Articles by Carla Finesilver

Tonight’s Orchestre de Paris Prom was very much a concert of two halves, in the first of which they got to show their sensitive, introspective side, reflecting on the nature of life and lamenting too-early death, then becoming considerably more extrovert in the second for some free-spirited buccaneering, and what the programme notes describe as “vivid, prolonged and grand noise”.

Surprisingly, this was the Warsaw Philharmonic’s first visit to the Proms, invited as part of this year’s focus on Polish music. About time too, one might say, and particularly so with it being both Lutosławski’s centenary year (and almost Panufnik’s too, shy by a year), and this the farewell concert of outgoing Artistic Director of twelve years, Antoni Wit.

Can it really be nearly 25 years since Nigel Kennedy’s landmark first recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? 1989: when Baroque music adopted commercial pop’s mass marketing techniques, selling over two million copies (with a place in the Guinness Book of Records for all-time best-selling classical work) and making the young chap with lightning fingers and sticking-up hair a media sensation.

Opera being a strongly visual art form as well as a musical one, the idea of a pure concert performance seems a little strange to those unfamiliar with the form.

As I write this, I have just realised that someone in a neighbouring flat is listening to some rather loud jazz, a man is shouting outside, probably at the car alarm that has just gone off, and there is a bee buzzing around my room.

Carl Nielsen had an exceptional understanding of the nuances of woodwind instruments, and when playing the parts he wrote for flautists, the affection is almost palpable. Towards the end of his composing career, he thought of different orchestral instruments as having distinct personalities, and composed their interactions accordingly.