BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 17: BBCNOW/Martyn Brabbins – Parry 5, Holst’s Ode to Death, Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral Symphony – Tai Murray plays The Lark Ascending
The heat-wave broke in London with impeccable timing, an hour or two before the start of this Prom, rain clearing the air for this programme of English music. The centenaries...
Prom 16: Hallé/Mark Elder – Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky
After last year’s lecture concert, ending in a performance of Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony, it was good to welcome the Hallé and Mark Elder back for a full-evening programme –...
Prom 15: BBC Philharmonic/Ben Gernon – What Did We See? & Brahms 2 – Paul Lewis plays Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto
Tansy Davies's opera about 9/11, Between Worlds, was premiered by ENO in 2015, to a mixed reception. What Did We See? is a twenty-four-minute four-movement Suite drawn from that score,...
Prom 14: BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds, with Elizabeth Watts & Louis Lortie – Wagner’s Mastersingers, Schubert/Liszt Songs & Wanderer, Zimmermann & Sibelius Symphonies
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand” (William Blake) might have been one way of summing up the components of this programme: its overview of the Romantic movement...
Prom 13: Pioneers of Sound
The London Contemporary Orchestra has certainly established a secure basis in the capital's fixtures over its first decade of existence, and this late-night Prom of music by five pioneering female...
Prom 12: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Karina Canellakis – Coriolan, Spiral, Symphonic Dances – Alisa Weilerstein plays Shostakovich
Karina Canellakis has rapidly come to prominence among younger conductors and, on the basis of this Prom, it is not hard to hear why. Beethoven's Coriolan (1807, for Collin’s play)...
Proms at … Cadogan Hall 2/Proms Chamber Music – Jean Rondeau
The enthusiasm of Eve Risser for the harpsichord – “the most fun instrument to write for” – is perhaps not surprising: for all its associations with Baroque music, the plucked...
Prom 11 – Thomas Søndergård conducts Mahler 8 (Symphony of a Thousand)
Separately if not together, Sir Henry Wood and the Royal Albert Hall have played significant roles in the UK performance history of Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, the Proms as...
Prom 10: Iveta Apkalna at Royal Albert Hall organ
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... The heart doesn’t quite sink at the prospect of Widor’s ‘Toccata’ yet again – it’s not a bad piece despite its over-exposure, but...
Prom 9: World Orchestra for Peace – Donald Runnicles conducts Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem & Beethoven’s Choral Symphony
“War and Peace” was the BBC’s online strapline for this Prom given (mostly) by the multinational ensemble founded by Sir Georg Solti on the fiftieth-anniversary of the United Nations in...
Proms at … The Roundhouse – London Sinfonietta/George Benjamin
Billed as a fiftieth-birthday concert for the London Sinfonietta as well as one of the cornerstone Proms in this year’s commemoration of the end of the First World War –...
Prom 8: BBCNOW/Thomas Søndergård – Lili Boulanger, Morfydd Owen, Schumann 4 – Bertrand Chamayou plays Mendelssohn
There were a few connective threads in this very fine concert, the first of BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s two Proms this season. Lili Boulanger and Morfydd Owen were contemporaries...
Prom 7: Jacob Collier and Friends
Before a note even sounded, Jacob Collier received an emphatic response as he entered the Royal Albert Hall. His musical journey has been spectacular. The viral success of his YouTube...
Prom 6: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo – Gershwin’s An American in Paris & Messiaen’s Turangalîla
The big barn was almost but not quite full for this unlikely pairing held together, however loosely, by two of this year’s Proms themes: the musical legacy of French Impressionism...
Prom 5: Glyndebourne Festival Opera – Stefan Herheim’s production of Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande – John Chest, Christina Gansch, Christopher Purves; London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robin Ticciati
Glyndebourne’s annual showcase at the Proms this year derived from its new staging of Debussy’s ever-intriguing Pelléas et Mélisande, a controversial production. Played without some of the distractions and accretions...
Skip to content