BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 30: Late Night Sinatra – Seth MacFarlane with Jamie Parker & Claire Martin; John Wilson Orchestra
Over the last couple of weeks BBC Radio and BBC Television have extensively promoted this Prom, so it is hardly surprising that it was a sell-out. There was plenty of...
Prom 29: BBC Philharmonic/Nicholas Collon – Idomeneo ballet music, La valse, Un oiseau des arbres de Vie, Oiseaux tristes, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements – Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G
France and the dance seemed to be the connecting factor in this effervescent Prom offering the best of the BBC Philharmonic with Nicholas Collon. There were two French composers Ravel...
Prom 28: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, The Poem of Ecstasy – Lawrence Power plays Mark-Anthony Turnage’s On Opened Ground
It is very easy to pigeonhole Oliver Knussen, and unfortunately some people do, yet anyone aware of his conducting craft – such as in Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ Symphony, Richard Strauss’s Don...
Prom 27: Late Night With … BBC Radio 6 Music – A Winged Victory for the Sullen, London Brass, Random Dance Company Wayne McGregor, Nils Frahm
This was the second Prom to be held under the auspices of BBC Radio 6 Music, and while the first in 2013 was essentially a showcase for the station and...
Prom 26: BBCNOW/Tadaaki Otaka with Chloë Hanslip & Ailish Tynan – Walton, Vaughan Williams, Grace Williams, Elgar – Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, Fairest of Stars, Froissart
It was a genuine pleasure to welcome Tadaaki Otaka back to the Proms with what one might regard as ‘his’ orchestra in terms of those he has conducted in the...
Prom 25: John Eliot Gardiner conducts Monteverdi’s Orfeo – with Krystian Adam & Mariana Flores and the Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists
Opulence and animation in abundance marked this semi-staged performance of Monteverdi's seminal opera, Orfeo. These were inherent qualities in Sir John Eliot Gardiner's interpretation, rather than inculcated in order to...
Prom 24: Donald Runnicles conducts James MacMillan’s Fourth Symphony and Mahler’s Fifth – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
James MacMillan’s latest Symphony, completed this year, is dedicated to Donald Runnicles. Sir James’s No.4 plays continuously for close on forty minutes, is scored for a full if not extravagant...
PCM3: Apollon Musagète Quartet – Webern, Colin Matthews and Beethoven
With their affectionate performance of Webern’s Slow Movement, the members of the Apollon Musagète Quartet brought forward its likely status as a love-song to his cousin Wilhelmine Mortl, whom the...
Prom 23: Donald Runnicles conducts Verdi’s Requiem – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with Angela Meade, Karen Cargill, Yosep Kang & Raymond Aceto
Donald Runnicles was conducting, and he was wearing two of his official hats, those of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.Verdi’s Requiem here took root in...
Prom 22: Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon – Pastoral Symphonies by Brett Dean and Beethoven, and Anna Meredith’s Smatter Hauler – Francesco Piemontesi plays Mozart’s Coronation Concerto
There were also at least three phenomenal feats of memory – not just from the players in the Meredith and Beethoven, but also Francesco Piemontesi, playing the Piano Concerto from...
Prom 21: Alina Ibragimova plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin (2)
The Proms’ late-night Bach series suggests intimacy and meditation, and that is what Alina Ibragimova gave in this second instalment of her complete survey of the composer’s solo-violin Sonatas and...
Prom 20: BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena – Schubert’s Tragic Symphony, Luke Bedford’s Instability, Bruckner’s Mass in F minor with Orfeón Pamplonés
Luke Bedford has for over a decade been writing music difficult to define in terms of idiom, while avoiding any risk of stylistic tourism. This consistency is essential to Instability...
Prom 19: Alina Ibragimova plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin (1)
This is only the second Prom (and it was a late-night affair) – during one hundred and twenty-one seasons – to programme J. S. Bach’s solo-violin repertoire. It seems fitting...
Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov – Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony – Katia & Marielle Labèque play Mozart K365
Once in a blue moon I find myself utterly aghast at a concert. As it happened it was a blue moon (a month in which there are two full moons...
Prom 17: Hallé/Mark Elder – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Sancta civitas, Elgar’s Second Symphony
The Proms exploration of neglected British music continued with this rare revival of Sancta civitas (1925) by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Designated an oratorio, its brief duration (little more than 30...
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