BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

BBC Proms LNOP photocredit BBC Jennifer Hawthorn 12.09.26 13
BBC Proms 2026 – The Last Night – BBC Singers, Symphony Chorus and Orchestra with Sakari Oramo
Almost 6,000 promenaders packed the hall for a Last Night doing two jobs at once: seeing off the 2026 season in customary style, and finding room for grief. More on...
BBC Proms LNOP photocredit BBC Jennifer Hawthorn 12.09.26 6
BBC Proms 2026- Last Night (from another Reviewer)
For several years The Last Night of the Proms has excited controversy, due to what might be considered the overt nationalism of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory....
BBC Proms Mahlers Ninth with the Mahler Academy Orchestra photocredit Chris Christodoulou 12.09.26 7
BBC Proms 2026 –  A ‘Period’ Mahler 9
A late start and a single work defined this penultimate concert of the season. Unlike the so-called ‘Gershwin’ Rhapsody in Blue advertised at a previous Prom, this was indeed Mahler’s...
BBC Proms Mahlers Ninth with the Mahler Academy Orchestra photocredit Chris Christodoulou 12.09.26 8
BBC Proms 2026 –  A ‘Period’ Mahler 9 (another view)
The world is awash with good, bad and indifferent performances, of Mahler Symphonies. Where scarcely a week goes by without another complete cycle being launched. In the concert hall, at...
Rachmaninov Bartok and Varese photocredit BBC Chris Christodoulou 4 1
BBC Proms 2026 – 1936 Revisited
This was a modest, even self-effacing event with which to celebrate the orchestra’s 90th birthday but room had to be found for the pop proffered later in the evening. Quite...
BBC Proms Rattle Conducts Schumann cr BBC Chris Christodoulou 13 1
BBC Proms 2026 – Rattle conducts Schumann
It’s 50 years since (now Sir) Simon Rattle first conducted at the Proms (though his first Royal Albert Hall appearance was a year later, in 1977). He has appeared almost...
John Wilson Conducts the Sinfonia of London Strings photocredit BBC Chris Christodoulou 5
BBC Proms 2026 – John Wilson Conducts English String Music
Earlier this season, John Wilson confirmed his orchestra’s special status with an extravagant realisation of Respighi’s Roman trilogy. Here, in the last of the year’s Sunday morning entertainments, a much-reduced...
BBC Proms Martha Argerich Plays Beethoven photocredit BBC Chris Christodoulou 05.09.26 12
BBC Proms 2026 – Martha Argerich Plays Beethoven…again
The ‘novelty’—to use Henry Wood’s historic term for unfamiliar fare—came first. The music of Louise Farrenc (née Jeanne-Louise Dumont; 1804–1875) was entirely absent from these concerts until 2024 when her...
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BBC Proms 2026 – Vaughan Williams Revisited
It is not just at the Proms that Vaughan Williams’s star is in the ascendant, whether or not you trace the phenomenon to the special impact of Andrew Manze’s landmark...
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BBC Proms 2026 – Berlin Philharmonic plays Beethoven and Scriabin
It’s a fairly unusual concert when a major work by Beethoven is by far the less maverick and more lyrical item, yet that was the case here with the Violin...
BBC PROMS Steve Reich at 90 Credit Chris Christodoulou 3
BBC Proms 2026 – Late Night Reich
Billed as a 90th-birthday celebration for Steve Reich, this Late Night Prom seemed in certain respects a missed opportunity. If the headline performance of Reich’s masterly Tehillim was the main event, the...
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BBC Proms 2026 – Elgar and Tchaikovsky from Berlin
Urban myth or not, it has been alleged that the BBC once turned down a proffered Proms visitation from the Bavarian State Orchestra under Kirill Petrenko, possibly on the grounds...
Rachmaninovs Third Piano Concerto photocredit BBC Chris Christodoulou 23
BBC Proms 2026 – A Czech Sandwich – Vítězslava Kaprálová, Rachmaninov & Janáček – BBC Symphony Orchestra with Jakub Hrůša 
As Bamberg Symphony Orchestra chief, Antonio Pappano’s successor at Covent Garden, and music director designate of the Czech Philharmonic, Jakub Hrůša cannot have much time for guest conducting these days....
Prom Berlioz Damnation of Faust Credit BBC Mark Allan 9
BBC Proms 2026 – Berlioz – La Damnation de Faust – Maîtrise de Radio France with Jakob Lehmann
Goethe’s Faust appealed to the 19th century psyche with its themes of the search for immortality, the nature of humankind, ageing, good, evil, love, damnation and redemption. The best-known vocal setting...
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BBC Proms 2026 – Mirga and Pat Kop do mostly Russian Music
A not-quite full house had braved unseasonable rain to hear two fiercely individualistic (and borderline unpronounceable) artists from the former Soviet bloc in masterpieces by peripatetic Russians, themselves loosely bound...