BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 66 – Stunning Shostakovich
It is one of those facts of life that so busy is the Proms schedule that not all the regional orchestras can fit in every year. Thus the Hallé were...
Prom 65 – Prom
After an apposite pairing of Pintscher and Bruckner in Prom 57, Jukka-Pekka Saraste returned with an unlikely programme – linked, perhaps, by the tendency to hold emotion in check through...
Prom 64 – Much (Viennese Vocal) Ado About Nothing
A curiosity on paper perhaps not surprisingly turned out to be a curiosity in concert. Admittedly one in which the packed hall screamed and shouted for more and, even after...
Prom 63 – War and Peace
Originally conceived in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the complicated performance history of War and Peace makes it one of the archetypal problem pieces...
Prom 62 – The Clerks’ Group
This was an intriguingly devised concert. The first performance of Robert Saxton’s Five Motets occurred between the ’Credo’ and ’Sanctus’ of Josquin’s Mass, and the motets themselves were interspersed by...
Proms 60 & 61 – BBCNOW British, French and Belgian
The final Composer Portrait of this year’s Proms featured Michael Berkeley introducing music by himself and his father Lennox, whose centenary falls this year.Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina is a most attractive...
Prom 59 – Nessun Dorma (Insomnia)
Insomnia is not the music for an imaginary Hitchcock movie. Nor is real insomnia a pleasant experience – as a paid up member of Insomniacs Anonymous I speak from bitter...
Prom 58 – Purcell the Perfect
If Prom 51 had shown the danger of multiple-work late-night Proms over-running, Prom 58, with just Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, proved that there are certain works that not only fit...
Prom 57 – En Sourdine
The portrait of Matthias Pintscher introduced a self-assured if not overly-revealing composer, writes Colin Anderson, one whose favourite instrument is apparently the orchestra. Of the music played, Figura V/Assonanza (for...
Proms Chamber Music No.7 (1 September)
A nicely-balanced recital from Steven Isserlis and Kirill Gerstein – the latter’s buoyant and perceptive pianism indicative of a major new talent. Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata is often referred to in...
Prom 56 – Berlin Diary
For his second Prom with the now Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle again chose to enclose a contemporary piece within two acknowledged classics. This time, those classics went back to...
Prom 55 – Berlin Rite
In what was always going to be one of the musical events of 2003, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic presented a typically astute programme, one that also managed...
Prom 54 – Mariss, Mendelssohn & Mahler
After a breathtaking Tchaikovsky Fourth the previous evening, expectations were running high. The biggest block-busting orchestral weekend of the Proms this season (the Berlin Phil follow the Pittsburghers). On its...
Prom 53 – A Mingled Chime
Friday night, an absolutely full house, and the Pittsburgh Symphony is a wonderful orchestra. Mariss Jansons is an excellent and much-loved conductor taking his leave of the PSO as Music...
Prom 52 – Manfred Symphony
A relatively standard Prom this season from Sakari Oramo and the CBSO, though Nielsen’s Pan and Syrinx is a masterly tone poem difficult to programme and consequently undervalued. It’s also...
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