BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 51 – Woolrich’s Winning Mercurial Musical Metamorphoses
After perhaps the longest break of Late Night Proms I have ever known (almost two full weeks), the tradition burst brilliantly back to life with this wonderfully themed concert, regrettably...
Prom 50 – Spirit Survives The Slips
Coming from the dizzy heights of four of the most spectacular Proms of the season (Saul, the two-part Trojans, and Haitink’s Mahler 6), there was always a danger that the...
Prom 49: European Mahler
Thankfully, in contrast to some of this year’s Proms, the only colourful visual element came from the flags of the European Union decked on the platform and from the attire...
Proms Chamber Music No.6 (25 August)
Another Monday lunchtime and another nicely balanced programme at the V & A’s Lecture Theatre, introduced, as ever, by Christopher Cook. He entertained the packed audience pre-broadcast with some thoughts...
Proms 47 & 48 – Trojans-tastic!
After the performances of The Trojans in the LSO’s Berlioz Odyssey with principal conductor Sir Colin Davis three years ago (so memorably enshrined in the award-winning, multi-selling LSO Live CD...
Prom 46 – Scoreless Saul Scores Stupendous Success
An almost-full Royal Albert Hall attended Paul McCreesh’s peerless performance of Saul, Handel’s first great success in English oratorio (following Deborah and Athalia), with hushed silence and rapt concentration, with...
Prom 45 – Romeo & Juliet
As Leonard Slatkin reached the podium to start the concert, the members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra stood up for him, demonstrating their respect for his musicianship. The concert itself...
Prom 44 – West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Music is supposedly the food of love. It is, unfortunately, not likely to be a panacea for the settling of conflict. Music can, of course, be wonderful in its healing...
Prom 43 – Warzone
The Rotterdam Philharmonic is Valery Gergiev’s ’other’ orchestra, a fine one requiring no string pulling. Gergiev seems less of a showman when working with it. In Ravel, there was much...
Prom 42 – La mort de Cléopâtre
You expect the unexpected (negatively and positively speaking!) from Valery Gergiev, and this concert was no exception. Beethoven’s The Consecration of the House is not an overture at every conductor’s...
Proms 2003 – Chen Yi & Daphnis
The relatively recent introduction of Composer Portraits to the Proms is an innovative and welcome idea. An opportunity to meet the composer and hear some chamber music in the intimate...
Proms Chamber Music No.5 (18 August)
To the non-specialist, the prospect of an hour of unaccompanied 16th-century religious music by the little known Filippo di Monte, even when served with a leavening of Byrd and Lassus,...
Prom 40 – The Oceanides
While Osmo Vänskä has become a familiar figure at the Proms through his appearances with the BBC Scottish Symphony, his work with the Lahti Symphony is known primarily through a...
Prom 39 – Benvenuto Cellini
“Est-ce folie ou bien génie?” – Is this madness, or is it genius? Thus cries Cellini towards the end of this remarkable opera. Such a thought must surely have occurred...
Prom 38 – Flying the (British) Film Flag
At last – Rumon Gamba gets his own evening Prom!A stalwart of the morning Blue Peter Proms of recent years with his quondam orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, it was perhaps...
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