BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Long marketed as “The Aristocrat of Orchestras”, today’s Boston Symphony Orchestra is a magnificent ensemble, buffed to perfection in short order by a super-competent maestro. And yet, after the Berliners’...
This last of the weekly Proms Chamber Music recitals also featured its final new commission in the guise of Baca (2018) by the Slovenian composer Nina Šenk. The title –...
There is a story – it may just be an urban myth – that the BBC once turned down a proffered Proms visitation by the Bavarian State Orchestra and Kirill...
Mahler may have turned away from the chain-of-creation programme in the original titles for the six movements of his Symphony No.3, but having been planted their imagery will never go...
Much of the interest in the Berlin Philharmonic's brace of Proms centre on the orchestra's Chief Conductor designate, as (save for passing engagements with the London Philharmonic and Royal Opera)...
It may have been "beautifully restored to a state of frozen decay" (to quote Kate Romano's programme note), but the recently re-opened Alexandra Palace Theatre (think Wilton's Music Hall as...
“The king of African ballad music! You can dance! If you want to sing you can!" Thus Youssou Ndour was announced to us all by his faithful drummer bedecked in...
Despite a series of “Further Performances at the Proms” notifications throughout this year’s printed programmes promising, in Prom 65, The Rite of Spring by one Richard Strauss, I’m glad to...
Verdi’s Requiem, in all its barnstorming, penitential glory, is a natural fit for the Proms and the Royal Albert Hall, but I wonder if I have heard a performance that...
Having undertaken the First Book of the Well-Tempered Clavier at a late-night Prom last year, András Schiff completed his traversal of the ‘48’ with another extraordinary feat of concentration and...
Light and warmth are not phenomena that spring to mind in relation to Romanticism and Modernism in music, which tend to prefer exploring the darker regions of inward and outward...
When a Bruckner Symphony is the main work it is the modern trend to throw in a Piano Concerto – often by Mozart and hardly ever is an ‘overture’ offered.Liszt’s...
With the BBC’s extended bank-holiday Bernstein weekend drawing to its close it was no surprise to find his one-time assistant at the helm of this well-attended Prom. You can catch...
For the second year running the Proms hosted a Relaxed Prom. Open to all, without exception, this was a bite-size concert – Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ (The Planets) the longest piece –...
The Proms centenary celebrations for Leonard Bernstein continued on a smaller scale with a programme from Wallis Giunta and Michael Sikich in a vertiginous race through recipes, La bonne cuisine,...
Skip to content