BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Anyone counting on programme information from the BBC Proms website might have been surprised that Roxanna Panufnik’s Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light that was due to start the Last...
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Handel’s penultimate oratorio, about the martyrdom of the saint, Theodora, for Christian beliefs in fourth-century Antioch, provided a serious and sobering offering ahead of the revelries of the Last Night...
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Appositely – after Britten’s invocation to “Let us sleep now” in War Requiem heard in the evening’s first Prom – the final late-night concert this season was a seamless musical...
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The centenary of the end of the First World War has been a constant presence in this year’s Proms, with three major Requiem settings and much other specifically war-related music...
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A teacher of long ago wrote off Berlioz as a “frightful vulgarian who confused gesture and content”. I think she would have both gone into orbit and, I hope, reconsidered...
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This was the Proms first foray into Tango and was launched by Katie Derham rocking a voluminous androgynous black-and-white Pierrot satin trouser suit – the antithesis of Tango attire. An...
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Long marketed as “The Aristocrat of Orchestras”, today’s Boston Symphony Orchestra is a magnificent ensemble, buffed to perfection in short order by a super-competent maestro. And yet, after the Berliners’...
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This last of the weekly Proms Chamber Music recitals also featured its final new commission in the guise of Baca (2018) by the Slovenian composer Nina Šenk. The title –...
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There is a story – it may just be an urban myth – that the BBC once turned down a proffered Proms visitation by the Bavarian State Orchestra and Kirill...
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Mahler may have turned away from the chain-of-creation programme in the original titles for the six movements of his Symphony No.3, but having been planted their imagery will never go...
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Much of the interest in the Berlin Philharmonic's brace of Proms centre on the orchestra's Chief Conductor designate, as (save for passing engagements with the London Philharmonic and Royal Opera)...
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It may have been "beautifully restored to a state of frozen decay" (to quote Kate Romano's programme note), but the recently re-opened Alexandra Palace Theatre (think Wilton's Music Hall as...
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“The king of African ballad music! You can dance! If you want to sing you can!" Thus Youssou Ndour was announced to us all by his faithful drummer bedecked in...
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Despite a series of “Further Performances at the Proms” notifications throughout this year’s printed programmes promising, in Prom 65, The Rite of Spring by one Richard Strauss, I’m glad to...
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Verdi’s Requiem, in all its barnstorming, penitential glory, is a natural fit for the Proms and the Royal Albert Hall, but I wonder if I have heard a performance that...