BBC Four is also broadcasting many of the BBC Proms from the Royal Albert Hall. The Proms are a Brit institution where die-hard 'promenaders' queue for hours to stand in the downstairs arena - the front rows often shouting clever remarks in unison at interval (and info about their charity collection) to those in the gallery up in the gods. Viva dutifully queued but wasn't able to get into Mahler's massive 8th Symphony of massed choirs on the First Night (it's the composer's 150th birthday). Instead you can see some great jazz improv footage the same evening (HERE in 3 parts- ONE, TWO, THREE) from the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V & A-another amazing free entrance museum).


More photos HERE of the 1:1 Small Spaces

Conductor Donald Runnicles, now of the BBC Scottish Symphony (after years of this Edinburgh native having to defect and prove his talent overseas) showed what a loss he was to America and blessing for Scotland in Mahler's 3rd Symphony. This has arguably music's most soul-searching final movements as those who are blessed to see stand proudly, dignified: cascading tears hidden within hearts.

The week prior, former English National Opera maestro Sir Mark Elder conducted the Australian Youth Orchestra claiming he'd be only to happy to hire at least 95% of the soloists to play in the Halle Orch. While someone like Valery Gergiev (he conducted the World Peace Orch last night in more Mahler birthday celebrations) may have demanded a touch more frost bite in Shostakovich's 10th Symphony from these sunny dispositioned Ozzie players (aged between 16-25), theirs was undeniably a world-class performance by any standards, cherishing and brandishing every note of Shostakovich's searing writing for clarinets and bassoons, the siren screeching piccoli, all in Tchaikovsky orchestrating lineage (with acknowledged debt to Mahler). Plaintive, robust and reborn. The AYO opened with Oz composer Brett Dean proceeded by more than marvelous mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova (touring with the orchestra) in excerpts from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn:

An angel appeared and tried to turn me aside
Oh no! I would not let that happen
I come from God and will return to God
Beloved God will grant me light
he shall light my way to the life of eternal blessedness

And the encore of Percy Grainger's arrangement of the Londonderry Air (Danny Boy) reduced this music-lover to tears.
Proms performances are available to watch on BBC iPlayer (though not 'officially' available to those in the United States)

Another unmissable performance was tenor Placido Domingo singing the baritone role of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra (in a semi-staged performance of the recent Royal Opera House Covent Garden production). The curtain calls can be seen HERE and hopefully a DVD will be made of the BBC 2 broadcast from the Royal Opera House. Once or twice, some may have preferred Antonio Pappano's conducting to be a touch more vehement but that would really only be personal taste and his interpretation easily will withstand the annals of history. And though some might have tiny qualms about the tenore of Domingo's baritone, in a way it mimics the longing for calm sea and prosperous voyage of Verdi's score most obviously heard in Amelia's famous aria. Boccanegra the pirate who become the people's democratic Doge and probably in his darkest moments stared out of the Palace window consoled by those specs of white sails on the sea always chastened by the scent of his past while the sewage wafted ripe from the harbor docks. Domingo is now 70 years old. What an achievement to behold.

And if all that wasn't enough there was an 80th birthday tribute to acknowledged musicals genius Stephen Sondheim. An unforgettable Sweeney Todd from opera singer Bryn Terfel (he even cajouled to join the dance in Everybody Ought to have a Maid), and an equally unforgettable rendition of Send in the Clowns from doyenne Dame Judi Dench.

Catching the final performance of Eugene O'Neill's first published full-length Pulitzer Prize (the 1st of many) winning play Beyond the Horizon (1920) was well worth it. Directed by Laurie Sansom (transferring from the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton), it played in repertory at the Royal National Theatre's smaller Cottesloe space with Tennessee Williams' Spring Storm (1937). On a Connecticut family farm, the educated, bookish Robert (Michael Malarkey) looks out into the distant hills dreaming of travel and escape.

The conductor Donald Runnicles recounted the story of a meeting between Richard Strauss and Mahler after composing the 3rd Symphony. They went hiking together in the mountains. Mahler stopped and said, "You don't need to look at those mountains, I've composed it." It's the more gregarious brother Andy (Michael Thomson) who goes to sea in Eugene O'Neill's play. There's a naive, haunting, simple universality about this post WWI play. If one compares it to what was blazing concurrently in Russian avant-garde theater then it seems pale. But compared to the American and British theater of the time it's as if Ibsen's characters have been stripped bare of their ostentatious socio/political utterances revealing only the burning desires beneath-Maeterlinck crossed with Strindberg. In all honesty actress Liz White probably made a better Heavenly Critchfield (a precursor to Blanche Dubois) in the Tennessee Williams than revealing the raw nerves of Ruth in Beyond the Horizon, a girl caught between two loves. But to think that this was a regional theater production gives credence to the oft spoke idea that Britain has the greatest pool of actors in the world.

Outside the RNT free events have been taking place the last month or so- some video HERE of the Gandinis juggling show Smashed. And on BBC News 24's Meet the Author, former escort girl Catherine Arnold reveals some of fascinating facts in her latest book and what happened in centuries gone by on the Southbank i.e. that the Bishop of Westminster was essentially a pimp with his "geese".

Unlike NYC, most outdoor summer film events in London have a somewhat hefty ticket price. Instead of the winter ice rink, Somerset House (in the Strand) have a pretty good programme this year with talks or shorts before each screening.

And some more photos HERE of the new show of French post-WWII art at Timothy Taylor, The Tightrope Walker curated with great insight by Emma Dexter and Oscar Humphries and with not often seen work by Hans Hartung's wife Anna-Eva Bergman and furniture designer Charlotte Perriand.












Jean Dubuffet's L'Effraye (1951)

Meanwhile, Brits in New York:

* Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson's harrowing doco Mugabe and the White African (First Run Features at Cinema Village)
* Sony Pictures Classics have re-released a new print of Sally Potter's Orlando (based on the 1928 Virginia Woolf novel) co-inciding with MoMA's recent retrospective.
* MoMA also have on the 3rd Floor London Transport posters,1920s-1940s or visit the London Transport Museum itself just off the Covent Garden piazza.
* While the Yale Center for British Art has Art for All: British Posters for Transport (until Aug 15)
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The Christian Marclay Festival continues at the Whitney

The must-see Brion Gysin: Dream Machine continues at the New Museum. In his notes for a 1971 album of Moroccan music released by the Rolling Stones, Gysin wrote: “Magic calls itself The Other Method for controlling matter and knowing space.”

And finally, curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Franklin Evans, the last week of Lush Life (inspired by Richard Price's 2008 novel about where the truth lies) takes over 9 galleries (most on the Lower East Side each referencing a chapter in Price's book). Really disappointed Viva's missing those shows - it must be on the short list for best NYC curatorial project of the year.

And beware but the American Embassy in London has been flooded with calls about an internet dating scam.

"He must hasten to this wound- incurable as he himself - and to this solitude where he will find the force, the audacity and the agility required by his art."

Jean Genet, Le Funambule (The Tightrope Walker)