BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 42: Sibelius Symphony Cycle (2) – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ilan Volkov – Symphonies 3 & 4 and Violin Concerto with Julian Rachlin; world premiere of Michael Finnissy’s Janne and Finnissy Composer Portrait
Ilan Volkov took up the baton for the second instalment of the Proms’ cycle of Sibelius’s Symphonies for the composer’s 150th-anniversary. They were generally cogent readings in which he and...
Prom 41: Sherlock Holmes – A Musical Mind – Matthew Sweet, Mark Gatiss, Christine Rice, Jack Liebeck; Stile Antico; BBC Concert Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth
From Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900) to Mr Holmes (2015), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s (fictitious) detective continues to draw cinema audiences and Benedict Cumberbatch’s impersonation dominates television screens globally.So it was...
Prom 40: Sibelius Symphony Cycle (1) – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard – Symphonies 1 & 2 and Finlandia
The first of three consecutive Proms evenings devoted to Sibelius’s Seven Symphonies, and more or less identical in their programming to the trio of back-to-back concerts that Simon Rattle and...
PSM3: Apollo’s Fire & Jeannette Sorrell with Alina Ibragimova – J. S. & C. P. E. Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi
Perhaps not the most burning question of our time, but I did wonder as I climbed the stairs to Cadogan Hall’s stalls for this third Proms Saturday Matinee (and the...
Prom 39: Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Glyndebourne – Edgaras Montvidas, Sally Matthews, Mari Eriksmoen, Brenden Patrick Gunnell, Tobias Kehrer & Franck Saurel; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Robin Ticciati
Later this year David Pickard will have moved from the directorship of Glyndebourne to that of the BBC Proms, so the Sussex-based company’s annual decamping to the Royal Albert Hall...
Prom 38: BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena – John Foulds’s Three Mantras and – with Steven Osborne & Valérie Hartmann-Claverie – Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony
What a triumph for the brass! Considerable passages within both these works are driven by this section, and the brass-players of the BBC Philharmonic brought to bear an exemplary variety.In...
Prom 37: Late Night with … BBC Radio 1Xtra – Wretch 32, Stormzy, Lethal Bizzle, Chip, Little Simz, Krept & Konan, Fekky; Metropole Orkest/Jules Buckley
The fusion between the European Classical Music tradition and the contemporary Urban Music genres of Hip Hop, Rap and Grime promised a curious and unpredictable partnering. It would be reasonable...
Prom 36: BBC Symphony Orchestra/François-Xavier Roth – Boulez’s Figures – Doubles – Prismes … Ravel/Boulez Frontispice … Stravinsky’s The Firebird – Marc-André Hamelin plays Ravel’s Left-Hand Piano Concerto
This was a Pierre Boulez Prom – as composer and arranger and then through music closely associated with him. Now aged 90 and no longer conducting, he needs his disciples...
Prom 35: Story of Swing – Clare Teal, Jamie Davis, Elaine Delmar & Clarke Peters; The Promunards; Guy Barker Big Band; Winston Rollins Big Band
It made sense to take swing music as the focus for this year’s jazz-centred Prom. Not only is it a genre immediately identifiable in terms of sound and rhythm, but...
Prom 34: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits – Peter Grimes & Prokofiev 5 – Nicola Benedetti plays Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Whether or not planned as such, the programme of this Prom was conveniently unified by date – all three works being premiered, albeit with varying degrees of success, in 1945.In...
PCM4: Evelyn Glennie & Philip Smith
Three weeks after her 50th-birthday (19 July), Evelyn Glennie returned to the Proms for this lunchtime concert, with regular recital partner, Philip Smith, twenty-six years after their first appearance at...
Prom 33: Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner – Beethoven’s Fifth & Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony
Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring are often presented as giant musical leaps for mankind. Perhaps no less remarkable is the musical distance travelled between Beethoven’s Fifth...
Prom 32: Eric Whitacre conducts… The River Cam (with Leonard Elschenbroich), Cloudburst, Equus, Deep Field – and Martin James Bartlett plays Rhapsody in Blue
I didn’t know what to expect on this Sunday afternoon – not having particularly registered Eric Whitacre before (and being elsewhere on his previous Proms appearance, No.62 – late night...
Prom 31: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain/Mark Elder – Tansy Davies’s Re-greening & Mahler 9
To begin this without-interval Prom the gifted members of the National Youth Orchestra played Tansy Davies’s Re-greening without a conductor, as intended, and did so with total confidence and unanimity,...
PSM2: B’Rock with Dmitry Sinkovsky & Mary-Ellen Nesi – Vivaldi, Caldara, Geminiani
The previous night, over at the Royal Albert Hall, the BBC Philharmonic had played a French-themed programme with works from three of the last four centuries. This Saturday-afternoon at Cadogan...
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