BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 44: Youthful Sophistication
After the rigours of Parsifal at the Edinburgh Festival, this concert looked small beer for Claudio Abbado and the orchestra he founded in 1986 to help bring together young musicians...
Prom 43: Non-vibrato Magic? D major Overdose?
Nicely timed to coincide with the Sony CD release, Sir Roger Norrington, Joshua Bell and Camerata Salzburg reunited – this time before a packed Royal Albert Hall audience. Norrington has...
Prom 40: Transcriptions and Concertos
If the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s first appearance at the Proms last week found them technically unfazed by the English pastoral tradition, their emphatic, virile style of delivery seemed slightly beside...
Prom 39: An Odd Mix
What a peculiar programme! Where the original Proms prospectus promised us a first half of “Spanish postcards”, the programme booklet came up with the more plausible explanation of a gypsy...
Prom 37: Richard Rodgers – & Hammerstein
In the centenary year of the birth of Richard Rodgers, this Prom is one of many celebratory concerts and recordings. Perhaps in a macabre way, the timing is right for...
Prom 36: Spanish (K)nights and American Days
Although providing a fine evening at the Royal Albert Hall, given the day – the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley – the Proms missed a trick at...
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...