ON: YORKSHIRE MAGAZINE
When you host a John Williams concert, choosing which tracks go into the running time is a tricky choice.
Obviously, the main themes from Star Wars, Superman, Jaws, ET, and Raiders of the Lost Ark are high on the list. As are Harry Potter and Jurassic Park. It’s the sort of track list you’d find on ‘Now That’s What I Call John Williams’ Greatest Hits’.
Journalist Julian Worricker recently caught up with Artist in Residence at Southbank Centre, conductor Marin Alsop, to talk about our upcoming concert at the Royal Festival Hall (Monday 27 February).
Marin Alsop’s first outing in many years at the helm of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will offer a "triumph of the human spirit" in Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, a touch of joie de vivre in Renaud Capuçon's Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (Alsop taking a "partner role"), and a mammoth response to the 1941 Leningrad siege in Shostakovich's "massive on every level" Symphony No.7.
CLASSICAL SOURCE
Allocating this critic a seat in the Gallery of Cadogan Hall for a concert of music by Sibelius and Prokofiev, to be greeted by a leaflet headed “Octava – Enriching your concert experience” by means of using your mobile phone to read the programme note – while the music is being played – is rather like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
DAILY EXPRESS ★★★★
THE Royal Phil is currently showing off its New Year wares in its Sloane Square home with a diet of “richly satisfying sandwiches”, as conductor Shelley put it, chatting away to us from his podium.
Who can resist Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, his first? Just to prove that anything revered Austrian classicist Joseph Haydn could do he could do better, Prokofiev produced his first symphony aged 26 in 1917.
