BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 35: 16th August 2001 – Fidelio
As Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio has always enjoyed the caché of articulating his convictions - of liberty, equality and verity - in the most direct and immediate terms. Of course,...
Prom 34: 15th August 2001 – Foreign Bodies
The conductor who is also a composer is something of a suspicious breed. It would be a brave soul who claimed that figures such as Previn or Maazel (or Klemperer...
Prom 33: 14th August 2001 – Klezmer & Gypsy Music
After last year’s disaster of an ’ethnic’ Prom, “Cuban Night” (with truly atrocious amplification), which attempted to persuade us that a boy-band, Vocal Sampling, was the epitome of the fantastic...
Prom 32: 14th August 2001 – Hollywood’s Golden Age
Rarely – if ever – has the encore come first in a concert. But as he raised his baton (in his left-hand) for his Proms debut, 79-year-old Elmer Bernstein started...
Prom Composer Profile: 13th August 2001 Esa-Pekka Salonen
Following portraits of James MacMillan (see review of Prom 8) and John Tavener, with John Adams to come (6 September), this focus on Salonen the composer was welcome, and not...
Prom Chamber Music 4: 13th August 2001
With the 50th anniversary of Schoenberg’s death being marked in some depth at this year’s Proms, what better than to turn one of the weekly Proms Chamber Music recitals into...
Prom 30: 12th August 2001
Without wishing to infer the ’Boulez is God’ epithet still often encountered, it can be said that a Boulez premiere is an event. In the case of the orchestral Notations,...
Prom 29: 11th August 2001 – Marvellous Messiaen
The annual visit to the Proms by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – now in its fifty-third year – is always an occasion for wonderment. Unlike the great...
Prom 28: 10th August 2001
Those surveying the programme of tonight’s concert may have been put in mind of the three-part Proms that were a regular feature of the late Sir William Glock’s era. In...
Prom 27: 9th August 2001 – Speaking in Ibsen
Peer Gynt (pronounced “Pear Gunt”) made his triumphant debut at the Proms this week - complete. Whatever Neeme Järvi had – warned by his doctors to take it easy –...
Prom 26: 8th August 2001 – The Seasons
Haydn’s Oratorio, The Seasons, was premiered in Vienna in April 1801 to great acclaim from critics and public. The idea for the work had come to Haydn two years previously...
Prom 25: 7th August 2001 – Broken Promise
It was going to be “The Russians are coming” even after Evgeny Svetlanov cancelled – ’… but one didn’t make it’ – Repin, who promised much in Tchaikovsky, broke a...
Prom 24: 6th August 2001 – Late Night Handel
The Proms’ pastoral leaning was again in evidence with Handel’s ’pastoral masque’, surprisingly receiving its first-ever complete Proms performance.After his early visits to Italy, Handel’s desire to experience music in...
Prom 23: 6th August 2001 – Man-o’-war
Man-o’-War has two meanings - an old English name for a warship, and a dangerous sea-creature. (36-year-old Ian Wilson, from Northern Island, also points out that Manowar is a village...
Prom Chamber Music 3: 6th August 2001
The Lecture Theatre in the V & A is an excellent venue for chamber music. It resembles an abbreviated Wigmore Hall, with a steep rake of seats instead of stalls...
Skip to content