BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Akademie für Alte Musik
The 'other' Water Music, Telemann's, and Bach’s D major 'Ouverture' with its attendant dances: two Baroque suites of remarkable invention framing two duets which in turn framed two arias in...
Huw Watkins Premiere
One of the many things the Proms does well is to provide a sympathetic context for new music. I am not referring to the audience, usually disposed toward the unfamiliar...
Ravi & Anoushka Shankar
Having bagged Plácido Domingo for the first time, Nicholas Kenyon’s second debut-coup of this year’s Proms season was to present Ravi Shankar, along with his daughter and protégé Anoushka, in...
Coro
I am tempted to stick my neck out – only a third of the way through the season – to say that this was the Prom of the Season. Yes,...
Water Music
The San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under its conductor Nicholas McGegan, making its UK debut, offset the often outlandish rhythms and scoring of Rameau’s music by counterpointing it with some...
Hans Abrahamsen
Sandwiched between Sibelius and Brahms, the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's Four Pieces for Orchestra received its UK premiere to a reasonably full house. There was a slight irony to this...
Proms Chamber Music – 3 (NYO Sinfonietta)
While not attracting a full house (although one that included the National Youth Orchestra’s new chairman and editor of “The Guardian”, Alan Rusbridger), the NYO Sinfonietta’s concert as part of...
Romeo & Juliet
Berlioz's aptly titled 'dramatic symphony' is not at all easy to categorise, being a strange mix of cantata and opera alongside the purely symphonic. Neither is it a straightforward work...
Violins!! – Part 3
In this culminating event of “Violins!!”, a folk-tradition that stems back almost to Bach’s time. Two ensembles occupied the platform: “Blazin' Fiddles” – Scottish fiddles – and the Roby Lakatos...
Violins!! – Part 2
Never has there been such an example of what the BBCSO should concentrate its undoubted talent on and equally what it should avoid. As a nation we spawn gifted sight-reading...
Violins!! – Part 1
In a world of ‘bite-sized’ portions it is a shame that classical music has found a niche in the ‘sound-bite’ world. Excerpts and selections present an incomplete picture of composers’...
Sergey Khachatryan
The BBC Philharmonic, possibly Britain's most underrated orchestra, usually responds well to Vassily Sinaisky in core Russian repertoire. Having a Gergiev protégé, Gianandrea Noseda, in charge as overall Chief shouldn’t...
The Red Violin
Dramatic scenes, or scenarios, was the thread underlying the works given at this concert; and there was a further link in the first half in that both the Adams and...
Manchester Camerata
Despite the foul weather, a fair crowd turned up for this late-night concert, the Manchester Camerata's Prom debut. They were rewarded with music-making of distinctly variable quality. The Manchester Camerata’s...
Pictures at an Exhibition
The ghost of Maurice Ravel hovered – benignly, of course – over this concert. Literally so in the opening and closing items, and figuratively in the new work by Dutilleux...