Goebbels premiere, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, London As in their first prom the previous evening, it was the contemporary work at the centre of Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic's programme that really captured our...
View ArticleDido and Aeneas, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonIn a Proms season dominated on the operatic side by overblown war epics, thank God for Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Berlioz's take on the Aeneid - The Trojans - took up most of...
View ArticleBBCSO/Saraste, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonNothing about Matthias Pintscher's En Sourdine is quite what it seems. First performed in Berlin earlier this year and now receiving its UK premiere, the work has frequently...
View ArticleSalonen premiere, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonHamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra is a world-class ensemble. Their Prom two seasons ago - the last UK appearance by the late, great conductor Gunter Wand - was one of the most...
View ArticleProm 60: BBCNOW/ Hickox, Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert HallThe full house for the first of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales's two appearances with its chief conductor Richard Hickox at the Albert Hall this week was lured, no doubt, by the...
View ArticleENO/Daniel, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonThere was a special intensity in the English National Opera's Prom of Prokofiev's War and Peace. Conductor Paul Daniel dedicated the performance to the soprano Susan Chilcott,...
View ArticleVienna PO/ McFerrin, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonIt would seem the Vienna Philharmonic is trying to change its image. The orchestra, noted for its conservatism, is part way through a European tour with the American...
View ArticleBBCNOW/ Hickox, Saxton premiere, Royal Albert Hall, London
/ 3 stars Royal Albert Hall, LondonCesar Franck and Maurice Ravel are two of the giants of French music - yet they make an unusual pairing. Franck, a devout Catholic, saw music primarily as sacred....
View ArticleBBCSO/ Saraste, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonPhaedra, the dramatic cantata Britten based on Robert Lowell's verse translation of Racine's play, was the last of his premieres the composer heard in the concert hall at...
View ArticleRSNO/Lazarev; Wood premiere, Royal Albert Hall, London
/ 4 stars Royal Albert Hall, LondonAudience participation at the Proms comes in more meaningful forms than the jingoistic flag-waving of the last night. Before the New London Chamber Choir's late-night...
View ArticleIPO/Mehta, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonIt is not hard to respond to the instantly dramatic conducting of Zubin Mehta. But it does not take long to grasp his limitations either. And both sides were in evidence in...
View ArticleBBC Phil/Noseda, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonBeethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and Mahler's Fourth Symphony have both been interpreted as parables about the power of music to assuage suffering. The slow movement of...
View ArticleScots, Welsh and Irish host own "last night" Proms
Patriots will be straightening their red, white and blue bow-ties tonight for Britain's annual sing-along, the last night of the Proms. As queues form outside London's Albert Hall for remaining £4...
View ArticleA look back on this year's Proms
The sell-outs, the mediocre premieres, the concerts that threatened to last for ever... Andrew Clements looks back on this year's PromsThe Proms is one event where the best is certainly not left until...
View ArticleBirtwistle premiere; Last Night, Royal Albert Hall, London
/2 stars Royal Albert Hall, LondonThe most substantial premiere of the 2003 Proms was kept for the last serious concert. Prefacing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (restored to its traditional place on the...
View ArticleLPO/ Wigglesworth, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonIt has been hard to know what to make of some of conductor Mark Wigglesworth's recent work. An assured handling of Wagner's Die Meistersinger at Covent Garden deservedly lifted...
View ArticlePatrick Wright on Dürer's Melencolia I
Dürer's Melencolia I is about more than insomnia and depression. Its themes of geometry, cosmology and even politics have influenced artists from Grass to Birtwistle. By Patrick WrightIn Albert Dürer's...
View ArticleWoolrich premiere, CBSO, Royal Albert Hall, London
/ 4 stars Royal Albert Hall, LondonHelios, Thea Musgrave's 1994 oboe concerto, could have been tailor-made for this year's Proms, which have classical mythology as their theme. It depicts the sun god...
View ArticlePSO/Jansons, Royal Albert Hall, London
/ Royal Albert Hall, LondonIn the 2002 Proms, Mariss Jansons gave one of the great performances of Dvorak's New World symphony with the LSO. Twelve months later, in the first of two back-to-back Proms...
View ArticleBerlin PO/Rattle, Royal Albert Hall, London
Royal Albert Hall, LondonThe greatness of this orchestra is beyond doubt. Judging by the form it showed in the first of its two proms this week, the Berlin Philharmonic is an ensemble with few peers on...
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