György Kurtág’s Endgame receives its UK premiere at the Proms

What sort of music might capture the enigmatic nihilism of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame?  The play’s fragmentation and dislocation?  Its seemingly pointless patterns of repetition and variation?  György Kurtág’s aphoristic stutters,…

Prom 41: Superb Nielsen from Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

“I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen: his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic…

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates Stravinsky at the Proms

When Stravinsky’s ‘one-act ballet with songs’, Pulcinella,was first performed in 1920 – by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with choreography by Léonide Massine and designs by Pablo Picasso – the music was…