Wilson and Sinfonia of London deliver five-star Proms Verdi, Walton
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- Sinfonia of London under John Wilson performed another Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, opening with a blistering account of Verdi's La Forza del Destino overture that exposed a rustle of strings beneath the clarinet melody often missed in lesser performances.
- Jonathan Aasgaard, the orchestra's principal cellist, was the soloist in Walton's Cello Concerto, described as generous-toned, technically immaculate and refreshingly undemonstrative against the work's sinister ticks and Hitchcockian cross-rhythms.
- Wilson used the Royal Albert Hall acoustic as an instrument in Respighi's Roman Trilogy, sending brass bands ricocheting across the balcony during the Pines of Rome and including a recorded nightingale in the Janiculum sequence.
- The audience rose as one after the Roman Trilogy, and the evening closed with a rip-roaring William Tell overture as encore — a piece Wilson reportedly chose to send the crowd home whistling.
- The reviewer's central claim is that none of the programme was actual film music, yet Wilson's wizardly hand and the orchestra's 'full-fat' sound and parade-ground discipline make them, in the writer's view, one of the finest ensembles on the planet.
Why it matters: For Proms attendees and classical-music readers, this cements Sinfonia of London/John Wilson as a reliable five-star draw at the Albert Hall — a hand-picked ensemble whose detail-driven readings and acoustic showmanship can turn familiar showpieces (Verdi, Walton, Respighi, Rossini) into event-level performances worth booking around.
