Latest news with #20thCenturyMusic
The Guardian
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
BBCNOW/Venditti review – 20th-century British classics shine at a potent patriotic Prom
In one sense, this stroll along the highways and byways of 20th-century British music was a throwback to an earlier era when Proms audiences were treated to grab bags of the latest popular odds and sods. What made this such a stimulating affair was the juxtaposition of undeniable old masters with works by composers underrepresented in today's concert halls. With the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on top form throughout, helmed by the energetic Italian-Turkish conductor Nil Venditti, there was much here to relish. The staples first, and Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending received a poetic and thoroughly idiomatic reading at the hands of Bulgarian violinist Liya Petrova. The orchestra laid the velvet-cushioned groundwork over which Petrova soared with elegant phrasing, silvery tone and exquisitely delivered top notes. An assured account of Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes teemed with atmosphere. Venditti was particularly adept at bringing out the music's underlying menace, though the hectic pace adopted for the Sunday Morning bells episode left musical details muddied by the acoustic. If Walton's Crown Imperial, taken a tad fast, lacked the final ounce of Technicolor chutzpah, Elgar's Enigma Variations was a painterly tour de force, Venditti holding the architectural line despite twice being interrupted by overeager applause. Tempi were ideal, whether depicting the aquatic high jinks of a bulldog in a river or sustaining a breathtakingly controlled build through Nimrod. The rarities – all Proms premieres – were a fascinating if slightly mixed bag. William Mathias's syncopated Dance Overture was a proper crowd-pleaser, the wizardly Welsh composer successfully locating his inner Carmen Miranda. The BBC Singers lent class to a pair of Edwardian part-songs by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, while his daughter Avril's The Shepherd, a haunting setting of William Blake for male voices and strings, was a fine discovery. Both rather showed up John Rutter's sugar-coated Bird Songs, here receiving its world premiere. Schmaltzy and curiously derivative, they felt dated in a way the older music did not. It was left to Venditti to right the ship with Grace Williams' affecting Elegy for Strings, its gently rocking rhythms and intricate interweaving lines crowned by Lesley Hatfield's heartfelt violin solo. Listen again on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 13 September
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bantock: The Seal Woman album review – Celtic folk opera that never quite gets its head above water
Except perhaps in Birmingham, where his memory is still cherished for what he did for the city's music, including co-founding the CBSO, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) has slipped quietly into the margins of 20th-century British music. But as well as being an academic and conductor, Bantock was a prolific composer, with a work list including four symphonies, five concertos and nine operas, of which the last, the 'Celtic folk opera' The Seal Woman, is easily the best remembered now. The premiere of The Seal Woman in 1924 was the Birmingham Repertory theatre's first production; librettist Marjory Kennedy-Fraser took the main role of the Cailleach, whose dreams and visions tell the story of the Selkie, seal-people who emerge from the sea every seven years to live on land, shedding their skins to take human form. Kennedy-Fraser's text is a patchwork of 24 folk songs that she collected in the Western Isles, and originally she intended it as a spoken drama. Even in the operatic version, the songs remain central; Bantock's music, for an instrumental ensemble of 16 players, tactfully wraps itself around the original melodies, never dominating, and preserving as much of the integrity of Kennedy-Fraser's accompaniments as possible. Dramatically, though, it remains inert. Although the original melodies and some of the texts as Kennedy-Fraser presents them have their own intrinsic beauty, The Seal Woman comes across as rather faded, dated and uninvolving. That's despite the best efforts of conductor John Andrews and a carefully assembled cast of singers, led by Yvonne Howard as the storytelling Cailleach and mezzo Catherine Carby as the Seal Woman herself. But it's the curiosity value of the score that recommends it above all.
The Guardian
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bantock: The Seal Woman album review – Celtic folk opera that never quite gets its head above water
Except perhaps in Birmingham, where his memory is still cherished for what he did for the city's music, including co-founding the CBSO, Granville Bantock (1868-1946) has slipped quietly into the margins of 20th-century British music. But as well as being an academic and conductor, Bantock was a prolific composer, with a work list including four symphonies, five concertos and nine operas, of which the last, the 'Celtic folk opera' The Seal Woman, is easily the best remembered now. The premiere of The Seal Woman in 1924 was the Birmingham Repertory theatre's first production; librettist Marjory Kennedy-Fraser took the main role of the Cailleach, whose dreams and visions tell the story of the Selkie, seal-people who emerge from the sea every seven years to live on land, shedding their skins to take human form. Kennedy-Fraser's text is a patchwork of 24 folk songs that she collected in the Western Isles, and originally she intended it as a spoken drama. Even in the operatic version, the songs remain central; Bantock's music, for an instrumental ensemble of 16 players, tactfully wraps itself around the original melodies, never dominating, and preserving as much of the integrity of Kennedy-Fraser's accompaniments as possible. Dramatically, though, it remains inert. Although the original melodies and some of the texts as Kennedy-Fraser presents them have their own intrinsic beauty, The Seal Woman comes across as rather faded, dated and uninvolving. That's despite the best efforts of conductor John Andrews and a carefully assembled cast of singers, led by Yvonne Howard as the storytelling Cailleach and mezzo Catherine Carby as the Seal Woman herself. But it's the curiosity value of the score that recommends it above all.
