BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 34: Polar Strings United
Stretching back over a century, the tradition of British music for string orchestra is a distinctive and distinguished one. Three of its primary contributions were featured in this late-night Prom,...
Prom 33: A Hero Returns
With neither castanets nor an Old Testament prophet in sight, Pierre Boulez’s Prom with the BBCSO asserted his own thesis, that of twentieth-century Modernism and – without any sense of...
Prom 32: Stop Press – George II Crowned
The powers that be at BBC Television are a strange bunch. Someone decides that it would be a good idea to televise every concert (on BBC4) during the first two...
Prom 31: Euryanthe Rescued (From the Desert)
Posterity has deemed that the exhilarating overture to Euryanthe is a fairly regular concert-opener. When a Weber opera is mounted or recorded, it’s usually Der Freischütz. Euryanthe, indeed, has only...
Prom 30: Symphony of a Thousand
Back in the 1980s, Sir Simon Rattle expressed major doubts over the intrinsic quality of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony – to an extent which made it clear that it would not...
Prom 29: ECO Not All There
Finnish composer-conductor-pianist Ralf Gothóni made his proms debut with this concert. For thirty-five years Gothóni has enjoyed an international career and was the winner of the 1994 Gilmor prize (a...
Prom 26: Mexico v. Spain
Christmas came early for the growing band of Revueltas fans with this rare UK performance of La noche de los mayas (The Night of the Mayas), one of the composer’s...
Prom 24: Love, the Magician
This programme looked curious on paper, and so it proved in performance.Giménez’s La boda de Luis Alonso is a Zarzuela – a typical Spanish kind of music drama, rather in...
Prom 23: Liverpool Triumph
Gerard Schwarz began his appointment as Music Director of the RLPO just under a year ago. If this, their first Proms appearance together, is anything to go by, then great...
Prom 22: Visions and Journeys
This was an evening of three pieces linked by a single concept – regression as progression. In the “Composer Portrait”, Anthony Payne alluded to this as an important step in...
PCM3: New Phibbs
A packed house for this lunchtime concert in which the Spanish element of this season was much to the fore, even in a newly commissioned piece from this year’s youngest...
Prom 21: The Passion of Matthew
Bach’s St Matthew Passion adapted effortlessly to the Royal Albert Hall. In solemnity and grandeur, the concert gave the space of the hall a sense of being the interior of...
Prom 19: Russian Night with Spanish Tinge
This was a solidly successful concert from a Manchester team unfazed by the acoustic problems of the big barn. The players have after all been giving accomplished performances of Russian...
Prom 18: Love Is All Around
Continuing the Spanish theme in this year’s Proms season was a double-bill of operas often referred to but not often played. Goyescas has long suffered from having been adapted by...
Prom 17: Turnage Triptych (Part 2)
In a Proms season where castanets are more conspicuous than commissions, the prospect of a new orchestral work from Mark-Anthony Turnage was even more enticing than usual. He delivered the...
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