Gorgeous playing under Sir Mark Elder wasn’t enough to mask the lack of theatrical drive in the scrupulously cast Dutch premiere of Delius’ most successful opera.
Impressive Ravel from Benedetto Lupo, with pleasing Debussy and Delius, and a strong performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring from Juanjo Mena and the LPO.
Despite a much reduced orchestra and a slightly awkward staging, New Sussex Opera's production of Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet still gave us the chance to wallow in a glorious late-Romantic score.
Stravinsky, Delius's evokation of the experience of Norwegain mountains, Rachmaninov and Tchaikoskyin a stunning concert by the Hallé, the Hallé Choir and Sir Mark Elder
Just occasionally a regular concert-goer experiences a performance that is truly special. When he is not anticipating this it can be an overwhelming experience. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert at the Bridgewater Hall, also broadcast on BBC Radio 3, proved to be such an experience.
Change is in the air at Ballet San Jose, and Saturday night’s star-studded gala to welcome new artistic director José Manuel Carreño proved this in a big way.
Delius is a composer who is often misunderstood, the English pastoralism of works like On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring hardly representative of either his cosmopolitan life or the breadth of his output.
The Bergen Philharmonic opened their concert very aptly, with a piece by an English composer that evoked their homeland. Delius took regular holidays in Norway and an early meeting with Grieg had helped Delius on his way to becoming a serious composer.
As London became a vision in white and all went quiet, the Southbank Centre was abuzz with all manner of arts-related activities. One rail replacement bus and a brisk walk behind me, I had made it to see the Philharmonia Orchestra’s matinee concert of 20th-century English music, framed around John Ireland’s Piano Concerto.
Two encores, a virtuoso and a cracking orchestra. This concert truly celebrated the best of British music and musicians, as the first concert in St George’s “Best of British” concert season. The scene was set with an array of red, white and blue amongst the orchestra in several forms: bow ties, flags, ribbons and other accessories.
The music of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius (1862–1934) is a love or hate affair. Whether you bask in the romantic lushness of his godless and nature-influenced ramblings, or find yourself drowning in a poor-quality school soup consisting of unappetisingly vague harmonic shifts, he is a composer that inspires passionate discussion.
The Last Night of the Proms isn’t really a concert at all; it’s two very different concerts put on one after the other. The first is something like what we’re used to from a Prom, with big-name soloists performing alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus in world premières and classic works from the repertoire.
I can’t work out if it was surprising or to be expected that Maxwell Davies, part of the New Music Manchester group that included Birtwistle and Goehr, should have become Master of the Queen’s Music.
Osmo Vänskä strode onto the stage to great applause, paused for the slightest of moments and then lunged at the orchestra with his baton. The gesture was sudden and lacked clarity, and as a result, the first note of the Prom wasn’t together in the strings.
If this year's Delius anniversary glut – he was born in 1862 – has taught us anything, it is how difficult his music is to capture: beautifully idiosyncratic at best, but plain boring if wrong.
The Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic made their last appearance of this year’s Proms on Thursday night led by their newly appointed Principal Guest Conductor, John Storgårds.
Prom 23 served up a menu of English music from the first half of the 20 century in all its variety, with impressionism by Delius, the lush strings of Vaughan Williams, heroic brass from Ireland, and jazzy, sophisticated excitement from Walton.The programme opened with a warmly affectionate performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
A second scorching day in Hereford at the Three Choirs Festival concluded with another excellent concert.Before an audience that filled the cathedral to capacity, the Philharmonia Orchestra assembled on the platform and a warm welcome was given to conductor Peter Nardone.The concert opened with John Ireland’s evocative orchestral opus A London Overture.
The first night of the Proms was, in this year of Olympic celebrations and the Diamond Jubilee, a tribute to all things English, featuring an impressive range of singers and a (somewhat appropriate) relay team of stellar English conductors. The programme began with a strange mixture of old and new.
A very interestingly programmed concert, this. Two Finnish and two English composers, all represented with pieces that to a greater or lesser extent are programmatic. First we heard Delius' "Walk to the Paradise Garden" from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet (here arranged by David Lloyd-Jones).
It is inevitable that one of the most beloved of orchestral instruments, the cello, will entice a diverse crowd of enthusiastic concertgoers – and that even in the midst of a recession, there prevails an inherent desire to depart from the self now and then for a ritualistic celebration of great music.
The history of British music reads rather like the old joke about buses: there was no composer of note in the two hundred years after Purcell, and then three came along at once. Whilst Elgar and Vaughan Williams have become household names, the third composer who came along at the end of the nineteenth century has been relegated to the dusty shelves of musical history.
One of the main attractions of this interesting programme given by the Chiltern Camerata was the Concerto for Organ, strings and timpani by Francis Poulenc and it was to do justice to this attractive work that this concert was presented in All Saints Church in Marlow with its fine Father Willis organ.
À la Maison Symphonique de Montréal, l'Orchestre Métropolitain et le violoncelliste Maximilian Hornung ont livré une prestation admirable, sous la direction inspirée de Jordan de Souza.
