BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 68: Yo-Yo Ma plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete Cello Suites
Like the complete cycle of Prokofiev’s Piano Concertos in one Prom earlier in the season, it seemed an eccentric or even dubious idea to present all six of Bach’s Cello...
Prom 67 – Bernstein Stage and Screen (On the Waterfront, Candide, West Side Story) – John Wilson Orchestra with Julian Ovenden, Louise Dearman, Scarlett Strallen, Lucy Schaufer
Judging from the whooping, cheering and ability to applaud absolutely anything, the vast majority of the capacity audience for this Leonard Bernstein Prom confirmed that John Wilson has an almost...
Prom 66: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski – Fidelio Overture & Shostakovich 8 – Mitsuko Uchida plays Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto
With so many newspaper and television images revealing the plight of Syrian refugees seeking a better life, this Prom, linking themes of war, tyranny and freedom, could not have been...
Prom 65: Being Both – Alice Coote sings Handel – Giulio Cesare, Semele, Hercules, Theodora, Messiah – with The English Concert and Harry Bicket
It is a sign of the ever-growing popularity of Handel’s music among concert- and opera-goers that a sequence of familiar and unfamiliar numbers from his stage-works is not only regarded...
Prom 64: BBCNOW/Thomas Søndergård – Carl Nielsen’s music for Aladdin & Mahler 4 – world premiere of B. Tommy Andersson’s Pan with David Goode; Andersson Composer Portrait
The world premiere of Pan was preceded by the last of this Season’s clutch of Composer Portraits hosted by the ever-urbane Andrew McGregor. B. Tommy Andersson (born 1964) – the...
Prom 63: Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Peter Oundjian – Messiaen’s Hymne & Bruckner 7 – Igor Levit plays Mozart K595
Transcendence and sublimity mark these works but it was only the first and briefest of them – Messiaen’s early Hymne (from 1932, reconstructed by the composer from memory in 1947...
Prom 62: Marin Alsop conducts Brahms with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – Academic Festival Overture, Alto Rhapsody, Triumphlied, Symphony 1
Having given Brahms’s German Requiem and Tragic Overture at the Proms in 2013, Marin Alsop and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment appeared together again this year, demonstrating more...
Prom 61: San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas (2) – Charles Ives’s Decoration Day & Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – Yuja Wang plays Bartók
Hot-foot from the Edinburgh Festival, the San Francisco Symphony was a welcome return visitor for its second Prom. Michael Tilson Thomas has been Music Director for twenty years, during which...
PCM7: Emerson String Quartet and Elisabeth Leonskaja – Barber, Debussy, Shostakovich
Perhaps it’s something to do with the run up to Labor Day in America (first Monday of September), but Philip Setzer – leading the Emerson String Quartet at the penultimate...
Prom 60: San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas (1) – Schoenberg’s Theme and Variations & Mahler 1 – Jeremy Denk plays Henry Cowell’s Piano Concerto
It takes a brawny pair of forearms to play Henry Cowell’s Piano Concerto, less to support the fingers while they pummel the keys than to flatten whole octaves in a...
Prom 59: Life Story Prom presented by Sir David Attenborough, with music by Murray Gold played by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Jeremy Holland-Smith
It is some seventeen years since television-branded Proms entered the annual Royal Albert Hall series: the first Blue Peter Prom was back in 1998. Since then drama (Doctor Who and...
Prom 58: Sakari Oramo conducts Sibelius’s En saga and Kullervo [Johanna Rusanen-Kartano, Waltteri Torikka, Polytech Choir, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra]
For a conductor who has been associated (and not merely through nationality) with the music of Sibelius throughout his career, it made sense that Sakari Oramo conduct a Prom devoted...
PSM4: London Sinfonietta/Thierry Fischer with Michael Cox and Mark van de Wiel – Pierre Boulez, Helen Grime and Christian Mason
The last of this season’s Proms Saturday Matinees continued from the first with its tribute to Pierre Boulez in his 90th-birthday year; in the company of the London Sinfonietta, which...
Prom 57: Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Bernard Haitink with Maria João Pires – C-major Schubert (Italian Style Overture & Great Symphony) and A-major Mozart (Piano Concerto K488)
In these three works of contrasted style and scale, the celebrated Chamber Orchestra of Europe forged a consistent approach by bringing out much of the inner detail of the music...
Prom 56: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton – world premieres of Ørjan Matre’s preSage and Alissa Firsova’s Bergen’s Bonfire, The Rite of Spring – Alina Ibragimova plays Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto; Firsova Composer Portrait
If you miss the ferry, as the touring Bergen Philharmonic did, and that in turn loses the planned connection, then you are bound to be late at the Royal Albert...
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