BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 54: John Eliot Gardiner conducts Beethoven’s Missa solemnis
The late-night Proms seem to become more adventurous in scope, and surely there are few other compositions which can equal, still less surpass, the epic vision of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis....
Prom 53: Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer (2) – Brahms’s Third and Fourth Symphonies
The Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer returned to the Royal Albert Hall for a second night and to launch a Proms Brahms Symphony Cycle with the final two such...
Prom 52: Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer (1) – Hungarian Dances, Unfinished Symphony, Music of the Spheres, Pleasure Train, Blue Danube Waltz, Dances of Galánta
Many years ago record companies put out collections of short, lighter pieces on LP under some such title as “Promenade Favourites”. Even then the concept was outdated, since the Proms...
Prom 51: Ulster Orchestra/Jac van Steen with Zhang Zuo – Slavonic Dances, Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Roscatha, Bill Whelan’s Riverdance Suite
The latest Bank Holiday Weekend at the Proms could easily have been marketed as a Dance-a-thon. Saturday night’s Mother Goose and Scheherazade were both made into ballets, and Sunday night’s...
PCM6: Mozart, Mahler and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen – Louis Schwizgebel & Royal String Quartet
An oddly assorted Proms Chamber Music recital, beginning with Mozart in limpidly unaffected mood. His D major Piano Sonata (1777) may not be among the most probing or prescient of...
Prom 50: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek with Alisa Weilerstein – From the House of the Dead, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, Beethoven 7
What makes a good Prom? There are various scenarios and this marvellous concert epitomised at least three of them: the visiting orchestra, on its mettle and determined to show itself...
Prom 49: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo with Anu Komsi – Mother Goose, Voice verser, Songs of a Fairy Princess, Scheherazade
This Prom – combining French, Finnish, Polish and Russian music with a common basis in the fantastical – was as much a showcase for soprano Anu Komsi as for that...
Prom 48: Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Ilan Volkov with Jonathan Biss – Magma, Schumann’s Piano Concerto, Geysir, Beethoven 5
Not the longest-travelled orchestra to the Proms (the Melbourne Symphony took the palm there) nor the highest in latitude (the Lapland Chamber Orchestra are more northerly), but the Iceland Symphony...
Prom 47: Britten’s War Requiem – Andris Nelsons conducts CBSO, BBC Proms Youth Choir, CBSO Children’s Chorus, Susan Gritton, Toby Spence & Hanno Müller-Brachmann
This year’s Proms are serving the centenary of the start of the First World War with a wealth of imaginative programming, and it’s right that the orchestra that played in...
Prom 46: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim – The Marriage of Figaro, Resonating Sounds, Ramal, Alborada del gracioso, Boléro
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra dates back to 1999 as the brainchild of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. Mixing young musicians from Israel, Palestine and several other countries (including Spain), this...
Prom 45: Laura Mvula with Esperanza Spalding, Electric Vocals, Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley – Sing to the Moon
Although it is not unprecedented to have 'pop' artists at the Proms, to have one that has such current cross-cultural appeal is unusual. This might explain the enthusiastic rumpus created...
Prom 44: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Davis with Truls Mørk – Don Juan, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Symphonie fantastique
Sir Andrew Davis, going great guns at the Lyric Opera of Chicago until at least 2021, has since January last year also been the Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony...
Prom 43: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner with Albina Shagimuratova, Stuart Skelton, Mikhail Petrenko and Baiba Skride – Scherzo fantastique, The Bells, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, 1812 Overture
A Russian programme oddly shaped and of no particular relevance to wider Proms themes but enjoyable for all that. Edward Gardner may not be the most innovative conductor of his...
PCM5: Anne Schwanewilms & Malcolm Martineau – Debussy and Richard Strauss
With the unfortunate withdrawal of Alice Coote due to ill health (and with her Julius Drake), the BBC Proms team secured the considerable services of Anne Schwanewilms and Malcolm Martineau...
Prom 42: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Manze with Roderick Williams and Allan Clayton – Rudi Stephan, Frederick Kelly, George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony
“Lest we forget” was the strap-line above this concert, one of several Proms marking (or occasionally just cashing in on) the outbreak of the First World War one hundred years...
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