“It is nearly 80 years since the Proms, which begin on Friday, moved to the Royal Albert Hall,” writes Richard Brooks in Saturday’s (7/13) Guardian (U.K.). “The Proms should get out of London more. It is, after all, the British Broadcasting Corporation, not the London Broadcasting Corporation.… In 2019, they are all being held in the capital—evenings the Albert Hall, excellent lunchtime ones at the Cadogan Hall, plus a couple at Battersea Arts Centre and the Holy Sepulchre church. David Pickard, the Proms director, really should plan more Proms in our regional cities, such as Stoke, Sunderland or Nottingham, all pretty well starved of classical music. A change of tune at this year’s Cadogan Proms with a special emphasis on female composers, most of whom have been overlooked. The series kicks off on 22 July with a work by the extraordinary 12th-century German abbess and philosopher, Hildegard of Bingen. Others include the Italian Antonia Bembo … Barbara Strozzi [and] the courageous Pole Grazyna Bacewicz, who, while living in Warsaw during the second world war, composed in secret and even put on underground concerts. The last in the Cadogan series is a new work from the young Brit Freya Waley-Cohen.”
Posted July 15, 2019
