BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Romeo & Juliet
Since Prokofiev never left a final, definitive performing version of his opera “War and Peace”, there is some uncertainty as to whether, ultimately, this overture was to be included. In...
A Little Birthday Music
Happy Birthday Ma’am!Four years ago the Queen came to the Proms during her Golden Jubilee celebrations and met some front-row Prommers. This year, in honour of her 80th-birthday, she was...
Così fan tutte
There is a moment towards the end of Jane Austen’s last novel, “Persuasion” (1815), where the heroine Anne Elliott is in debate with a relatively minor character, Captain Harvill, about...
To Compose Without the Least Knowledge of Music
The Royal Albert Hall is an odd venue for small-group music, not so much ‘chamber’ as ‘echo chamber’, and with the sun setting on a balmy Hyde Park, it seemed...
Hallé
In his tenure thus far, Mark Elder (Music Director since 2000) has been patiently building the Hallé Orchestra (or Hallé as seems to be its preferred, singular billing) into a...
Christoph Eschenbach & Paris Orchestra Soloists
The first Proms Chamber Music of the season, this lunchtime programme following-on from the Paris Orchestra’s “Siegfried” the previous evening, which Christoph Eschenbach conducted.This enterprising recital was despatched, for the...
Siegfried
The annual presentation at the Proms of the complete 'Ring', continued with this distinguished performance of what was the original starting-point, dramatically speaking, of the whole cycle.Less apparently 'starry' than...
Mozart the Dramatist
For the first Saturday of the 2006 Proms season the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Sir Roger Norrington gave a whistle-stop tour through Mozart’s operatic canon picking out well- and lesser-known...
London Mozart Players
In the beginning was darkness … and silence. But, gently, there became audible little string phrases, like a growing dawn chorus of Vivaldian birds. By the time the stage lights...
The First Night Of The Proms
The intention to mark Mozart's 250th-anniversary and Shostakovich's centenary throughout this year's Proms season was made explicit in this opening concert. Whether or not some of Mozart's most popular operatic...
The Last Night
This farewell to the 111th season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts also bade farewell to two members of the BBCSO. It was also a welcome to Paul Daniel conducting his...
From the Wreckage
Flash floods in West London kept audience numbers down for this vaguely watery Prom, a welcome transfer from the Helsinki Festival. Esa-Pekka Salonen has re-emerged recently as a composer but...
Vienna Philharmonic – 2
From Jascha Horenstein to Günter Wand, the Proms has witnessed some astonishing revivifications of Bruckner’s Eighth, “the biggest and grandest of 19th-century symphonies” as Andrew Huth’s programme note insisted.Against a...
Vienna Philharmonic – 1
The Vienna Philharmonic is a wonderful ambassador for its musical heritage – and here Haydn and Berg were treated as absolute equals and played with total identification and commitment.How natural...
Tippett, Horne & Carter
Late-night Proms can vary as much in content as they do in attendance – the present occasion as musically diverse as it was sparsely peopled. Yet the alternation, then combination...