BBC Proms 2017–Elias, Weir, Turnage, and INSPIRE
The Prom presented on August 9 by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth, featured the first performance of Brian Elias’s Cello Concerto, which was a BBC…
More Proms (and Cafe Otto)–Grisey, Nobre, Villa-Lobs, Sollima, and Hellawell
The Prom on August 20, presented by The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, opened with the first UK performance of Dérives by Gérard Grisey. It’s hard to…
More Proms–Ades, Coll, Mathews, Part, Widmann, Janacek
Thomas Adès is a phenominal musician. The depth of his musical intelligence and power of his insight are impossible to miss. They knocks you down, jumps up and down on…
The Proms–Inspire, Simpson, Dutilleux, and more….
Every year the BBC in conjunction with the Proms holds a competition for composers aged 12 through 18 as part of their larger music education program Inspire. Each concert performance…
Some Thoughts About/Memories of Max
Peter Maxwell Davies died about two months ago. I started writing this the week that Max died, but was unable to finish it before now. I met Max Davies in…
BBC Proms—Boulez, Grime, Mason
One of the major threads of the programming of the 2015 Proms concerts was the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez. This commemoration is both testimony to the importance of Boulez…
BBC Proms–Young and Younger Composers: Yiu, Matre, Firsova, and INSPIRE
Raymond Yiu’s Symphony, a sort of Mahlerian song-cycle, which received its first performance on the Prom on August 25 by counter-tenor Andrew Watts and the BBC Symphony conducted by Edward…
BBC Proms–Finnissy and Sibelius
One of the major themes of this year’s Proms is the commemoration of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Jean Sibelius. The Proms on August 12 and…
BBC Proms–Boulez, Ravel, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Founds
As well as being one of the major figures in the music of the second half of the twentieth century, Pierre Boulez has had a long and important relationship with…
Some More New on the Proms
On August 27, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung, in its first appearance at the Proms, included, along with Debussy’s La Mer and the Tschaikovsky Sixth Symphony, Šu,…