“Finally… women have taken center stage” at the Proms, writes Ivan Hewett in Thursday’s (7/12) Daily Telegraph (London). “More than half of the newly commissioned pieces in this year’s season are by women, and altogether there are 22 female composers featured throughout the festival. [Roxanna Panufnik and Anna Meredith] have been given the most eye-catching commissions of all, for the First and Last Night” concerts on July 13 and September 8. Panufnik says festival organizers “ ‘wanted something that commemorated the centenary of the end of the First World War but also looked optimistically into the future.’ [She] came up with … Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light for choirs and orchestra. In this, a poem by Isaac Rosenberg … is ‘soothed and assuaged’ by verses from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet.…. Anna Meredith’s … Five Telegrams … a music-and-visuals piece made in collaboration with hi-tech designers 59 Productions [is] in five movements, each focused on an aspect of communication between soldiers and loved ones at home … ‘There’s no feeling of triumph or joy at the end, because that’s not the impression I got of how soldiers actually felt,’ says Meredith. ‘It’s more a sense of dogged, heavy persistence.’ ”
Posted July 13, 2018
