Royal Albert Hall
BBC Proms: Ehnes, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - aspects of loveSaturday, 13 September 2025
Critics (including this one) casually refer to John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London as an all-star outfit, an army made up of generals. This week I was able to see, and hear, exactly what that means. A few days ago, in Scotland, I marvelled at... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Steinbacher, RPO, Petrenko / Sternath, BBCSO, Oramo review - double-bill mixed bagTuesday, 09 September 2025
My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-header of the RPO playing Respighi, Milhaud and Vaughan Williams at 11am and an evening concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and massed choirs in Gipps, Grieg and Bliss.The matinée... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Barruk, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Kuusisto review - vague incantations, precise lamentsTuesday, 02 September 2025
Every year, the Royal Albert Hall proves complicit in the magic of the quietest utterances if, as Barenboim put it, you let the audience come to you and don’t try too hard. Pekka Kuusisto is the ultimate communicator, the ideal guide for the... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Alexander’s Feast, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan review - rapturous Handel fills the spaceMonday, 01 September 2025
Many Londoners would already have experienced the musicality incarnate of Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra. A smaller ensemble rocked two of Irish National Opera’s Vivaldi specials in the Linbury Theatre – one a major award winner – and... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Moore, LSO, Bancroft review - the freshness of morning wind and brassSunday, 31 August 2025
11am concerts do take some getting used to. The BBC Proms season has no fewer than seven of them this year, three on Saturdays and four on Sundays. And yet, strangely, for this programme, mainly consisting of works for concert band, it did genuinely... Read more... |
BBC Proms: The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival review - merriment and menaceThursday, 28 August 2025
One door closes, and another one opens. A lot. It’s extraordinary what value those two simple additions to the Royal Albert Hall stage lent to Glyndebourne’s performance of The Marriage of Figaro at the Proms.Combined with some niftily manoeuvred... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Faust, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Nelsons review - grace, then grandeurWednesday, 27 August 2025
Does the orchestra that sways together play together? Quite apart from their (reliably gorgeous) sound, the tight-packed strings of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig made quite a sight at the Proms as they collectively surged through key passages of... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Jansen, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mäkelä review - confirming a phenomenonTuesday, 26 August 2025
How often is an orchestral concert perfect in every texture, every instrumental entry, every phrase? Wednesday's Phiharmonia Prom struck sound-spectrum gold, but its chief conductor, Santtu Matias Rouvali, could do with more humanity. My colleague... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mäkelä review - defiantly introverted Mahler 5 gives food for thoughtSunday, 24 August 2025
Klaus Mäkelä teased out all the fragility and the sense of impending mortality in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, revealing a vision that was as intricate as it was quietly luminous. Famously Mahler almost died from an intestinal haemorrhage in the year... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Liu, Philharmonia, Rouvali review - fine-tuned Tchaikovsky epicThursday, 21 August 2025
Pianist Bruce Liu wasn’t the only star soloist last night, though he certainly had the most notes to play. Attention was riveted by at least five Philharmonia members and their maverick principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali as percussionist in a... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Suor Angelica, LSO, Pappano review - earthly passion, heavenly griefWednesday, 20 August 2025
At first, I had my doubts about Puccini’s Suor Angelica in this concert performance at the Proms with Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra.With the big band (up to and including Richard Gowers’s organ) arrayed far behind the... Read more... |
BBC Proms: A Mass of Life, BBCSO, Elder review - a subtle guide to Delius's Nietzschean masterpieceTuesday, 19 August 2025
For Delius – then a young man, visiting Norway in the late 1880s to walk in its mountains – his first encounter with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra was nothing less than an epiphany. Already high on the grandeur of nature in a country defined by... Read more... |
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