BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 19: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Thomas Dausgaard conducts Also sprach Zarathustra & The Confession of Isobel Gowdie – Alexander Melnikov plays Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto
Three composers around thirty-one. Tone-poem, Concerto, requiem. 1895-96, 1841-45, 1990. Gravity depths, cosmic trumpets, sounds remembered, a single pitch, C, to open, link and close.Witnessing the fire and power of...
Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra – Edward Gardner conducts Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Claudia Mahnke & Stuart Skelton – Leif Ove Andsnes plays Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto
Britten loved Mahler’s music and thought, in relation to Das Lied von der Erde, that it was “cruel that music should be so beautiful” – and there are flickers of...
Prom 17: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – 2 – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Sibelius 1 & Der Rosenkavalier | Gil Shaham plays Prokofiev
Having been conducting Brahms on Sunday at the Festival de Lanaudière, Canada’s largest classical music festival, Yannick Nézet-Séguin can’t have had much time to prepare for his surprise stint with...
Prom 16: Angélique Kidjo
The arrival of the Beninese-born “queen of African music” was transmitted in timeless fashion by Magatte Sow's thrilling rapid-fire djembe-style drumming – and on she strode in traditional dress for...
Prom 15: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – 1 – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Symphonies by Beethoven (No.2) & Shostakovich (No.5)
It should have been Mariss Jansons conducting (resting on doctor’s orders), and Shostakovich’s Tenth. Yannick Nézet-Seguin replaced him and offered the Russian composer’s Fifth instead.At this Prom, the distinction of...
Prom 14: Omer Meir Wellber conducts Haydn’s The Creation with BBC Philharmonic & BBC Proms Youth Choir
This was an extraordinarily crisp and engaging account of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation), led by Omer Meir Wellber with an unerring sense of pace very attuned to the narrative...
Proms at … Cadogan Hall/Proms Chamber Music 2: A Celebration of Barbara Strozzi
Bringing a touch of vibrancy to this seventeenth-century stop-off in the Proms Chamber Music survey of 800 years of music – not only aurally but visually, with Mariana Flores in...
Prom 13: BBC Symphony Orchestra – Sakari Oramo conducts Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles …
Continuing this year’s Proms theme of space exploration on the fiftieth-anniversary of the first Moon Landings, Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra took up Olivier Messiaen’s expansive cycle Des...
Prom 12: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – Mark Wigglesworth conducts Icarus & Romeo and Juliet – Nicola Benedetti plays Tchaikovsky
There may be economic reasons behind the appearance of more and more youth orchestras at the Proms but it’s pure gain to hear an ensemble big enough to fill the...
Proms at … Battersea Arts Centre
Take three stages in a resurrected venue, brazen in its shabby chic state with a nearly-completed organ restoration. Add five composer/performers and the might of the BBC, let alone the...
Prom 11: 1969: The Sound of a Summer
People wore flowers in their hair and there were Paisley shirts and loon pants in the auditorium but more people wore twenty-first-century sportswear and trainers. This Prom was 1969 –...
Prom 35 preview: Martyn Brabbins introduces Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for M. C. B. [August 13 @ 7 p.m.]
About three years ago, my friend and manager, Susie McLeod encouraged me to come up with a suitable and sizeable project to mark my suitably sizeable 60th birthday.Having conducted hundreds...
Prom 10: Public Service Broadcasting – The Race for Space
Despite the heat, which may have put off passing audiences at the earlier Prom (No.9), this year’s first Late Night was rammed. I may have been one of the laggards...
Prom 9: BBC National Orchestra of Wales – Markus Stenz conducts Till Eulenspiegel & Brahms 1 – Jeroen Berwaerts & Håkan Hardenberger give UK premiere of Tobias Broström’s Nigredo – Dark Night of the Soul
Improbable as it looks on paper, Richard Strauss and Brahms constituted the livelier outer panels of a triptych in which Tobias Broström’s two-trumpet Concerto formed the heart of darkness. Its...
Prom 8: BBC Symphony Orchestra – Peter Eötvös conducts Faune, Dance Suite & Firebird – Isabelle Faust gives UK premiere of Eötvös’s Alhambra
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... Although I had a man present in the Albert Hall, this was such a good concert I just had to jump on the...
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