BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

National Youth Orchestra
The National Youth Orchestra’s annual visit to the Proms is always a significant event. This year it was Sir Roger Norrington’s turn to bring his individuality to bear.Norrington has for...
Theseus Game
The concert’s theme was ‘innovation’. Innovation suggests new and different. Strange sounds may commit an assault upon the ears. Yet, once presented, the innovation may be repeated and copied so...
The Pines of Rome
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s association with Tadaaki Otaka, its Conductor Laureate, goes back nearly twenty years. Prom 29 proved an experience to cherish.Despite its eclectically various composers, the...
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
One of the most-welcome aspects of the Proms season is the opportunity to hear orchestras from around the world, not just high-profile ensembles from the main capitals. To my knowledge,...
Antarctic Symphony
Two symphonies with extra-musical connotations and a source in plainsong – the ostensible ‘theme’ of this Prom, maybe. What Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Antarctic Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique proved...
Staatskapelle Dresden 1
Staatskapelle Dresden is one of the oldest orchestras having been founded in 1548. With Bernard Haitink, 75 this year, and Dresden’s chief conductor since 2002, the combination of Mozart and...
Freiburg Baroque
This late-night Prom, performed with athletic aestheticism and very tight ensemble, included music by two Bohemian composers: Jan Dismas Zelenka (whose sacred choral music, if the examples I’ve heard are...
BBC Phil Vengerov
On the face of it an enticing programme, although it turned out an uneven and, at times, unsatisfactory concert.Szymanowski’s Concert Overture was one of the first works to draw the...
Water Concerto
Composer/conductors are hardly uncommon these days – and, on the basis of this Prom, Tan Dun's conducting is one of executive rather than interpretative leaning. A composer who first made...
Chamber Music No.3
Dvořák the songwriter was celebrated in this lunchtime Chamber Prom at the V & A. A selection of his Moravian Duets, folk-based ditties here sung in a decidedly old (and...
The Veil of the Temple
Sir John Tavener's seven-hour vigil was first performed in July 2003 at the Temple Church in London. This Prom performance was the first one of the so-called 'concert version'. It...
War Requiem
This concert started with the world première of a recently found piece for solo organ that Benjamin Britten wrote in 1940 when he was in America. He left the piece...
Out Here To Swing!
Back after Wynton Marsalis brought it to Kensington for its Proms debut two years ago, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra returned in a blaze of swing for this late-night Prom.These...
BRSO 2
The great anticipation for this second Bavarian Radio Prom from Mariss Jansons, with his Latvian compatriot Gidon Kremer, was for once fully justified. This was a memorable concert, made even...
BRSO 1
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra responded unfailingly to all the demands of its new Chief Conductor. One senses mutual admiration. Yet for all the moulded phrasing, sparkling details, exuberance, and...
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