Sinfonia of London – weapons-grade energy and contagious dynamism

Royal Albert Hall, LondonConductor John Wilson has made this orchestra one of the best in Britain, and violinist James Ehnes was the ideal soloist in a performance that took flight instantlyThere are those BBC Proms performances that revel in the acoustic quirks of the Royal Albert Hall and those that bravely weather its challenges. Either way, the venue’s vast arena and cavernous dome tend to loom large. Then there are those rare, astonishing performances that seem untouched by basic matters of physics: performances that take flight instantly and apparently without effort from the monumental Victorian architecture, conjuring a space entirely their own – ephemeral and miraculous – for as long as they last.The Sinfonia of London’s concert on the penultimate night of the 2025 Proms season was one such performance. A frenetic ascending scale, an immediate gathering of forces into a single, razor-sharp motif, a precipitous tumble to bounce on the timpani – and we were off, violins airborne with one of Richard Strauss’s most joyfully propulsive melodies. This wasn’t just a vivid, high-definition reading of a familiar score: Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan sounded as if it had been made to measure. Woodwind solos were lithe and spacious, the strings glossy, the lower brass fixed in the crosshairs. Continue reading...

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