Proms
An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
Bowled over by Bruckner
The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work,…
Gustav Mahler
When I began listening to music seriously, in about 1950, I had read about Mahler but wasn’t able to hear…
Service with a smile
He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…
Bad conduct
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
Orchestral infallibility
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Diary
There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music…
Tax return
Make no mistake: the Proms, whose 2015 season was launched last night, would not, could not, exist without the BBC,…
Première league
This year the Proms are to stage 21 world premières and 11 European, UK or London premières. It is good…
Evolutionary road
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
Femmes fatales
Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her…
Buried treasure
One might have expected the streets of Edinburgh, especially at festival time, to bear some evidence of the political struggle…
Staying in tune
Where next for Radio 3? Last Friday was the First Night of this year’s Proms season but it was the…
The Wright stuff
Roger Wright’s precipitate departure from both Radio Three and the Proms came as a surprise. At first the news was…
Running out of time
If I live as long as my father, I’ll be checking out on 9 December 2017. Since every man in…
Farewell, Claudio Abbado
Fellini’s credo ‘the visionary is the only true realist’ could also be applied to the life of Claudio Abbado, who…
Classics in Crackland
Damian Thompson visits Brazil to hear Marin Alsop whip São Paulo’s orchestra into shape
Elder’s evening
The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome,…
The anniversary addiction
Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all
Exuberant genius
Whenever Michael Tippett’s first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, is revived, there is a chorus of voices, including mine, complaining that…
Wagner’s dream
It would be interesting to know why Tristan und Isolde was placed in the Proms programme in between Siegfried and…
Diary
Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked…
A Ring for eternity
The first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Proms is already, less than a week after its conclusion,…
