I listened to Soile Isokoski singing the 4 Last Songs in Prom 42 (3 stars). I didn’t enjoy it much but that was because Listen Again was being an a**e so I didn’t get to hear more than about a minute at a time. I’ve heard this twice before and the first time the girl sang 6 songs and the second time a different girl sang 5 songs. I reckon there were probably 4 here but it’s quite difficult when it keeps stopping, you kind of lose count. There was some Sibelius and some Bartok too but I don’t remember those.
Then there was this Wagner stuff with Ian Bostridge in Prom 45(4 stars). That was actually really good. You don’t think of Ian Bostridge as a Wagner singer. He’s got quite a small voice really and you’d think he’d get drowned out by the orchestra really badly but he didn’t, he sounded really good. He should sing more Wagner, it sounds better if you’re not having your eardrums blasted out. Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony was cool too, that was the Orchestra of St Lukes with Donald Runnicles.
Prom 48 (4 stars) was a Mariinsky one. I don’t remember much of that either apart from the bass. He was well cool. It was supposed to be Sergei Alexashkin or something like that but he had to replace someone in the next Prom so they got Mikhail Petrenko instead. He’s kind of the star of the Proms this year Mikhail is. First he was in the Mozart concert right at the beginning replacing someone, then he sang in Siegfried the next day. Then he did this one and then he did Prom 49 (4 stars) the day after that. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is one of the coolest operas ever and it well sucks that no-one else wants to go and see it and I can’t go on my own even though I’m 16 now, it’s so not fair. I couldn’t even take one of my girlfriends, it’s not the sort of opera you take your girlfriend to though anyway. Viktor Lutsiuk was the main bloke, Sergei. I saw him in The Queen of Spades and thought he was cool, he was good in this too. Really good voice. Larisa Gogolevskaya was Katerina, I actually didn’t like her that much. Her voice was quite hard. Mikhail Petrenko was good though and so was Gennady Bezzubenkov, don’t know why that sounds so dodgy but it does. They were singing the Priest and the Old Convict. The best was the bloke playing Boris though and that was Sergei Alexashkin who I mentiond before. This is a really cool and atmospheric opera, even if you can’t understand the Russian which I can’t you can tell that there are exciting and a bit horrible things going on.
Susan Graham was the soloist in some Chausson stuff in Prom 51 (4 stars). I don’t really like French songs usually because it’s all honky and slushy but I like anything Susan sings, it’s so sexy. First of all there was this piece by Richard Strauss about Don Juan, I don’t really get it, you can’t see the character in it in the same way that you can in Mozart’s opera but it’s still interesting and stuff. I liked the Shostakovich symphony afterwards more than I thought I would. I don’t usually like Shostakovich apart from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and I don’t like that for the music as much as the story but sometimes he just like surprises me.
Prom 53 (3 stars) had some singers in too but I don’t remember them. I quite liked the Turnage thing at the beginning though. I’m really getting into his stuff. There was a Prokofiev piano concerto after that with Nikolai Lugansky but I wasn’t really in the mood for that and Listen Again was so crap I just couldn’t be a**ed with all of the Rakhmaninov at the end with the singers.
Dawn Upshaw was supposed to sing a world premiere in Prom 54 (2 stars) but she didn’t so they did something completely different without a singer, can’t remember what it was now. I think I actually listened to that one but got a bit bored with it.
Prom 57 (5 stars) was like the best thing in the Proms so far except maybe a few other things. It was all Mozart and it was all really good. The Mozart Requiem was the best. Carolyn Sampson is just brilliant as well as a babe. Ingeborg Danz was the mezzo, her voice seemed a bit wrong for Mozart but it was still a good voice. Mark Padmore was better than I thought he would be, his voice has got bigger but he can still scale it down for Mozart, brilliant. Alfred Reiter was really good too, he’s well-known for his Mozart and his Wagner which sounds quite weird. Never heard his Wagner but he knows what he’s doing with Mozart. He can sing it in tune too.
Veronique Gens sang Mozart in Prom 59 and Amy Freston sang some stuff in Prom 63 and I was looking forward to them both but I never heard them. Maybe they’re still on Listen Again I don’t know but I bet they were both brilliant. There was another singing thing in Prom 70 with Susan Gritton and Christianne Stotjin, should be able to catch up with that one. And I missed Prom 72 yesterday (well it was yesterday when I wrote it) because I was at BYO’s Don Giovanni but maybe there will be a repeat of that, it’s the Mass in C minor, it’ll be on a school day probably but maybe I’ll just take the afternoon off, it sounds worth it. (If any of my teachers are reading this I’m just joking so if I do happen to be ill when the repeat’s on it’s just a coincidance okay?)
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