The BBC Proms came to a close last night with the feverish excitement of the Last Night. As ever it offered a huge range of music, but one performance in particular drew the eye – a spectacular account, from Yuja Wang and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo, of Samuel Barber‘s Piano Concerto, completed in 1962.
Difficult to reconcile that this was the same composer of the Adagio for Strings, and the melt-in-the-middle Violin Concerto – this was forthright pianism, terrifically played but still with a deeply emotive heart.
You can watch Yuja Wang’s account here…but below is the premiere recording made by John Browning, who Barber had in mind when he wrote the work. Here he is with the Cleveland Orchestra and George Szell:
Published post no.3,316 – Sunday 13 September 2026
There are a good number of performances of the symphony online, but Arcana has selected this big hitting performance under the direction of Marc Albrecht, live from Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw:
Published post no.3,315 – Saturday 12 September 2026
I wanted to post a short memorial to the awful events of 11 September 2001.
I was working for a New York-based company at the time, whose offices were in Manhattan, and will never forget the shock experienced on that day. As music can so often say what words don’t, here is a piece for reflection, as I think of all those colleagues affected:
Paul Cut has illustrious connections within the world of techno. A keyboard player with Larry Heard, he has also worked with Ron Trent and Chez Damier.
Here Cut, real name Paul Culliver, goes solo for the first time in what appears to be six years, on an eight-track LP of original productions.
What’s the music like?
Cut’s experience of what makes people dance shines through on each track. It is pretty effortless music making, the album unfolding like a DJ set would, building on minimal material for maximum effect.
Shady Nasty is classic Detroit techno, with a simple offbeat riff driving a track full of incident. Next one even better, before On The Rocks cuts up a sample from the Sensi-tize classic Burn Baby Burn. Meanwhile She Comes Around is an excellent, bassy groover.
Does it all work?
It does – very nicely, too.
Is it recommended?
With some ease. Paul Cut’s expertise is clear on an album that frequently presses all the right buttons.
For fans of…Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Kenny Larkin, Chez Damier, Charles Webster
Listen / Buy
tbc
Published post no.3,013 – Thursday 10 September 2026
Simone Lamsma (violin), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) Britten Violin Concerto in D minor Op.15 (1938-9) Smickersgill A Brick Thrown with Love (2026) [BBC co-commission: World premiere] Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-7)
Royal Albert Hall, London Friday 4 September 2026
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou
Andrew Manze’s eleventh appearance at the Proms, during which 28 years he has moved from being a Baroque violinist and director to a symphonic conductor, drew on just over a century of British music for what proved a typically thoughtful and absorbing programme.
Not consistently successful, though – hence an account of Vaughan Williams‘ Tallis Fantasia whose avoiding of old-school eloquence leant it a certain uniformity of expression. In particular, the second (nine-piece) orchestra sounded rather un-atmospheric placed just behind the main body, leaving it to the solo quartet to instil a degree of intensity as the piece built toward its fervent if generalized climax before heading into subdued retrospection. Assured playing among the ranks of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra strings did not make it other than an unexceptional reading.
The surprise about Simone Lamsma’s Proms appearance was this being her first, but anyone having heard her in Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto knows her to be a soloist of the first order -as was the case with Britten’s Violin Concerto. The Moderato’s alternating of enervation and incisiveness was deftly handled, then the Vivace’s impetus did not omit a soulful response in its central episode with a magical transition on piccolos and tuba back to its initial animation. Nor was the cadenza other than integrated thematically into an overall structure as concludes with one of Britten’s most deeply felt passacaglias. Spanish elements which keenly offset any formal severity with expressive spontaneity bring about its powerful climax; the equivocation between hope and resignation unerringly judged at the end of what was a memorable reading.
Those responsive to her earlier ensemble works should have found Carmel Smickersgill’s new Proms piece no less intriguing. Its three (more or less) continuous sections of A Brick Thrown with Love provide an unforced trajectory where reckless negativity is countered with diverse responses, before the coming together in a mood of determined positivity. Lucid textures and iridescent scoring banish any hint of agit-prop with an appealing demonstration of orchestral prowess; one whose warm reception the composer chose to acknowledge from the rear stalls.
Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony receives more hearings than ever in the seven decades since it premiered to a lukewarm response. Manze had the measure of the opening Moderato with its luminous scoring for three saxophones and a restiveness allayed if not resolved by its twilit coda. The ensuing Andante drew potent contrast from its hieratic and human elements, thrown into relief by a flugelhorn refrain (evocatively played by Tom Fountain) that reaches back into the composer’s distant past, then the Scherzo purposefully offset its capricious and militant aspects with a haunting lyricism as comes into its own in the finale. Less protracted than on Manze’s recording (Onyx), this unfolds in ever more elaborate arcs of accumulating activity to what is less a coda than an apotheosis which here was inevitable and unequivocal.
Just what those closing bars are conveying has been the subject of considerable speculation over time. Without overstating his case, Manze allowed this ‘journey of a life’ to envelop the Albert Hall’s expanse in what was an affecting end to a memorable evening’s music-making.
Arcana.fm 