BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 68: Mariinsky Orchestra/Valery Gergiev – Prokofiev’s October Revolution Cantata & Shostakovich 5 – Denis Matsuev plays Tchaikovsky
On paper this Prom seemed designed to explore aspects of Communist Russia’s musical legacy, its big components being conceived in the menacing context of Stalin’s Great Terror. In the event...
Prom 67: Mendelssohn – The Hebrides, Violin Concerto, Reformation Symphony – Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Pablo Heras-Casado with Isabelle Faust
To open this lunchtime Prom, here was Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture interpreted in a way I had not heard before and it reflected a very personal view of the music which...
Prom 66: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Daniele Gatti – Haydn’s Bear & Mahler’s Fourth
This second of two Proms by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was very much “a game of two halves.” All the more surprising from these distinguished players who, conducted by Danielle...
Proms at … Wilton’s Music Hall – songbirdsongs … Molly’s Song 3 … Eight Songs for a Mad King
Marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Proms included Wilton’s Music Hall for the first time. Not quite bedlam (the original Bedlam, St Mary’s of Bethlehem...
Prom 65: Stax Records – 50 Years of Soul – Jools Holland
Fifty years (and five months) since the epochal tour of artists associated with Memphis-based Stax Records ended in London seems as good a reason as any to devote a Prom...
Prom 64: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Daniele Gatti – Wolfgang Rihm’s In-Schrift & Bruckner 9
It might have been a truncated version of a concert previously given in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (and to come in Berlin, Weber's Euryanthe Overture common to both) but this programme suited...
Prom 63: Semyon Bychkov conducts The Oresteia & Manfred Symphony – Kirill Gerstein plays Rachmaninov
With the Taneyev and the Tchaikovsky Semyon Bychkov was revisiting the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s “Beloved Friend” project from last season (reviews below). The music of Sergei Taneyev is more often...
Prom 62: Chineke! conducted by Kevin John Edusei, with Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Jeanine De Bique
While not the youngest debutant at this year’s Proms (the Multi-Story Youth Choir is that, both in age since foundation and, genuinely, in its members’ young years), Chineke! – Britain’s...
Prom 61: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Sakari Oramo – Andrea Tarrodi & Carl Nielsen – Renée Fleming sings Samuel Barber & Richard Strauss
Whether it’s the BBC Symphony Orchestra or the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Sakari Oramo is the main man. It was the latter ensemble for the third of Oramo’s four Proms this...
Prom 60: Oslo Philharmonic/Vasily Petrenko – The Firebird & Shostakovich 12 – Leif Ove Andsnes plays Rachmaninov
Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic work well together, he cleanly efficient and technically precise, the players a well-oiled but individually characterful ensemble. As satisfyingly complete concerts go, largely without...
Prom 59: Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito from Glyndebourne Festival Opera – Richard Croft, Alice Coote, Joélle Harvey, Anna Stéphany, Michèle Losier, Clive Bayley; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Robin Ticciati
Mozart’s final opera, La clemenza di Tito, does not get as many outings as it should, and Glyndebourne’s mounting of Claus Guth’s staging shows why it should be seen more...
Proms at … Cadogan Hall, PCM7 – Pavel Kolesnikov plays Chopin
It was a wise decision to programme Pavel Kolesnikov in Chopin for the penultimate Proms Chamber Music recital this season; the hour illuminated, through Kolesnikov’s sensitive and idiomatic performances, that...
Prom 58: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Louis Langrée – On the Waterfront & Tchaikovsky 5 – Charles Dance narrates Lincoln Portrait
The early years of the present century were not kind to the Cincinnati Symphony, which in 1909 gave an untried Leopold Stokowski his first conducting post. The disappearance of the...
Prom 57: Swing No End – Clare Teal, Guy Barker, Winston Rollins
Big Band concerts have become a regular feature at the Proms of late, and though this matinee event was not intended to be a “battle of the bands”, there was...
Prom 56: The Bohemian Reformation – Tábor & Blaník, Field Mass, Hussite Overture, The Excursions of Mr Brouček, Praga – BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jakub Hrůša
Continuing the Reformation strand of this season's Proms, this concert focussed on the legacy of the early-fifteenth-century Czech reformer Jan Hus, burned at the stake in July 1415 for decrying...
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