BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 4: Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim – Elgar Symphony 2 – UK premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s Deep Time
For the second of their two Proms, Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin contrasted works by Elgar and Birtwistle written over a century apart, essaying between them an intriguing, challengingly sourced...
Prom 3: Bernard Haitink conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Mozart & Schumann – Isabelle Faust plays Violin Concerto K216
Now eighty-eight, in charge of his eighty-ninth Prom, Bernard Haitink has never been a conductor of extremes or histrionics. To this classic mix of Mozart and Schumann he brought all...
Prom 2: Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim – Elgar Symphony 1 – Lisa Batiashvili plays Sibelius’s Violin Concerto
The end of the Proms season was upon us a little early to close this invigorating concert by Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim. He decided, for whatever reason, to play...
First Night of the Proms 2017 – Edward Gardner conducts Tom Coult’s St John’s Dance and John Adams’s Harmonium – Igor Levit plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3
And so the world’s longest and possibly greatest music festival comes round again. 2017 may be a little thin on significant musical anniversaries but the BBC has been intimately involved...
As you’ve never heard us before… Alan Davey – Controller BBC Radio 3 – a Proms Blog for Classical Source [begins July 14]
This year at the Proms we are celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the BBC taking responsibility for what was already a popular festival – saving it from bankruptcy. With that...
Prom 75: Sakari Oramo conducts The Last Night of the Proms with Juan Diego Flórez
With “Remain” campaigners handing out EU flags and hoping to hijack the Last Night celebrations on one side, and 10,000 Union-flags freely distributed by “Brexiteers” on the other – for...
Prom 74: Marin Alsop conducts Verdi’s Requiem
I see that Zurich Opera is putting on a dance version of Verdi’s Requiem later this year – imagine the opportunities offered by the ‘Dies irae’ – and at least...
Prom 73: Academy of Ancient Music/Richard Egarr – Handel’s Coronation Anthems, Muffat, and Bach’s Air & Purcell’s Dido’s Lament arranged by Stokowski
First, the curiosity. What does it mean for a ‘period’-performance ensemble to programme two Baroque pieces in arrangements by Leopold Stokowski designed precisely to exploit their latent musical possibilities through...
Prom 72: Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann (2) – Max Reger’s Mozart Variations & Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel – Nikolaj Znaider plays Beethoven
In their second Proms appearance this season, Christian Thielemann and Staatskapelle Dresden demonstrated again a characteristic authority and assurance in their native repertoire, whether familiar or not.Beethoven’s is one of...
Prom 71: Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann (1) – Bruckner 3 – Daniil Trifonov plays Mozart K467
For the third successive evening the Proms programmed a Mozart Piano Concerto against a Bruckner Symphony. Apart from the Austrian heritage of the two composers the connection is not obvious,...
Prom 70: Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim (2) – Mozart’s Coronation Concerto and Bruckner 6
Despite the ceremonial which might be implied by the nickname ‘Coronation’ for Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto (attributed to the fact that the composer played it as part of the festivities...
Prom 69: Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim (1) – Mozart K491 and Bruckner 4
Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin kicked off the final week of this year’s Proms with the first of three pairings of Mozart and Bruckner (two by them, and the...
Proms Chamber Music 8: Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies & Joseph Middleton
And so the end draws nigh, this was the last of the 2016 Proms Chamber Music concerts at Cadogan Hall. Even the weather seemed to be mourning the last week...
Prom 68 – Rossini’s Semiramide – Albina Shagimuratova, Daniela Barcellona, Mirco Palazzi, Barry Banks – conducted by Mark Elder with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment & Opera Rara Chorus
Performances of Rossini’s Semiramide do not grow on trees although, perhaps owing to its Overture, the name of the opera is not unknown to classical music enthusiasts. Semiramide is generally...
Prom 67: Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra/Gustavo Dudamel – Desenne’s Hipnosis mariposa, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No.2, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and La valse
Who'll forget that hot August night back in 2007 when the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra stormed into London? A history-defining debut of breathtaking brilliance, thirst for music, and show-stopping chemistry....
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