BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

RPO Vasily Petrenko Sayaka Shoji 10 CR.Chris Christodoulou
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko – Vaughan Williams & Mendelssohn – Sayaka Shoji plays Respighi
Continuing his love-affair with British orchestras after fifteen years with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the RPO’s new music director (from August 1st) sets out his stall in a programme of...
Elisabeth Bauss cr Felix Broede
BBC Philharmonic & Ben Gernon – Symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven; Elisabeth Brauß plays Mozart’s K488
The BBC Philharmonic’s chief conductor Omer Meir Wellber had to withdraw from this first Prom – Covid again – so out went the advertised first-half of Schubert and a BBC...
BBCNOW Ryan Bancroft 3 CR.Chris Christodoulou
BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Ryan Bancroft – Guy Johnston plays Saint-Saëns; Purcell’s Dido’s Lament; Elizabeth Ogonek’s Cloudline; Brahms’s Fourth Symphony
Due to “scheduling issues arising from the pandemic” both conductor Elim Chan and cellist Sol Gabetta were unable to travel here. In steps Guy Johnston – quite a performing world...
Zemlinsky
Zemlinsky & Brahms Clarinet Trios at Cadogan Hall – Michael Collins, Adrian Brendel, Michael McHale
This Cadogan Hall Proms recital of two late-romantic clarinet trios was well worth the two-year absence, the later by Zemlinsky deferring to Brahms’s late love-affair with the artistry of the...
Prom 4 2021
Scottish Chamber Orchestra & Maxim Emelyanychev – Mozart’s final three Symphonies
There is a bit of a vogue in considering these final symphonic masterpieces as a triptych. Nikolaus Harnoncourt described them as an “instrumental oratorio”, with each being, respectively, the prelude,...
RAH organ
Martin Baker organ recital – Johann Sebastian Bach and improvisations
"Due to Covid" – an overworked mantra for these distracted times – this Proms organ recital was to have been given by the Notre-Dame titulaire Olivier Latry, but the Parisian...
Prom 2 2021
The Golden Age of Broadway – Richard Balcombe and BBC Concert Orchestra
There can be no better way to celebrate a return after an absence than with a nostalgic look back to yesteryear and, even though Broadway only came to the Proms...
First Night of the Proms 17 CR.Chris Christodoulou
First Night of the Proms 2021 – Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music; Poulenc’s Organ Concerto; James MacMillan’s When Soft Voices Die; Sibelius’s Second Symphony
And they’re off! After the trimmed-down and audience-less 2020 season, it is absolutely glorious that there is a six-week BBC Proms season, with a physically present audience, at the Royal Albert Hall...
Last Night of the Proms Mark Allan 20
Prom 16: The Last Night 2020
With 300 musicians reduced to just 65, a socially distanced audience viewing from the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and the BBC Singers scattered about the stalls where, in times past,...
Aurora Prom CR Chris Christodoulou 10
Prom 15: Nicholas Collon conducts Aurora Orchestra in Beethoven 7 & Richard Ayres’s No.52
If Beethoven had been alive in 1963, he might well have nodded approvingly after reading Sydney Carter’s lyrics: “Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the...
Prom 9 September Credit Chris Christodoulou 4
Prom 14: Paavo Järvi conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in Ravel & Mozart – Benjamin Grosvenor & Jason Evans play Shostakovich
Replacing Esa-Pekka Salonen, if without changing the programme, Paavo Järvi opened with Le tombeau de Couperin, Ravel’s tribute to friends lost in World War One, expressive music located through a...
Prom 8 September 2020 Credit Jake Bufton 9
Prom 13 – Ryan Bancroft conducts BBC National Orchestra of Wales – Natalya Romaniw sings Barber’s Knoxville
With this live no-audience Prom Ryan Bancroft opened his account as Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, swinging into action with Bohuslav Martinů’s Jazz Suite (1928), music...
Prom 7 September 2020 Credit Mark Allan 6
Prom 12: Kokoroko
Kokoroko, a London West African jazz-fusion band, made its Proms premiere in splendid isolation performing in the vast solitary cavern that is this year’s RAH bathed in blue lonesome light...
Prom 11 September 2020 Credit Chris Christodoulou 4
Prom 10 – Sheku & Isata Kanneh-Mason – Cello Sonatas by Beethoven, Barber & Rachmaninov
Recital recorded on August 27; first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on September 6; this review is of the relay on BBC Four, September 11 Chamber music in the cavernous...
Prom 5September2020 Credit Martin Shields 9
Prom 9 – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at City Halls Glasgow – Alpesh Chauhan & Stephen Hough
Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (for twenty-three solo strings) has done sterling service during lockdown, a gift to reduced, socially-distanced ensembles. Directed on this occasion by Alpesh Chauhan (the BBCSSO’s Associate Conductor,...