Music
More than a yard of tickets to the Proms!
Quite a change from the Albert Hall last night: I went to St Andrews church, Greystoke, near Penrith, Cumbria, for the last night concert of the Greystoke Music Festival.
Glorious string sound from the Pittsburgh Orchestra in the big tunes of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 was a pleasant surprise after the interval in tonight's Prom. This followed the Pittsburgh Orchestra's rather stiff accompaniment to Hélène Grimaud’s mawkishly tragic interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 which echoed her renowned performance at the Prom of 11th September 2001, when the Proms played on, as in World War II,
Read more: Prom 68: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra & Hélène Grimaud
Here are some views of The Proms that you don't see on the BBC.
The gradual convergence of the audience as you walk from South Kensington or High Street Kensington tube stations.
The typically British picnicing on the steps of the Albert Memorial.
And of course the queue to Prom in the arena.
A dance with the devil, a romantic escapade and a death dance, followed by a titanesque performance of Mahler’s First Symphony that filled the Albert Hall: this evening’s Prom from the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, was a Proms treat.
This evening’s Prom, given by BBC Philharmonic, conductor Gianandrea Noseda, was one of those evenings which demonstrate the Proms’ claim to be “The World’s Greatest Classical Music Festival”. A full and attentive Royal Albert Hall audience heard Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, ‘Egyptian’, with Stephen Hough, piano; then Liszt’s Dante Symphony with Julia Doyle, soprano and the women’s voices of the CBSO Chorus.
Gianandrea Noseda’s Beethoven Fourth Symphony was played by a medium sized orchestra, which is slightly unfashionable nowadays for a Beethoven Symphony. Nonetheless, the conductor reigned back the strings (both first and second violins sitting on the same left-hand side of the platform) allowing more detail than would have been audible in a mid-twentieth century performance.Yes there were a very few couple of passages of rough ensemble but the solos were impeccable with very little slowing down of a cracking pace even for the (in)famous bassoon and flute solos. But this was still an intense, dynamic and above all, a meticulously controlled reading. A treat and a revelation to encounter a new reading of such a familiar piece. The performance received the full, warm acclamation of an audience appreciative and knowledgeable as only the Proms audiences seem to be.
