Royal Albert Hall
Gavin Dixon
This concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra marked the first performance of composer Mieczysław Weinberg at the Proms, an important milestone in the recent surge of interest of his music. When Weinberg, a Russian composer of Jewish descent and Polish birth, died in 1996, he was little known in the West, and had fallen from favour in a post-Communist Russia that associated his music with its Soviet past. But a staging of his opera The Passenger at Bregenz in 2010, sparked a huge revival of interest, especially in Germany, Poland and Russia. This year marks the centenary of his birth, the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Ben Gernon is only 30 (and looks about ten years younger) but has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic since 2017. He really impressed in last night’s Prom but, after an exciting overture, things fell away a bit with an under-nourished Rachmaninov concerto and an enjoyable if not faultless second half of Tchaikovsky.The first item augured very well. Malcolm Arnold’s Overture Peterloo is an odd piece, but gripping. Written in 1967 it shows two sides to the composer at once: first an effortless melodist but also a musical experimenter. The first two minutes have a filmic, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
I’m not quite sure that I should review this Prom, since I performed in it. Before anyone summons the white coats, let me clarify. As the encore to a mind-expanding evening, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto returned to the stage with his band of folk musicians. He asked the audience to hum a sort of drone, and then sing open-mouthed, as they sung and played a traditional song. How did we do? OK, I thought. It made a fittingly unorthodox finale to a rule-flouting programme which will have delighted many ears but left some concert purists not just with open mouths, but jaws on the floor.How Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Montrealers exude a particular kind of happiness and have wonderfully snappy expressions to convey it: “Chu correc”, means ‘I’m fine’, and “C’est l’fun” means...exactly what it looks like. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a distinctly proud Montrealer (“It’s where I live, it’s where my partner lives, it’s where my cats live...it is where I feel truly and fully myself,” he has said), and that special effervescence was plainly visible in both of his concerts at the Proms with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.In the second concert, he brought it notably to the Suite from Richard Strauss's Der Read more ...
David Nice
While we wish the great Mariss Jansons a speedy recovery, no-one of sound heart and soul could be disappointed by his substitute for the two Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Proms, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose supreme art is to show the score's construction in the face, with gestures to match. Some of us, on the other hand, weren't quite so happy that Shostakovich's Fifth replaced a deeper, richer symphony, the mighty Tenth. But Nézet-Séguin was as sure of intent and as attentive to dynamic possibilities in this as he had been in Beethoven's Second, even if the Munich orchestra might not, by Read more ...
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 ...