Young Felix Mendelssohn couldn’t quite handle the level of applause from the London audience for premiere of his first piano concerto, and felt too shy to return to the platform for a bow.
For many audience members at the Brighton Dome, Michael Collins was the unforgettable young clarinet player who won the first BBC Young Musician of the Year in 1978.
Ravel wrote that he wanted his G major piano concerto to be light-hearted and brilliant, like those by Mozart and Saint Saens, and, in the quicksilver fingers of Melvyn Tan, that is exactly what it was.
It takes an artist of rare courage and ability to play the Tchaikovsky B flat Concerto in public.
Mrs. Hoover is hanging up her floral pinny and finishing the custard crèmes; no longer will Brighton’s leading landlady terrorise guests with bathroom etiquette and rules for pouring tea.
Staging Charlotte Bronte’s gothic romance outdoors in a fractured English summer is a risky business; not only must the characters convey the tortured anxieties of forbidden love in the candle-lit shadows and attics of Thornfield Hall, they must compete with cackling seagulls, traffic sirens up Dyke Road and gusting seabreezes.
The "proof" of the title is plural. The brilliantly crafted play demonstrates almost limitless numbers; there is the mathematical proof which proves Catherine’s ability and the right to be her father’s daughter; there is proof of sibling affection, of passion inspired by discovery and of the instant connection which creates love.
Thoroughly Modern Millie is a thoroughly old-fashioned boy-meets-girl story.
