On consecutive nights the Prommers saw two relatively young conductors who might seem to have little in common, the very English Nicholas Collon and the very Californian Ryan Bancroft. But they have both recently been appointed to direct Scandinavian orchestras of great prestige: Collon the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (the first ever non-Finn to do so) and Bancroft the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic…
Whoever paid the swan to fly across the stage just as dusk turned to night with the Pyrenees as the backdrop was inspired! The swan glided, the musicians began to play and Sergei Bernal, dressed only in gold pantaloons, started to impersonate Rodin’s sculpture Torse d’homme Louis XIV…
Perhaps the last thing one expects from this extraordinary disc is to find that it starts with the chimes of Big Ben played on the sheng, in a piece derived from one of Telemann’s a century before that bell tolled…
These days the idea of an artistic director who was also a composer presenting an opera by a contemporary the year after its first production would be thought of as a co-production…
Perhaps the last thing one expects from this extraordinary disc is to find that it starts with the chimes of Big Ben played on the sheng, in a piece derived from one of Telemann’s a century before that bell tolled…