BBCPhil/Storgårds / Park & Jupiter Ensemble reviews – stylish Strauss and lyrical Sibelius … and a lutenist’s singalong
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- John Storgårds conducted the BBC Philharmonic at a Proms concert featuring Sueye Park's Proms debut in Sibelius's violin concerto, which Park, a South Korean violinist, owned with a lean, silvery, intensely lyrical tone from first note to finale.
- Betsy Jolas's 1977 piece Tales of a Summer Sea was performed, with Jolas turning 100 in two weeks; the 15-minute work deployed seven busy percussionists, tom-toms, vibraphone, celesta and a louring gong-and-timpani storm.
- Storgårds delivered a stylish Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra with the bell placed way up in the Albert Hall gallery to ring in Nietzsche's deep midnight, though The Dance Song lacked a final degree of Viennese schmaltz.
- Thomas Dunford's Jupiter Ensemble made a singularly idiosyncratic Proms debut alongside British tenor Laurence Kilsby, with a Dowland-centred programme marking 400 years since the composer's death plus Purcell.
- Kilsby sang a debonair Come Again, Sweet Love and moving accounts of Dowland's Flow, My Tears and Sorrow, Stay paired with Dunford, while Jupiter juxtaposed Can She Excuse My Wrongs with its original lute source The Earl of Essex Galliard.
- Dunford cajoled the audience into a singalong of Hey Jude — a moment only the broadcast captures.
Why it matters: The evening gave the Proms two debut-making artists — Park, whose silvery Sibelius is now on the radar of anyone booking violinists for future seasons, and Dunford's Jupiter Ensemble, whose infectious early-music-meets-pop crossover could reshape how the Proms programmes late-night slots. The Jolas centenary performance also marks one of the last big London showcases before her 100th birthday.
