Royal Albert Hall
Bernard Hughes
This Prom had three pieces from times of social crisis, although only one faces its crisis head on. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring hides its pre-war angst behind a story of pagan Russia while Ravel’s post-war desolation is danced in decadent Viennese waltz time in La Valse. Berio’s Sinfonia, however, is very much engaged with the upheaval of the late 1960s, when, as today, fundamental questions were being asked about the very fabric of western society.This is in danger of making the whole thing sound less fun than it was. Although these are works of overriding seriousness, they all have a wit in Read more ...
David Nice
It was the C major Prelude and Fugue from this second book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, not its more familiar counterpart in Book One, which found itself tracked on a gold-plated disc inside Voyager I to reach whatever intelligent life there may be outside our solar system. Surely more interesting, though, is the universe within the minds of certain exceptional individuals – in this case not just that of the composer, which remains unfathomable. How can an artist like András Schiff not only have all 48 Preludes and Fugues in his head, but communicate them to a huge public with such Read more ...
David Nice
1944 was one hell of a year for Bernstein the composer, with a perfect ballet and a near-perfect musical sharing a general theme of three sailors loose in New York, but nothing else, in their boisterous originality. Perhaps their only equal among Bernstein's works - more contestably – is MASS of 1971, surely his biggest and most resonant score, but hardly a candidate for comparable classicism. What John Wilson applied last night to make On the Town work as unremittingly well as the much shorter ballet, Fancy Free, was precisely that classical focus, high on energy and cutting no slack. Never Read more ...
Prom 55, Lisztes, Lendvai, Lendvay, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer review - unity and strength
Jessica Duchen
There seems no limit to the sheer creativity that fizzes from Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra. For their second night at the Proms, packed out this time, the theme was the meeting of classical and Gypsy musical traditions. And though Fischer, talking to the audience from the podium, kindly explained that the Gypsy tradition is distinct from both Hungarian folk music and classical conservatoires, what emerged was a sense that they have far more in common than might be admitted.Nothing asserts “Hungarian Gypsy music” quite strongly as a cimbalom centre stage. In case you haven’ Read more ...
Prom 54, Richter, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer review - independent-minded Hungarians return
David Nice
Two heartening facts first. Iván Fischer's much-loved crew remains one of the few world-class orchestras with an individual voice, centred on lean, athletic strings adaptable to Fischer's febrile focus (perfect for Enescu and Bartók, not quite so much for Mahler). And though the Budapest players remain Hungary's greatest musical ambassadors, the anti-Orbán stance of their eloquent chief conductor means that they will never be propaganda tools of the new nationalism; we can welcome them back to the Proms unreservedly.Fischer is not only something of a hero for saying what's right; he's also a Read more ...
David Nice
Who is the greatest British conductor in charge of a major orchestra? It's subjective, but my answer is not what you might expect. Jonathan Nott has done all his major work so far on the continent. He left the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in excellent shape to another of the world's best, Jakub Hrůša; and now he is, as we learned from two long-term players in the Proms Plus talk, liked and respected across the board at the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Continuity with the first major Swiss orchestra founded by Ernest Ansermet 100 years ago was underlined last night in Debussy, Ravel and Read more ...
David Nice
This should have been the third much-anticipated Prom of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's inspiring communicator-in-chief Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. She's now on maternity leave. So those of us who hadn't experienced Ludovic Morlot live before had a chance to witness what a splendid moulder and shaper he is, here in a skilfully co-ordinated all-French programme. It was not the fault of his impeccable presentation if prodigiously gifted Lili Boulanger's setting of Psalm 130 didn't come across quite as anticipated from estimable note-writer Roger Nichols' declaration of the work as a Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The days are long gone when a Proms gig by Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra felt like a life-changing visitation by a major prophet. Expectations of the ensemble he and the scholar-writer Edward Said founded in 1999 to encourage young Arab, Israeli and (later) Mediterranean-region musicians to work, and play, together have contracted on the political front. Meanwhile, WEDO’s purely musical scope and ambition has never ceased to grow. Now, a WEDO event feels (almost) like a normal Proms night at the Royal Albert Hall, although a special warmth – bordering on reverence – Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Music-lovers who normally balk at the sight of national colours in a concert hall would surely have forgiven the little Estonian flags – in stripes of blue, black and white – that waved happily at the conclusion of this Prom. Under the baton of Paavo Järvi, dynamic and resourceful heir to a conducting dynasty, the Estonian Festival Orchestra came to London to celebrate the centenary of the first phase of the nation’s independence from Russian rule – a freedom lost in 1940 and not fully reclaimed until 1991. Yet Järvi steered not a corny carnival of patriotic uplift but a thoughtfully balanced Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
When did this weird mix-tape fashion take root at the Proms? Just a couple of days after Antonio Pappano ran Haydn into Bernstein without pausing for breath, Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields sought to splice the final yearning notes of Frank Bridge’s Lament to the spooky short adagio that opens Beethoven’s Fourth. Some alert applauders broke the thread, which meant that we never quite heard if the join would hold firm.Yes, smart programming draws attention to the hidden kinship that binds seemingly disparate pieces across periods and styles. Still (literally, in this Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In the beginning, Sir Antonio Pappano created a little chaos of his own. At the outset of this Prom that saw musical shape and form emerge out of primeval aural disorder or ruinous destruction, the conductor chose to elide the opener – the representation of “Chaos” from Haydn’s Creation – with centenary birthday-boy Leonard Bernstein’s First Symphony. You could see his point, in a programme that climaxed with Mahler’s First to offer a trio of trail-blazing pieces that hammer something out of nothing, beauty from the void.Yet this pause-less slide from Haydn’s astonishing reinvention of the Read more ...
David Benedict
It was all about the acoustic. Well, almost. Disregarding the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Royal Albert Hall, there’s a school of thought that believes the Proms is the world’s greatest concert series in the world’s worst hall. Why? Because its problematic acoustic is so ungovernable. It certainly wreaked havoc in Sunday’s Prom of the Brandenburg Concertos – I’ve never heard professional orchestral playing so lacking in ensemble – and in this intriguing Anglo-American BBC Philharmonic concert, the cavernous space proved as much a hindrance as a help.Initially, it was all gain. Juanjo Mena Read more ...