Proms Wrap-up
The BBC Proms is ongoing until the end of this week, the traditional Last Night at the Proms being on Saturday night. For me it all ended about a week…
At the Proms–Vaughan Williams, Osborne, and Eötvös
One of the threads of this year’s Proms is a survey of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his death. On August 26,…
Carter, Messiaen, and Stockhausen at the Proms
Among the focuses of the Proms this summer are the centennials of Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen and the eightieth birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen (due to his death in 2007,…
More from the Proms–first performances of Berkeley, MacRae, and Hillborg
The Prom Concert on August 10, given by the BBC Symphony, conducted by Edward Gardner, included two first performances, both of them commissioned by the BBC for this season of…
Chen Yi’s Olympic Fire – More From the Proms
The BBC marked the beginning day of the Beijing Olympics by offering the first performance of Olympic Fire, commissioned for the occasion from Chen Yi. All of Chen’s music uses…
My First Prom–Prom 27, August 6
George Benjamin, at age 48, is one of the grand old men of British music. Considering a succession starting with Britten, and continuing with Oliver Knussen and Thomas Ades, and…
Question
I have a vague recollection of an article in the Sunday Times sometime in July of one of the last ten or so years which compared the decline of twelve-tone…
Somebody didn’t get the memo
The biggest shock of the day was reading in the NYTimes Book Review a review by Pankaj Mishra of Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff, the following…
Some More Proms–Lutoslawki, Birtwistle, Ades
On August 16, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martin Brabbins, presented a late-night concert in honor of Sir John Drummond, former director of the Proms, who died last…
Portman at the Proms, Beaudoin at the Arcola
In England the last Monday in August is a Bank Holiday, and is more or less equivalent to Labor Day in the U.S. in being the last holiday of the…