Classical Reviews
Prom 43, Batiashvili, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Barenboim review – from Russia with loveWednesday, 15 August 2018
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. Read more... |
Prom 42, Buniatishvili, Estonian Festival Orchestra, Järvi review – bright lights from the NorthTuesday, 14 August 2018
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. Read more... |
Prom 40, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bell review - tea-time treats with wit and dashMonday, 13 August 2018
When did this weird mix-tape fashion take root at the Proms? Read more... |
Prom 39, West Side Story, Wilson review - best heard on the radioMonday, 13 August 2018
In West Side Story, those great, familiar songs just keep on coming. Already by the end of the first half an hour, there have been “The Jet Song”, “Something’s Coming”, “Maria”, “Tonight” and “America”, and there is no shortage of them still to come. Read more... |
Prom 37, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano review – order, and delight, out of chaosSaturday, 11 August 2018
In the beginning, Sir Antonio Pappano created a little chaos of his own. Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Zimerman, LSO, Rattle - fizzing chemistrySaturday, 11 August 2018
It was Simon Rattle’s first visit to the Edinburgh International Festival for – well, really quite a few years. And the first of his two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra drew, perhaps predictably, a capacity crowd in the Usher Hall, for what was in fact quite an odd, uncompromising programme – if one that ultimately delivered magnificently. Read more... |
Prom 34, Matthews, BBC Philharmonic, Mena - Anglo-American mixed bagThursday, 09 August 2018
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. Read more... |
Prom 33, Schultz, Reuter, BBCSO, Farnes review - powerful Brahms RequiemWednesday, 08 August 2018
The heart of Prom 33 was Brahms’s massive German Requiem, a piece that eschews Christian dogma and Day-of-Judgment terrors for a humanism focusing on consolation of the bereaved. Read more... |
Prom 31, Barnatan, Minnesota Orchestra, Vänskä - American classics take centre-stageTuesday, 07 August 2018
Prom 31 featured an American orchestra playing an all-American programme – until the final encore dived thrillingly into a completely different musical tradition. But one of the principal features of American music – its joyous risk-taking – was undermined by conductor Osmo Vänskä’s cautious tempos, and the orchestral playing only periodically caught fire. Read more... |
Proms at...Cadogan Hall 4, Connolly, Middleton review - perfect partnering in the unfamiliarTuesday, 07 August 2018
“It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations.” Oscar Wilde was being ironic when he had Gwendolen contemplate the sound of her beloved’s drab name in The Importance of Being Earnest, but he had a point when it comes to composers and poetry. With their own “vibrations”, great poems rarely warrant musical interference; bad poetry, meanwhile, can resist even the finest scoring. Read more... |
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