The original version of PULCINELLA was choreographed by Massine with designs by Picasso in 1920. Like the original, Richard Alston’s greatly-admired version of the complicated love-story has a Neapolitan setting and is based on traditional Commedia dell’Arte characters.
BBC Proms 2017: First Night of the Proms
The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Igor Levit, conducted by Edward Gardner, follow the tried formula for the First Night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall, combining an exciting new work by a British artist, Tom Coult’s St John’s Dance, with a repertoire classic – Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto – and a topical piece such as John Adams’s Harmonium, marking the composer’s 70th birthday. Igor Levit performs Beethoven “with rare grace and intimacy” (The Independent). For the grand finale, John Adams’s armonium receives “a glowing performance” (The Daily Telegraph) by ist gargantuan chorus: alongside the BBC SO under Edward Gardner, seven choirs, among them the
BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Proms Youth Choir, make up the choral forces, doing “a formidable job” in “this stratospherically high, rhythmically difficult, super-exposed
job.” (The Observer) PROGRAM Adams: Harmonium; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.3; Coult: St John’s Dance
BBC Proms 2018: Canellakis conducts Russian Classics
Conductor Karina Canellakis returned with the BBC Symphony Orchestra after her triumphant 2017 Proms debut. Two 20th-century Russian masterpieces led the bill – the exhilarating Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich’s much-loved First Cello Concerto, where Canellakis was joined by another young American star, soloist Alisa Weilerstein. The programme kicked off with Beethoven’s forceful Overture Coriolan, which Canellakis describes as a ‘punch in the face’, and a third young American, composer Andrew Norman, completed the programme with the UK premiere of his new work Spiral – “It could spice up any programme!” (The Guardian) PROGRAM Beethoven: Overture ‘Coriolan’; Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No 1; Norman: Spiral; Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
BBC Proms 2019: Karina Canellakis conducts Dvorák and Janácek
Janácek’s monumental Glagolitic Mass, steeped in Moravian rhythms, is heard alongside Dvorák’s fairy-tale tone-poem The Golden Spinning Wheel and and a World Premiere by Zosha Di Castri, a new work that marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s mission to the Moon. Karina Canellakis conducts the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, BBC Singers and soloists in one of the 20th century’s great choral masterpieces. “The performance of the season” (The Times) PROGRAM Zosha Di Castri: Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory; Dvorak: The Golden Spinning Wheel; Janacek: Glagolitic Mass