BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 55: SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg/François-Xavier Roth – Boulez’s explosante-fixe, Ligeti’s Lontano and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra
A first and a last, as François-Xavier Roth told the audience after this Prom. The SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg will be celebrating its 70th-birthday next year, but it...
Prom 54: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner – Britten & Janáček and the premiere of Raymond Yiu’s Symphony – Emily Beynon plays Nielsen’s Flute Concerto
The 'Symphony' in different guises, this Prom opened with Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) given maximum force and loudness at its outset, Edward Gardner maybe giving too much away too...
Prom 53: Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen – Miraculous Mandarin and Orango – David Fray plays Mozart K491
Notable by its absence in 2014 (only its third non-Prom-year since it first appeared in this festival in 1962: 1965 and 1997 were the other two), the Philharmonia Orchestra roared...
PCM6: Jeremy Denk plays Piano Sonatas by Scriabin (Black Mass), Bartók and Beethoven (Opus 111)
A friend from the States, a very keen Jeremy Denk fan, told me (with a slight warning inflection) that this pianist belongs firmly to the tradition of American classical-music educative...
Prom 52: Thierry Escaich Organ Recital
As time goes by, one eventually learns to be grateful for all mercies, so if it appears ungracious to criticise what I believe is the first-ever complete evening Prom given...
Prom 51: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Andris Nelsons (2) – Haydn 90, Barber Second Essay, Shostakovich 10
Only its eighth appearance at the Proms (of which I’ve made five), the second of this season’s Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concerts under music director Andris Nelsons – following hard on...
Prom 50: András Schiff plays J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations
Any doubt about the suitability of the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations vanished with the opening ‘Aria’, which served as a delightfully cool...
Prom 49: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Andris Nelsons (1) – Mahler 6 – Håkan Hardenberger plays Brett Dean’s Dramatis personae
Welcome back! Following the dearth of visiting US orchestras to the Proms in recent years, this Boston Symphony Orchestra visit, with its new music director Andris Nelsons at the helm,...
Prom 48: J. S. Bach – Mass in G minor, Brandenburg Concerto No.2, Magnificat – BBC Singers, Academy of Ancient Music/David Hill
This late-night Bach Prom could have been designed to refute recent media reports of intimidating or poorly-behaved, noisy audiences and our diminishing powers of concentration hastened by electronic gadget dependency....
Prom 47: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo – Tapiola, Beast Sampler, Beethoven 7 – Stephen Farr plays Jón Leifs’s Organ Concerto
Tapiola was carried forward from the final concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s 2014-15 Season at the Barbican Centre when Sakari Oramo completed his superb traversal of Carl Nielsen’s Six...
Prom 46: Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Fabio Luisi – Nielsen’s Helios, Hymnus amoris & Four Temperaments – Nikolaj Znaider plays Brahms’s Violin Concerto
If Fabio Luisi’s becoming Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (in two season’s time) was other than a coincidence following the untimely death of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos,...
Prom 45: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Charles Dutoit – Debussy’s Petite Suite & Shostakovich 15 – Elisabeth Leonskaja plays Mozart K482
A well-planned Prom, if with variable results. The opening item, Henri Bűsser’s Ravel-esque orchestration of Debussy’s Petite Suite (piano/four hands), was apparently last given at the Proms 88 years ago....
Prom 44: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim – Schoenberg, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky
Apart from the deserved admiration and goodwill they inspire, the members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra must command enormous respect from serious music-lovers for their far from populist programming. Here...
Prom 43: Sibelius Symphony Cycle (3) – BBC Symphony Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä – Symphonies 5, 6 & 7
Although Sibelius was not the sort of creative figure extensively promoted by William Glock (the innovative BBC Controller of Music and Proms planner of the 1960s and early-1970s), his works...
PCM5: A Sondheim Cabaret – Kitty Whately, Jamie Parker, Siân Phillips, Anthony Brown & Richard Sisson
This lunchtime Prom tenuously linked to Stephen Sondheim’s 85th-birthday (which was back in March) was excellent in showcasing the composer and lyricist’s artistry as a song-smith but severely lacking in...
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