THIS year’s BBC Proms provides an unexpected feast of cello music. It is the first time in 126 years that the four warhorses of the concerto repertoire—Elgar, Dvo ák, Saint-Saëns and Walton—have all been played in the same season, although, says Proms director David Pickard, the programming owes more to pandemic-related pragmatism than design. ‘These concertos seem to fit for the times we are in, because of the emotional languages they speak, but also the practicalities of social distancing,’ he explains. ‘The repertoire this year is dictated by the number of players on stage and it so happens all these concertos have manageable orchestral forces.
‘They are being performed by astonishing cellists from home and abroad,’ he adds. ‘We tend to think of the Elgar as quintessentially English and connected to Jacqueline du Pré, so to have it reflected back to us by someone who is German [Johannes Moser] will add another dimension.’
This happy accident of planning showcases the sheer range of this most beloved of stringed instruments and the fascinating links between current virtuosi and some of the past greats, whose memory is inevitably eclipsed by du Pré, Rostropovich and Tortelier.
The ‘happening’ young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason tackles the Dvo ák concerto. This Czech masterpiece has been performed 35 times at the Proms, although never more famously than in 1968 by Mstislav Rostropovich. By chance, it was the day after Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. The Russian orchestra was booed, although not ‘Slava’, who was in tears throughout. At the end, he held the score aloft, as if to show where his sympathies lay.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
