much the same trajectory over the past few years for many of us: look through the Proms prospectus, feel a bit disappointed that there isn't more of the rich and rare, be won round when it comes to the performances. After all, you're probably never going to get better than Martha Argerich in Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony from the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by 90-year-old Bernard Haitink in his last official UK concert, or Semyon Bychkov taking charge of the Czech Philharmonic in Shostakovich.Always remember, too, that for many it will be a first Read more ...
Liz Thomson
I remember my first time in San Francisco, February 1982, crying at the sight of Golden Gate Bridge. I still shed a tear – it and the Bay are so very beautiful and the city is, like Venice, crazy-wonderful, defying all logic. It’s impossible to set foot “in the city by the Bay” without Tony Bennett’s song lodging in your brain; impossible, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, not to hear the song without picturing that magical city. It takes only a couple of notes of that celebrated and evocative piano riff...The man who inhabits the song and sings it from every stage is 93 in just a Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It might seem odd to laud the entrances and exits of a ballet, but when it comes to stagecraft Christopher Wheeldon is second to none. You lose count of the ingenious ways he finds to shift up to 130 dancers in and out of view at the Albert Hall. Wheeldon created his three-act Cinderella in 2012 for a conventional stage, but for English National Ballet he has reworked it for this vast, non-theatrical O. For once, the wheels of Cinders’ carriage have space to roll.The down side is that the narrative feels overstretched and thin in spite of the pyrotechnics that have been thrown at it – massive Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Prufrock might have measured his life in coffee spoons but for many of us it’s rock albums, the money to buy them way back when scrabbled together from Saturday jobs and student grants – remember them? Many in the audience at the Royal Albert Hall last night for Mark Knopfler surely did and we knew precisely where we were when we heard “Sultans of Swing”, which caught the ear on late-night student radio – that open-tuning National Steel guitar, the story of George, “who knows all the chords”, delivered in a voice and style that seemed to mix Bob Dylan and Lou Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Having long been immersed in folk and world music and acoustically-oriented singer-songwriters, it’s a surprise to be given a CD of music by someone who’s never crossed your radar, especially when the artist concerned turns out to have sold some 14 million albums, though mostly in Europe and North America. It’s probably the case that Loreena McKennitt’s considerable following owes to word-of-mouth, for the music-loving friend who gifted me her 1994 album The Mask and The Mirror had been put on to her by a friend in Europe. Instantly hooked, I explored further, giving her live 2006 CD/DVD set Read more ...