BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard
5 August 2019
First thoughts aren’t always the best. When Sibelius’s Symphony No 5 was premiered in Helsinki in 1915, the audience liked it, but the composer wasn’t happy. Drastic surgery was required. Four years and two revisions later, the bold orchestral work that’s become a concert-hall favourite emerged. So why bother digging out that original, rejected version?
Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bbc-sso-dausgaard-review-the-familiar-sibelius-made-to-sound-strange-hvxj6j5tx
National Youth Orchestra of the USA/Antonio Pappano
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov
12 August 2019
When Joyce DiDonato was singing Le spectre de la rose from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (Prom 32) — her voice so tender, so poignant, so full of meaning — it really was hard to imagine anything more perfect. Every word of French was finessed, every phrase unfurled naturally. Sentimentality could swamp this glimpse of an exquisite dying rose, yet DiDonato made it human and transcendent.
Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/proms-32-33-reviews-nyo-usa-pappano-bbc-so-bychkov-didonato-triumphs-gansch-falters-tkq8l27lz
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim
13 August 2019
There was no time for nerves, second thoughts, or even getting comfortable. As soon as an almost reluctant-looking Martha Argerich had sat down, the orchestra struck up and she was away, whipping up an already heightened Proms atmosphere with the unstoppable striding chords of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.
Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/west-eastern-divan-orchestra-barenboim-review-martha-argerich-is-a-musical-legend-for-a-reason-nrkqgm0gf
London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle
21 August 2019
There aren’t many pieces that can make the capacious Royal Albert Hall feel small, but Varèse’s Amériques is one of them. It’s not simply the huge orchestra; it’s the depth and scale of the head-spinning, modernist urban soundscape, which teeters on the edge of cacophony and feeds off the energy and rhythms of a city that never sleeps. Stories suggest themselves for the deluge of sounds: the wail of a police siren, the squeak of a subway train on metal rails, the clank of a bolt through a steel girder. This is music in which the world is constantly being remade.
Full review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prom-44-london-symphony-orchestra-simon-rattle-review-urban-soundscape-meets-sonic-jungle-5jgpqf3cd
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