BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 44: CBSO/Ludovic Morlot – From Faune to Boléro via Psalm 130 and Nocturnes
2018 marks the death, one-hundred years ago, not only of Debussy but also his younger compatriot Lili Boulanger, whose untimely passing (at the age of twenty-four) figures as a tantalising...
Prom 43: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim – Tchaikovsky, David Robert Coleman, Scriabin – with Lisa Batiashvili & Elsa Dreisig
Brahms’s Violin Concerto was originally billed for the first half of this Prom, but for unclear reasons the crowd-pleaser by Tchaikovsky was substituted (also at Snape the evening before) –...
Prom 42: Estonian Festival Orchestra/Paavo Järvi – Arvo Pärt & Sibelius – Khatia Buniatishvili plays Grieg
Yet another summertime scratch band but a very good one. Since 2011 the always-peripatetic Paavo Järvi has touched base at the Pärnu Festival, overseeing its evolution into a kind of...
Proms at … Cadogan Hall 5/Proms Chamber Music – Colin Currie & JACK Quartet – Xenakis, Holt, Farrin
Two world premieres for unusual combined forces, percussion and string quartet. Simon Holt’s Quadriga is in some ways the more-conventional of the pair, but indubitably persuasive – not least the...
Prom 41: BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra – Edward Gardner conducts Pour les funérailles d’un soldat and Dona nobis pacem – Jean-Guihen Queyras plays Elgar
Another Prom in the seasonal strand vaguely associated with the First World War began with Lili Boulanger’s prescient pre-War evocation of a funeral ceremony. Whether Boulanger’s neglect owes most to...
Prom 40: Joshua Bell & ASMF – Dream & Lament, Saint-Saëns & Beethoven
After the warring Jets and Sharks running about the Royal Albert Hall stage twice the previous day in West Side Story, normal order was restored for this matinee with a...
Prom 39: John Wilson conducts Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story [performance 2]
First mooted as a seventy-six-minute concert version involving the LSO with singers to be announced, this Proms rendition of a complete-ish West Side Story lasted nearly two hours, including a...
Prom 38: John Wilson conducts Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story [performance 1]
By now a regular at the BBC Proms, bringing his supremely polished band with music from the shows of yesteryear, the first of John Wilson’s 2018 concerts is Leonard Bernstein’s...
Prom 37: Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Antonio Pappano – Representation of Chaos, Jeremiah Symphony, Mahler 1
No need this time to strain to connect “BBC Proms 2018 – part of BBC Music” with that other dubious presentational construct, “Leonard Bernstein at 100”. Antonio Pappano’s programme consisted...
Prom 36: Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen – Webern’s Opus 10 & Mahler 10’s Adagio, and Act I of Die Walküre
The Philharmonia Orchestra’s Prom opened with Webern, world-in-a-grain-of-sand music that looked back over the composer’s shoulder, as though wondering how it was ever possible that he and Mahler were in...
Prom 35: New York: Sound of a City
The Royal Albert Hall was bedecked with a welcoming butterfly motif and psychedelic traffic lights in waves of peppermint-green and purple: a nod to the vibrant innovation of the New...
Prom 34: BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena – Walton, Copland, Britten, Barber – Sally Matthews sings Les Illuminations & Antony and Cleopatra
The so-called special relationship between the UK and the USA was much in evidence in this Prom, with English music that could well have been American, English music that was...
Prom 33: BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra – Richard Farnes conducts Phoenix Rising & German Requiem
Thea Musgrave turned ninety on May 27, and she looked on very good form when she took a bow for Phoenix Rising (premiered in 1998 by the BBCSO and Andrew...
Prom 32: Inside Shostakovich – Piano Concerto 2, Symphony 9 – Denis Kozhukhin, Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
We should no longer wonder at Aurora and its feats of musical remembrance. Since 2014, with Nicholas Collon, the orchestra has performed a succession of Mozart and Beethoven Symphonies at...
Prom 31: Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä – Candide Overture & Ives 2 – Inon Barnatan plays Gershwin
As American showcases go – Osmo Vänskä, married to the concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, Erin Keefe, is a committed Minneapolis stalwart, and Israeli-born, London-trained Inon Barnatan is based in...
Skip to content