CityLife

Pop to the Proms

AUTHORATIVE: Wilson

IT'S Hallé Proms time again - and this year's programmes are definitely on the classical-pop side.

There are only five of them and - apart from the 'Last Night', which is on Sunday July 26 - they're on the next four Saturdays.

John Wilson opens the account on Saturday with a mixed bag of Romantic pieces and the very substantial bonus of Leon McCawley, as piano soloist, in Rachmaninov's Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini.

Conductor Wilson has a new CD out with the Hallé and has made his mark as an authoritative director of 'lighter' music.

Born in Tyneside, in 1972, he studied composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music. He graduated in 1995, winning all the major conducting prizes and the Tagore Gold Medal for the most outstanding student. This year he was nominated for the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society awards.

He arranged and conducted the music for Kevin Spacey's film Beyond The Sea (the bio-pic of singer Bobby Darin, which was nominated for a 2006 Grammy) and has a close working relationship with Paul McCartney, orchestrating and conducting several of his compositions with the London Symphony Orchestra.

He has also spent much time restoring classic film scores, and is reconstructing lost orchestrations of MGM's major musicals, including High Society, Singin' In The Rain and An American In Paris.

On Friday members of the Royal Northern College of Music will perform the notorious steam-train impression by Honegger, Pacific 231, as the opener for the RNCM Symphony Orchestra's summer concert in the Bridgewater Hall, under conductor Mark Shanahan.

It's followed by Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (soloist Daniel Browell) and then Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony.