BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 64: The Breaks
Prom 64 took a spirited deep dive into the musically alchemic form of the Break, with Jules Buckley and the Heritage Orchestra in collaboration with an impressive roster of performers,...
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Prom 63: Staatskapelle Dresden – Myung-Whun Chung conducts Brahms – Yuja Wang plays Rachmaninov
A tonal excursion from minor to major usually has some life-enhancing magic, but from Staatskapelle Dresden and its principal guest conductor Myung-Whun Chung this concert felt doggedly rooted in the...
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Prom 62: Canzionere Grecanico Salentino
Italy's own medievalist folk-rock band Canzioniere Grecanico Salentino was founded during the great era of Steeleye Span, Trader Home and Fairpoint Convention adding Mediterranean heat and resonance to an oft-ethereal...
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Prom 61: Vienna Philharmonic – Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts The Noonday Witch & New World Symphony – Leonidas Kavakos plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Following Bernard Haitink’s semi-official farewell to UK concertizing was never going to be easy. (No matter that others have found more Romantic subjectivity or philosophical depth in Bruckner’s Seventh.) The...
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Prom 60: Bernard Haitink conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Bruckner 7 – Emanuel Ax plays Beethoven
At the end of his biography at the back of the printed programme, there was a neutral statement that Bernard Haitink would be taking a sabbatical after this season. This...
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Prom 59: John Eliot Gardiner conducts Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini
September may have arrived, ushering in the waning of Summer, the home stretch of this year’s Proms season, and here the end of John Eliot Gardiner’s five-year Berlioz cycle at...
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Proms at … Cadogan Hall/Proms Chamber Music 7: Silesian Quartet & Wojciech Świtała – Weinberg SQ7 & Bacewicz PQ1
Arriving in the twentieth-century, the Proms lunchtime’s 800-year musical survey concentrated on two divergent Polish composers working in the 1950s; although Weinberg had found refuge in Soviet Russia, Bacewicz (here...
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Prom 58: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Ilan Volkov conducts Nuages, Fiddler’s Child & Little Russian Symphony – Georgia Jarman sings Love Songs of Hafiz
Ilan Volkov is an exceptional musician not usually associated with popular programming. Still, it’s difficult to see how this determinedly low-key event got planning permission: the top layers of the...
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Prom 57: Long Yu & Shanghai Symphony Orchestra – Qigang Chen & Rachmaninov – Eric Lu plays Mozart K488
The cock had to crow early for this Prom which began at the unusual hour of 11 a.m. and featured the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Long Yu. A near-capacity seated...
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Prom 56: Henry Wood Tribute – Bramwell Tovey conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra – with Leon McCawley & Nathaniel Anderson-Frank | Dobrinka Tabakova premiere
A fascinating snapshot of Sir Henry Wood’s achievements; an intelligently designed programme certainly, but the end results were mixed.The sumptuous evocation of all things Spanish that is the opening Ravel...
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Prom 55: Handel’s Jephtha – Allan Clayton, Hilary Summers, Jeanine De Bique; conducted by Richard Egarr
Despite the serious, fatalistic subject of Handel’s late oratorio, Jephtha (1751) – surely the closest he came to a Greek tragic drama in terms of its metaphysical theme – this...
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Prom 54: Duke Ellington’s Sacred Music
It might seem surprising that the music which makes up Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts is only now receiving its due at the Proms. Derived almost entirely from those three such...
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Prom 53: BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra – Andrew Davis conducts VW’s Tallis Fantasia, Hugh Wood’s Scenes from Comus, and Elgar’s The Music Makers
Three works by British composers of different generations made up this programme: three serious works, nothing meretricious but sufficiently varied in character and timbre – to say nothing of individual...
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Prom 52: Britten Sinfonia – Ryan Wigglesworth conducts Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana & Stravinsky’s Fairy’s Kiss | Marc-André Hamelin premieres Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto | Wigglesworth & Hamelin play Mozart K365
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... Mozart inspires Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky motivates Stravinsky. Mozart writes a Concerto for Two Pianos (for himself and his sister), Ryan Wigglesworth composes a Piano...
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Prom 51: Glyndebourne Festival Opera – Barbe & Doucet’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte; conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth
Try as one might, it’s difficult to see any meaningful connection between Mozart’s great opera of the Enlightenment, The Magic Flute, and the grand-hotel setting into which it is ignominiously...