Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Vasily Petrenko and the Liverpool Philharmonic opened Prom 19 with two Richard Strauss rarities, the first of which, his Festival Prelude, was pure bombast.
But the second was intriguing, being his Deutsche Motette - an a cappella setting for chorus and four soloists of a devotional poem by Friedrich Ruckert.
With twenty elaborately-figured parts shifting constantly in key, it’s dauntingly hard to sing (and for that reason is seldom performed), and the BBC Singers plus soloists led by the excellent Brindley Sherratt made a brave stab at it.
But they didn’t quite bring it off: the impression was of a dense mass of choral sound out of which solo voices intermittently surged, and the effect was muddy. The skies then cleared for Strauss’s Four Last Songs: Inger Dam-Jensen doesn’t have the heft for the Albert Hall acoustic, but her tone had a silvered purity.
Nodding towards 1914 is today’s obligatory cliché, but Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra ensured that Gurney’s gravely expressive War Elegy earned its airing. Sally Beamish’s 1914-inspired Violin Concerto should have followed, but the illness of its soloist led to the substitution of her Concerto for Accordion, with James Crabb as soloist.
Entitled The Singing, this inventive and brightly-coloured work benefited hugely from Crabb’s personal brand of Highland virtuosity.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments