2024

Walton
Overture Portsmouth Point

Puccini
from Gianni Schicchi ‘O mio babbino caro’
from Madama Butterfly Humming Chorus
from Tosca ‘Vissi d’arte’ 

Carlos Simon
Hellfighters’ Blues – BBC co-commission: world premiere 

Fauré
Pavane  

Ives
The Yale–Princeton Football Game 

Coleridge-Taylor
Summer is Gone 

Grace Williams
Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes 

Saint-Saëns
from Piano  Concerto No 5 in F major, ‘Egyptian’ – second movement

Iain Farrington
Extra  Time – BBC commission: world premiere 

Mancini arr. Gavin Sutherland
The Pink  Panther 

Sir Stephen Hough
In His  Hands: Two Spirituals  

Ruperto Chapí
from Las hijas del Zebedeo – ‘Al pensar en el dueño de mis amores’ 

Trad/Henry Wood
Fantasia on British Sea Songs   

Arne arr. Sargent
Rule, Britannia! 

Elgar
Pomp and Circumstance March No 1    

Parry arr. Elgar
Jerusalem

arr. Britten
The National Anthem

Trad/Paul Campbell
Auld Lang Syne  

Angel Blue
soprano

Sir Stephen Hough
piano

BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo
conductor

And so, we come to the end of the 130^th season of the Proms. Sakari Oramo – for the sixth time since his first Last Night in 2014 – presided over the closing ceremony, something of a television institution, as well as, for regular prommers, the final party and the only concert in modern seasons that ape Henry Wood’s original programmes, with a lengthy potpourri of disparate pieces, tonight with none lasting more than 11 minutes.  After what felt like a more cohesive Last Night programme last year, starting with a romantic warhorse (Richard Strauss’ Don Juan), this year, especially the first half, seemed too bitty, not helped by lengthy gaps between pieces, latterly and most disrupting the ten minute stage change to bring the piano on for the 11-minute last piece of the first half.  I understand TV audiences had film insets to cover the gap, but in the hall, there was a distinct feeling that the audience was losing concentration. Following the second movement of Saint-Saëns’ Egyptian Piano Concerto (No 5), however brilliantly played, Sir Stephen Hough had to hurriedly return to the stage before applause petered out to give his prepared encore; but that proved an actual game changer.

That’s not to say the collection of pieces in the first half were not brilliantly played or sung. Walton’s Portsmouth Point got the evening off with effervescent aplomb and – after the placing of the chaplet around Sir Henry Wood’s bust by two prommers – Angel Blue made an early appearance with two Puccini gems from Gianni Schicchi and Tosca, separated by BBC Singers and Symphony Chorus, intoning gently in the Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly. The first new commission (of three) of the evening was a nod to America in Carlos Simon’s intriguingly entitled Hellfighters’ Blues, a virtuosic brass-led homage to James Reese Europe, bandleader of the Harlem Hellfighters who first brought jazz to France in 1918.

Nicely though contrastingly paired together, anniversary composers Fauré (death centenary) and Ives (150^th birth anniversary) were represented by the choral version of the Pavane and Yale-Princeton Football Game respectively, the one contemplative with an arcadian setting, the other, as Ives himself described it, ‘two minutes in sounds for two halfs [sic] within bounds’, a raucous assault on the ears, including the singers wielding kazoos. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Christina Rosetti setting of Summer is gone restored some decorum, before a very welcome first performance at the Proms, Grace Williams’ Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes, beguilingly orchestrated and involving.

The number of people, sans programme, who thought that marked the interval were encouraged to retake their seats during the too-long stage change, bringing the piano on.  Curiously (and unprecedentedly in modern times, I think) we heard only one movement of a concerto – Saint-Saëns’ Egyptian Piano Concerto, his fifth and last. Although the multi-sectional movement does stand alone, and it was infectiously played by Sir Stephen Hough, accompanied again by Sakari Oramo (they recorded all Saint-Saëns concertante works together for Hyperion in 2001, with the CBSO), it seemed just as odd a choice on the night as on paper, had not Hough seized the gauntlet and produced one of the most scintillating encores of the season, his own high-octane variations, in various styles – Beethoven and Liszt included – of the Sherman brothers’ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins (with just a touch of Chim Chim Chree), a tribute to the Sherman brothers (Radio 3 suggested it was specifically in memory of composer Robert M Sherman who died in May).  Suddenly this Last Night of the Proms was transformed.

More high-octane musical fun opened the second half, with Iain Farrington’s Extra Time a brilliant mash-up of BBC sports theme tunes, starting with Match of the Day and including Grandstand, Horse of the Year Show, Test Match Special and Wimbledon (here the extreme right and left members of the BBC Symphony Chorus producing tennis rackets and aped volleys between them across the Hall). As it all came to an Ivesian musical car crash, Farrington himself, donned in yellow T-shirt and with yellow card, entered at the back and tried to control the brass. Only Oramo showing a red card brought the work to a close.  Perfect Last Night fare, brilliantly done.

The interval had allowed a lounge bar combo of percussion to be set up stage right in front of the first violins for the next item. In one of the very rare cases where a piece is repeated from earlier in the season, there was a reprise, led by saxophonist Martin Robertson (curiously unnamed in the programme) and, back at the piano, Hough, of Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther, with orchestral flutes all wearing dark specs to boot… This lead to the final commission, from Hough himself, accompanying Angel in the hushed, still, poignant heart of the evening: his In His Hands – bringing together two spirituals, He’s got the whole world in his hands and Swing low, sweet chariot was magical, even if the drum-kit, percussion, stands and piano had to be removed after it.

Blue returned (in red) for another highlight, perhaps the first zarzuela at a Last Night, reviving Ruperto Chapi’s witty Al pensar en el dueño de mis amores (‘When I think of the man who owns my heart’) from Las hijas del Zebedeo (Zebedee’s Daughters), where her love for her lover seemed very much to be spread around the side stalls and arena prommers, as she dispensed a bunch of roses one by one to various audience members…

And we were into the last straight of the Last Night, with the now-usual amended version of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs to include some non-shanties from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. However nicely done, isn’t there a Northern Irish or Welsh shanty that would fit much better than Londonderry Air (which doesn’t even mention the sea) and Wales (Ar lan y môr, although citing the sea in most lines, is definitely not a shanty)? Oramo managed Jack the Lad masterfully, but honours go to leader Stephen Bryant and flautist Daniel Pailthorpe who brilliantly became unmoored from the tune in their solos to witty effect (not that most of the audience would have noticed as they attempted to clap along).  The whistling in See the conqur’ing hero comes in the Arena was stunningly good. 

Angel Blue – now in blue, with what looked like a jester’s cap made from a Union Jack – led us in Rule, Britannia! and Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory followed in time-honoured fashion. Oramo’s speech began with family memories of his grandfather’s sport and music shop and the importance of both forms of activity (sharing pursuit of excellence, with music perhaps not as competitive as sport) for public good. It wasn’t a barnstorming speech – we’d had two earlier ‘Last Night’ speeches from Sir Mark Elder and Martyn Brabbins (at the Sir Andrew Davis memorial Prom) – but it seemed in keeping with the evening. The audience, with many fewer flags draped from the boxes and logia and with a better-behaved arena than usual, seemed more intent on listening to the music this year. Which hopefully is a good sign.

Oramo invited all of us to be with him and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at next year’s First Night – Friday 18 July 2025 – for hopefully another record-breaking season. Although this was David Pickard’s last season, his nine-year custodianship, even though interrupted by Covid has seen the Proms grow both geographically and in audience numbers.  Sam Jackson was on the radio on Saturday morning looking to the future – with 250^th anniversary of American Independence in 2026 and the 100^th anniversary of the BBC taking over the Proms in 2027 – particularly cited as things to look forward to. I can’t wait.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 1 in E flat major, K16

Louise Farrenc
Symphony No. 3 in G minor

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Antonello Manacorda
conductor

Mozart’s First Symphony was composed in London in 1764 during a 16-month European tour with his father and sister. As the work of an eight-year-old it’s astonishingly mature, its three-movement scheme bearing the influence of J. C. Bach. The OAE (strings with pairs of oboes and horns) gave a zesty account of the opening movement, with Antonello Manacorda underlining all its dynamic and timbral variety. Warmth of tone, horns especially mellow here, coloured the slow movement, its remarkable pathos drawing out refinement and sensitivity, before earlier joie de vivre concluded the work.

The coupling of Mozart with the Third Symphony (1847) of Parisian-born child prodigy Louise Farrenc made for an interesting juxtaposition. Known for being the only woman to hold a teaching chair at the Paris Conservatoire during the nineteenth-century, her three symphonies are steadily gaining recognition which some believe deserve a place alongside those of Schumann. The Third inhabits a romantic sensibility within a classical mould, its restlessness owing much to Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Certainly, Manacorda stressed the first movement’s rhythmic impetus, its string-led nervous energy countered by relaxed woodwind contributions, bringing bonhomie within nicely shaped phrases. The Mozartian elegance of the Adagio, periodically gave way to darker episodes (timpani not holding back), with Farrenc’s individuality explicit. Thereafter a playful Scherzo showcased infectious string playing, gambolling flutes and a central Trio spotlighting horns, woodwind and pizzicatos – all stylishly rendered, as was the unrest turbulence of the finale.

But the unrest of Farrenc was nothing to that of the Beethoven. This was an ‘Eroica’ with bells on, not least for its super charged timpani-playing and much hyper direction from the podium. Manacorda seemed determined to fill the space around him and lived every phrase, every dynamic, every detail was there in his adrenaline-filled gestures. Whether conductor, gymnast or entertainer, his energy and inspiration could not be denied, and the players responded to this force of nature with a sustained vigour that ensured the first movement enjoyed a breathless and overriding sweep. Gravitas and subtlety of expression dominated the ‘Funeral March’ where cumulative tensions, within a broadly conceived tempo, were ideally shaped, its dignity and drama uppermost. A nimble Scherzo, with capering horns impressing in the Trio, led straight into a characterful Finale and propelled with crispness of articulation, vivid colouration (rasping horns) and well-judged tempos. Altogether, a life-enhancing close to the penultimate concert of the season.

Grażyna Bacewicz
Overture

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D major

Sergey Prokofiev
Romeo and Juliet

Nemanja Radulović
violin

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Jaime Martín
conductor

Sergey Prokofiev hoped his musical retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet would have ‘immediate appeal yet sound like nothing written before’. Even now, his score delivers on both fronts, showing the composer’s gift for melody and his ability to reconcile his music’s hard edge with a soft, romantic core. Jaime Martín conducts dramatic highlights from Prokofiev’s ballet score after charismatic Franco-Serbian soloist Nemanja Radulović sets off fireworks in the ultimate Romantic violin concerto. And, to begin, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales unleashes the strident energies of Grażyna Bacewicz’s thrilling Overture, which quotes the famous ‘V for Victory’ motif from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

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Maurice Ravel
Miroirs No. 2 ‘Oiseaux tristes’; No. 3 ‘Un barque sur l’oceán’; No. 4 ‘Alborada del gracioso

Franz Liszt
Years of Pilgrimage, Second Year: Italy

Seong-Jin Cho
piano

South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, who dazzled Proms audiences earlier this season with Mozart’s ‘Jeunehomme’ Piano concerto, gives a recital of solo piano works by Ravel and Liszt.

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Florence + The Machine
Lungs

Florence + The Machine
Jules Buckley Orchestra
Jules Buckley
conductor

‘As grand and mysterious as the Big Bang itself’ concluded Pitchfork when Florence Welch – aka Florence + The Machine – released her debut album 15 years ago, a year after attracting the attention of BBC Music Introducing. The BRIT Award-winning Lungs immediately announced Florence as an artist of huge courage, theatricality and vocal abilities – earning her a place on BBC Radio 1’s prestigious ‘Sound of …’ list. For her Proms debut, she joins Jules Buckley and his Orchestra for a celebration of Lungs, and of the compelling poetry and music of this singular artist in whom the darkly gothic meets all that glistens.

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Britten
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – opera in three Acts to a libretto by the composer & Peter Pears, adapted from the Shakespeare play [sung in English, with English surtitles]

Iestyn Davies
Oberon

Lucy Crowe
Tytania

Daniel Vening
Bottom

Caspar Singh
Lysander

James Newby
Demetrius

Stephanie Wake-Edwards
Hermia

Camilla Harris
Helena

Nicholas Crawley
Theseus

Christine Rice
Hippolyta

John Savournin
Quince

Frazer Scott
Snug

James Way
Flute

Geoffrey Dolton
Starveling

Adam Sullivan
Snout

Jerone Marsh-Reid
Puck

Garsington Opera Youth Compamy

Philharmonia Orchestra
Douglas Boyd
conductor

Rebecca Meltzer
Director, based on the 2024 Garsington Opera production

Every time opera comes to the Proms in a semi-staging of a summer production, doubts arise about how it will all work, mainly to do with singers being heard and seen from much greater distances, and nearly every time those doubts are confounded. And magically so in Garsington’s visit to the Proms, bringing its new production of the Britten-Pears reimagining of a play that has cast its spell over many an artist and composer over the past four centuries.

To be sure, the Albert Hall delivered an imposing forest of experience, but Rebecca Meltzer’s semi-staging worked efficiently, particularly in the case of the Garsington Opera Youth Company’s phalanx of black-clad, eccentric fairies (costumes by Netia Jones, who directed the full staging), who mysteriously appeared then vanished, and sang with other-worldly confidence. The social and supernatural hierarchies were neatly delineated, and the only seriously head-scratching element of the basic set was a giant gyroscope. Otherwise there was Tytania’s couch, and, for the mechanicals’ play, a trampoline stage, which was a delight. The long screen at the back of the stage gave us some projections of trees, sky and greenery, leavening the generally dark staging.

Garsington fielded a medium-sized Philharmonia Orchestra (with three double basses), and from the moment those ectoplasmic glissandos materialise, you are amazed by how Britten’s music flatters and gets inside Shakespeare’s words. All those quotes from the play that have become integral to everyday expression gather another layer of meaning – just think of Britten’s superbly ‘right’ setting of ‘Ill met by moonlight’ for our first encounter with Oberon and Tytania. The Philharmonia’s assumption of the various musical identities was peerless, and Douglas Boyd, Garsington’s Artistic Director, was a sure-footed guide through the sexual intricacies, high comedy and deft characterisation of Britten’s score.

The various conjunctions of the four lovers were made admirably clear, and the roles were lovingly performed. Caspar Singh’s lyrical tenor was perfect for his ardent Lysander. James Newby’s macho, slightly baffled Demetrius was a good fit for his attractive, easy baritone. As Hermia, Stephanie Wake-Edwards added some impressive fury to her lovely mezzo for her Act Two set-to with Camilla Harris’s impetuous Helena, whose gleaming soprano expressed a formidable opponent. The lovers’ fight suddenly built up quite a head of steam and was a highlight of the evening, as was their radiant Act Three reunion.

Richard Burkhard had had to withdraw and Bottom was sung by the young bass Daniel Vening, who had been covering the role at Garsington, and he seized the day with an assured, funny and finely sung performance. John Savournin was even funnier as a bossy, boring Peter Quince, dancing a fine bergomask, and despite protests James Way’s sweet-voiced Flute/Thisbe was a triumph of transvestitism. Speculation was rife as to which current media diva he was channelling. Frazer Scott as Snug/Lion, Geoffrey Dolton as Starveling/Moonshine and Adam Sullivan as Snout/Wall played the Pyramus and Thisbe play shamelessly for laughs. Nicholas Crawley played Theseus as a drunk, which probably made sense in the full staging, and Christine Rice’s Hippolyta was luxuriously cast and sung.s

As king and queen of the fairy band, Iestyn Davies had a sinister self-possession as Oberon, with an equally steely glint to his exceptional voice, and Lucy Crowe’s sumptuous, hall-filling and agile coloratura gave us a commanding Tytania. Jerone Marsh-Reid, as a young-man Puck in a lime-green suit, spoke clearly and was very athletic.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’ (arr. Ralph Greaves)

Arnold Schoenberg
Violin Concerto, Op.36

Dmitry Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op.47

Patricia Kopatchinskaja
violin

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Tarmo Peltokoski
conductor

Are Finnish conductors getting younger? At just 24 Tarmo Peltokoski has already built an impressive CV since graduating from Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. Coaching from Sakari Oramo, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Esa-Pekka Salonen, to name just a few of his teachers, has given Peltokoski a solid technique, much in evidence here in three radically different works from the 1930s. His ability to communicate is no less impressive, evident in the opening strains of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’, its arrangement by Ralph Greaves based on music from the composer’s opera Sir John in Love, in this well-balanced and polished account, flute and harp nicely pointed with strings glowing and confiding, the whole played with warmth and affection.

A stylistic volte face followed with Schoenberg’s uncompromisingly twelve-tone Violin Concerto (1936), its angularities and fearsome challenges dispatched with
characterful expression by Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Her commitment to the work was abundantly clear in a revealing account that outlined its quick-change sequence of shifting panoramas, Schoenberg’s restless imagination caught to perfection. That she had the measure of the work was apparent in flawless intonation and her ability to bring cohesion to the work’s labyrinthine complexities and volatile moods, her playing assertive, then sweetly lyrical and tender, all within the blink of an eye, the first-movement a cadenza a garland of passionate declarations and whispered asides. The central Andante grazioso brought intimacy and a lightness of touch, but it was in the Finale where she sashayed seamlessly through its martial and puckish landscape, relishing angst and playfulness. She almost transformed the second cadenza into a cabaret act with
stomping feet, dancing gestures and a cheeky grin. In all, a performance of stunning virtuosity, the orchestra sensitive collaborators and Peltokoski assured and fastidious. Two comic encores followed, including a ragtime parody by Giya Kancheli, both renditions wonderfully communicative.

After the interval Peltokoski fashioned a distinctive account of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, its emotional journey marked periodically by barely audible strings,gripping in its intensity, and heightening surrounding sullenness and malevolence. The Allegretto brought nose-thumbing and a superbly crafted Trio, while the Largo’s elegy could barely have sounded more desolate, flute, harp and strings in hushed communion with one another. Notwithstanding a rhythmic disagreement within the cellos near the end this was a hauntingly beautiful lament. The Finale erupted from silence, Peltokoski galvanising a propulsive, feverish traversal, allowing brass and percussion to raise the temperature (timpani resolutely defiant) and the obstinate string-writing evoking a battering-ram concluded a memorable performance.

Doreen Carwithen
The Men of Sherwood Forest – overture
arr. P. Lane

Elizabeth Kelly
Lace Machine
BBC commission: world premiere

Sergey Rachmaninov
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

Erich Wolfgang Korngold
The Adventures of Robin Hood
suite

Jean Sibelius
Symphony No 3 in C major

Clare Hammond
piano

BBC Concert Orchestra
Anna-Maria Helsing
conductor

There’s a strong local feel to the first visit by the Proms to one of the country’s finest acoustics, the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. Anna-Maria Helsing leads the BBC Concert Orchestra in music that celebrates the derring-do of local hero Robin Hood, as imagined in film scores by both Erich Korngold and Doreen Carwithen. Nottingham native Clare Hammond takes on Rachmaninov’s devilish Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and we hear a brand-new work by composer Elizabeth Kelly, Head of the University of Nottingham’s Music Department. All that is rounded off by a symphony of ecological awakening from Helsing’s Finnish compatriot Jean Sibelius.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Nutcracker Suite
arr. Ellington & Strayhorn, arr. and adapted J. Tyzik

Stewart Goodyear
Callaloo – Caribbean Suite for piano and orchestra

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, ‘Pathétique’

Stewart Goodyear
piano

Chineke! Orchestra
Andrew Grams
conductor

Britain’s only orchestra of Black and ethnically diverse musicians returns to the Proms with music that celebrates its own heritage as well as universal dreams and aspirations. Stewart Goodyear is the soloist in his own vibrant celebration of Caribbean music, Callaloo, while Duke Ellington’s jazzed-up take on Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker turns waltz into swing and Sugar Plum into heady rum. Conductor Andrew Grams ends with the most emotionally intense and musically robust symphony Tchaikovsky ever wrote, his heartbreakingly autobiographical ‘Pathétique’.

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Hubert Parry
Coronation Anthem ‘I Was Glad’

Charles Villiers Stanford
Three Motets, Op. 38

Henry Balfour Gardiner
Evening Hymn

William Henry Harris
Faire is the heaven

John Ireland
Greater love hath no man

Charles Villiers Stanford
Eight Partsongs, Op. 127 – ‘The Guest’
Eight Partsongs, Op. 127 – ‘When Mary thro’ the garden went’
Eight Partsongs, Op. 127 – ‘To a Tree’

Edward Elgar
Give unto the Lord

The Sixteen

Simon Johnson
organ

Harry Christophers
conductor

One of Britain’s best-loved choirs, The Sixteen – under Harry Christophers – returns to the Proms on Choral Day for some of the most serene and spiritual choral works written in England during the Victorian period – music in line with this ensemble’s singular combination of style and beauty, blend and expression.

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