BBC Proms 2012
Starts at 10:00 am on Friday, 24 August 2012
40 programmes from the world’s greatest classical music festival
(5) Vadim Gluzman (vln), BBC SO/Jirí Belohlávek: Smetana, Prokofiev, Dvorák
After last year’s sensational complete Má Vlast comes Smetana’s autobiographical E minor quartet, in George Szell’s orchestration, another first for the Proms. Its finale is suddenly interrupted by a graphic illustration of the onset of deafness, a sustained high E, here on piccolo as well as violin, imitating the tinnitus that afflicted the composer. By contrast Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto is one of his magical fairy-tale pieces, championed today by Proms debut artist, Vadim Gluzman whose extraordinary artistry both sustains the great violin tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries and enlivens it with the dynamism of today.
The Israeli violinist appears regularly around the world with major orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus and the San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and NHK Symphony; and with leading conductors including Neeme Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Andrew Litton, Marek Janowski and Itzhak Perlman.
Among his festival appearances are Verbier, Ravinia, Lockenhaus, Pablo Casals, Colmar, and Jerusalem. In the season 2013/14 Vadim begins collaboration with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, in the new position of Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist.
The concert ends with Dvořák’s dark, passionate Seventh Symphony, commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London, the composer himself crossing the Channel to direct the première.
This concert was recorded in the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC.
