BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 71 – Zurich Tonhalle
As this year’s Proms season approaching its finale it seems as if some of the best wine had been kept for last. The Zurich Tonhalle is Switzerland’s oldest orchestra. Founded...
Prom 70 – Sacred and Profane
After the horrendous over-run of the percussion late-nighter two evenings earlier when the last piece didn’t start until 11.50 – twenty minutes after the concert was meant to have ended!...
Prom 69 – In G
Whether it was the combination of Beethoven and Mahler or the fact that Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic are currently hot news, there was an absolutely full house. The...
Prom 68 – Israel Phil
Zubin Mehta started the symphony while a discourteous name-badge outfit was still finding seats. Once positioned, there were further distractions while they settled – this lot then appeared disinterested in...
Prom 67 – Tongues of Fire
Provocation galore in this lengthy late-night Prom, opening with two contrasting choral works by Xenakis. Nuits (1968) is protest music raised onto an altogether higher plane by the visceral nature...
Proms Chamber Music No.8 (8 September) – “Bully for Berlioz!”
It was a couple of days of Proms curiosities: first, the Vienna Philharmonic sang its collective way through Rossini, courtesy Bobby McFerrin, and then, at this lunchtime chamber concert, there...
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...