BBCSO
BBC Singers, BBCSO, Litton, Barbican HallThursday, 25 September 2014
The problem with programming Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony - and only the very bold and resourceful and/or the BBC are ever likely to do so - is that it eclipses everything, and I mean everything, in its proximity. And if it was my 90th birthday -... Read more... |
Last Night of the Proms, Jansen, Williams, BBCSO, OramoSunday, 14 September 2014
If only the Last Night of the Proms could just be about the music. If it were, then the story which I would want to tell would be about Janine Jansen. A crowd which mainly turns up to wave its vast array of flags, to bounce its beach-balls and... Read more... |
Prom 72: Berthaud, BBCSO, LittonThursday, 11 September 2014
A Prom billed as “English Music” sounds like a restful sort of affair – probably pastoral, definitely tuneful and potentially restorative after a day in the office. In practice however this concert from Andrew Litton and the BBC Symphony Orchestra... Read more... |
Prom 63: McAllister, BBCSO, AlsopFriday, 05 September 2014
Conductor Marin Alsop was welcomed like Britannia herself at last night’s concert, an astute partnership of John Adams’ vivacious hybridism and Gustav Mahler’s colourful patchwork quilt of a symphony. Alsop won the Prommers’ hearts with her... Read more... |
Prom 59: Elektra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BychkovMonday, 01 September 2014
How much familial dysfunction and lust - whether for sexual gratification or revenge - can one take in a single weekend? Salome and Elektra back-to back may on paper seem like a feast of divine decadence but no sooner had one become accustomed to... Read more... |
Prom 43: Skride, BBCSO, GardnerTuesday, 19 August 2014
The Russians were coming - and the prospect of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, even without the added attraction of hearing it in Igor Buketoff’s questionable choral arrangement where the Tsarist hymn is taken at its word and does a Boris Godunov on us... Read more... |
Prom 28: D'Orazio, Clayton, BBCSO, OramoFriday, 08 August 2014
All kinds of narratives were at play in this Prom from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Sakari Oramo - and perhaps the truly adventurous programmer might have double-deployed Rory Kinnear, dispassionately chronicling Stravinsky... Read more... |
Prom 20: Crabb, BBCSO, BrabbinsSaturday, 02 August 2014
The first half of last night’s Prom was supposed to be linked by the theme of the First World War, but Anthony Marwood’s illness meant that Sally Beamish’s Violin Concerto, based on All Quiet on the Western Front, had to be replaced at late notice... Read more... |
Prom 7: BBCSO, Bělohlávek/Prom 8: Pet Shop BoysThursday, 24 July 2014
The Forties and Fifties, seen through the eyes of Shostakovich and the Pet Shop Boys, were the historical centre of gravity for last night’s courageously broad Proms programme. Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a gently serialist folk exploration from... Read more... |
First Night of the Proms, BBCSO, Davis, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 19 July 2014
“And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” To fill the Albert Hall – where a sizeable number of participants are standing, of course, in the best place – as... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Khachaturian, Shostakovich, Walton, Roman MintsSaturday, 07 June 2014
Khachaturian: Violin Concerto, Shostakovich: String Quartets 7 and 8 James Ehnes (violin), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Mark Wigglesworth, Ehnes Quartet (Onyx)Moving from Khachaturian's breezy circus music to two of Shostakovich's darker... Read more... |
BBCSO, Morlot, BarbicanSunday, 25 May 2014
It’s safe to assume that mischievous Monsieur Poulenc would have been delighted by the juxtaposition of his joyous slice of Surrealism with Fauré’s serene masterpiece the Requiem. What his elder compatriot might have had to say is harder to imagine... Read more... |
