Category: Performances

Planet Earth laid waste by forces beyond our control, hunger and drought squeezing humanity out of existence whilst those in charge look on, laughing, lusting and concerned only with their own power struggles ñ does this sound familiar?

Musically and dramatically Ferdinando Paerís Leonora and Beethovenís Fidelio might be said to belong respectively to pre- and post-revolutionary ages.

A few seasons back, Los Angeles Opera invited William Friedkin to direct a double-bill of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.

Iannis Xenakis once stood among the leading composers of the avant-garde, mentioned in a (long, drawn-out, amelodic, taped and fed back) breath with Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Henze, Penderecki and Stockhausen: internationally famous among academics, ignored or deplored by the concert-going public.

The Verdi Requiem is a regular feature at the Proms, having appeared every few years in past decades, usually to full houses.

Sunday 24th August at the Proms promised a day dedicated to the music of Bach, beginning with an organ recital in the afternoon by Simon Preston and ending with a late-night performance of the first three of the six Cello Suites by Chinese cellist Jian Wang by way of a palate-cleanser.

The Last Night of the Proms is notorious because it’s an excuse for jingoistic excess.

Even a concert performance of Messiaen’s St FranÁois d’Assise could hardly fail to be an event.

Every time an artist walks onto the performance stage, he or she attempts to give the performance of their lives, focusing on everything they have learned prior to, and giving of themselves in an unprecedented way.