BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Nobuyuki Tsujii (piano) and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Domingo Hindoyan. Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou
Prom 70: The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – Honeggar, Rachmaninov, Ortiz and Bernstein
Those wanting an adrenalin fix had no reason to look any further than this penultimate Prom that seemed to encompass ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue’.  Arthur...
Photo: BBC/ Andy Paradise
Prom 66: Rufus Wainwright
Few festivals can compete with the range of music presented at the Proms since founder-conductor Henry Wood took up the reins in 1895.  At the season’s original Queen’s Hall venue,...
Photo: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
Prom 65: BBCSO/Bychkov – Bruckner 8
Coming on the composer's 199th-birthday (what bliss 2024 will surely be for Brucknerians) the Eighth had this Prom all to itself. Accordingly, Semyon Bychkov gave an unhurried survey of it...
Photo: BBC/ Andy Paradise
Prom 64: Berlioz’s Les Troyens
Having performed two other of Berlioz's epic stage-works at the Proms in recent years with its founder Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique now turned to the...
Stravinsky The Rite of Spring (Performed from memory). Photo: BBC/Andy Paradise
Prom 62: The Rite by Heart
From the primeval darkness an eerie, reedy sound grows and oscillates. The lights gradually reveal a white-floored Royal Albert Hall stage littered with some white boxes, on one of which...
Aaron Azunda Akugbo (trumpet) and the Chineke! Orchestra. Photo: BBC/ Mark Allen
Prom 61: Chineke! Orchestra/Anthony Parnther perform Valerie Coleman, Coleridge-Taylor, Haydn, Coleridge Perkinson and Beethoven
At least three proms’ premieres (though one was curiously not indicated as such in the programme) and two cornerstone pieces of the classical repertoire staples: there was so much to...
Photo: Andy Paradise
Prom 60: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Berlin has so many ensembles that the identity of this one was not immediately apparent (to me at least). The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin is in fact the contemporary manifestation of the...
Prom 59: Paavo Järvi, Augustin Hadelich & Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & Dvořák
Welcome 'old-fashioned' programming – overture, concerto, symphony. Super-league conductor. A-class Central-European orchestra. Poet-virtuoso soloist. Sell-out house, five-thousand plus, cheering, roaring and stamping. To open, Beethoven's Handelian late concert overture The...
The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle perform Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 9. Photo: BBC/ Mark Allan
Prom 56: LSO/Rattle Mahler 9
Not the first concert to be marketed as Sir Simon’s farewell to the LSO (nor, one suspects, quite the last) but a memorable occasion all the same, given before a...
Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Gershwin's Piano Concerto. Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou
Prom 55: The Boston Symphony Orchestra 2/2 – Andris Nelsons/Jean-Yves Thibaudet – Carlos Simon, Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel
Come dancing might well have been the watchword of this second Prom given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under their Music Director, Andris Nelsons. I came away feeling much more...
Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou
Prom 52: The Boston Symphony Orchestra 1 – Andris Nelsons conducts Adolphe, Strauss and Prokofiev
When orchestras go on their travels, the programmes they bring with them from distant shores are often a reflection of what they have been recently playing or recording, or what...
Prom 51: Weir, Schumann and Elgar with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Photo: BBC/Andy Paradise
Prom 51: Weir, Schumann and Elgar with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
Outside the Royal Albert Hall the leaves may have already been on the turn, but inside there was a vernal glow to a spring-themed programme that marked the third collaboration...
Handel’s Samson, at the Royal Albert Hall. Photo: BBC/ Sisi Burn
Prom 50: Handel’s Samson
The Academy of Ancient Music was swelled in number for Handel's oratorio Samson (premiered 1743) to fill out the stage of the Royal Albert Hall and its vast space with music, but...
Prom 49: Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri
This was the first complete outing for Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri (1843) at the Proms (previously only one aria from it was performed in 1909) but Sir Simon Rattle has...
Gemma New and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou
Prom 44: Stravinsky’s The Firebird
After their exertions the previous evening in Kurtág’s Endgame the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra were in more familiar territory last night as Gemma New made her Proms debut in a...
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