BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 24: Relaxed Prom – Swan Lake & Paganini Rhapsody – BBC Phil/Ben Gernon with Juan Pérez Floristán
Fighting your way out of a tourist-encrusted South Kensington tube station in time for an 11.30 a.m. concert at the Royal Albert Hall was always going to be a strain,...
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Prom 23: BBC Philharmonic – Ben Gernon conducts Peterloo Overture & Swan Lake – Juan Pérez Floristán plays Paganini Rhapsody
Malcolm Arnold’s Peterloo Overture was commissioned by the Trades Union Congress in 1968 to commemorate the massacre of protesting workers in Saint Peter’s Field, Manchester in 1819 (an event recently...
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Proms at … Cadogan Hall/Proms Chamber Music 3: The English Concert & Kristian Bezuidenhout
Comprising music derived largely from the late-seventeenth-century this was a fascinating programme featuring works all attempting to seek popularity by adopting or emulating features of music popular at the court...
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Prom 22: BBC Philharmonic – John Storgårds conducts Isle of the Dead, Midnight Sun Variations, The Year 1905
The UK’s first public performance of the 1915 version of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony was always going to be a hard act to follow. Not that the present evening was without...
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Prom 21: Olivier Latry at the Royal Albert Hall organ
Reviewed from live BBC Radio 3 broadcast... As the author of five books on rock music and musicians, including the first in-depth study of the life and work of Madonna...
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Prom 20 – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Sibelius – Thomas Dausgaard conducts the UK premiere of the first score of Symphony 5 | Pekka Kuusisto plays the Violin Concerto | Finnish Folk Music
Thomas Dausgaard can be relied upon for thoughtful and imaginative programme-planning, and this Prom was no exception; culminating as it did with a first UK performance for Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony...
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Prom 19: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Thomas Dausgaard conducts Also sprach Zarathustra & The Confession of Isobel Gowdie – Alexander Melnikov plays Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto
Three composers around thirty-one. Tone-poem, Concerto, requiem. 1895-96, 1841-45, 1990. Gravity depths, cosmic trumpets, sounds remembered, a single pitch, C, to open, link and close.Witnessing the fire and power of...
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Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra – Edward Gardner conducts Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Claudia Mahnke & Stuart Skelton – Leif Ove Andsnes plays Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto
Britten loved Mahler’s music and thought, in relation to Das Lied von der Erde, that it was “cruel that music should be so beautiful” – and there are flickers of...
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Prom 17: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – 2 – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Sibelius 1 & Der Rosenkavalier | Gil Shaham plays Prokofiev
Having been conducting Brahms on Sunday at the Festival de Lanaudière, Canada’s largest classical music festival, Yannick Nézet-Séguin can’t have had much time to prepare for his surprise stint with...
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Prom 16: Angélique Kidjo
The arrival of the Beninese-born “queen of African music” was transmitted in timeless fashion by Magatte Sow's thrilling rapid-fire djembe-style drumming – and on she strode in traditional dress for...
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Prom 15: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – 1 – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Symphonies by Beethoven (No.2) & Shostakovich (No.5)
It should have been Mariss Jansons conducting (resting on doctor’s orders), and Shostakovich’s Tenth. Yannick Nézet-Seguin replaced him and offered the Russian composer’s Fifth instead.At this Prom, the distinction of...
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Prom 14: Omer Meir Wellber conducts Haydn’s The Creation with BBC Philharmonic & BBC Proms Youth Choir
This was an extraordinarily crisp and engaging account of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation), led by Omer Meir Wellber with an unerring sense of pace very attuned to the narrative...
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Proms at … Cadogan Hall/Proms Chamber Music 2: A Celebration of Barbara Strozzi
Bringing a touch of vibrancy to this seventeenth-century stop-off in the Proms Chamber Music survey of 800 years of music – not only aurally but visually, with Mariana Flores in...
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Prom 13: BBC Symphony Orchestra – Sakari Oramo conducts Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles …
Continuing this year’s Proms theme of space exploration on the fiftieth-anniversary of the first Moon Landings, Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra took up Olivier Messiaen’s expansive cycle Des...
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Prom 12: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain – Mark Wigglesworth conducts Icarus & Romeo and Juliet – Nicola Benedetti plays Tchaikovsky
There may be economic reasons behind the appearance of more and more youth orchestras at the Proms but it’s pure gain to hear an ensemble big enough to fill the...