BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 59: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Herbert Blomstedt – Beethoven – Leonore No.2 & Symphony 7 – András Schiff plays the Emperor Concerto
The Beethoven concert was once a regular Friday-night feature of the Promenade Concerts, but as a Monday Bank Holiday event it was greatly appreciated.Herbert Blomstedt, recently turned 89, stepped boldly...
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Proms Chamber Music 7: Armida Quartett, Lise Berthaud, David Saudubray – Schubert D703, Sally Beamish, Mozart K515
The Armida Quartett is part of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme. Its members are however already very experienced musicians, the group formed in Berlin in 2006, and the...
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Prom 58: CBeebies II
Alex began his Promming career two years ago, at the age of four – seventeen years younger than I was when I began mine, in 1977. In the four decades...
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Prom 57: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov – Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No.2 and Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony – Elisabeth Kulman sings Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder
Wagner’s song-cycle sets poems by his muse, the married Matilde Wesendonck, and was cleverly programmed as ‘light relief’ between two monumental symphonic works requiring brilliance and virtuosity.The Songs were heard...
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Prom 56: CBeebies I
After attending the 2014 CBeebies Prom and thoroughly enjoying it, we were anticipating another memorable morning. As we arrived we were greeted by human-sized characters from several CBeebies programmes and...
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Prom 55 – City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla – Magic Flute Overture & Tchaikovsky 4 – Barbara Hannigan sings Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you
At one level, this Proms programme might appear to be made up of unconnected pieces, for the inclusion of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you is not – at least,...
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Prom 54 – Mozart Clarinet Concerto (with Ákos Ács) and Requiem – Collegium Vocale Gent & Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer
The singing soloist in Mozart’s Concert Aria, Per questa bella mano, and also later in the Requiem, was Hanno Müller-Brachmann, triumphantly replacing the indisposed Neal Davies. The Aria, with its...
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Prom 53 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko – Torus & Rachmaninov 3 – Alexey Stadler plays Shostakovich; Composers in Conversation: Emily Howard
The evening began with an engaging and illuminating conversation between Andrew McGregor and Emily Howard, in preparation for the first outing of her Torus. This born-1979 composer from Liverpool, with...
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Prom 52: São Paulo Late-Night Brazilian/Marin Alsop
And so to the “carnival” atmosphere of Brazilian popular music; from the audience, less than a handful moved at all, let alone in time to the music. Two made some...
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Prom 51: São Paulo Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop – Nobre’s Kabbalah, Villa-Lobos, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances – Gabriela Montero plays Grieg
The São Paolo Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop flew the Brazilian flag unashamedly on their two-Prom night.Marlos Nobre (born 1939) is a prolific composer, everything except opera. Kabbalah (2004) is...
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Prom 50: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Alexander Vedernikov – Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet & Prokofiev 3 – Stephen Hough plays Paganini Rhapsody
Of Tchaikovsky’s musical takes on Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet is the gold standard, whereas The Tempest and Hamlet are less consistently inspired if full of good things. However, the latter,...
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Prom 49: Quincy Jones Prom – Metropole Orkest/Jules Buckley with Richard Bona, Jacob Collier, Laura Mvula, Alfredo Rodríguez, Cory Henry
If Quincy Jones is not among the greatest artistic figures of the post-war era, he is assuredly one of the most versatile. Just how versatile was the concept underlying this...
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Proms Chamber Music 6: Louis Lortie plays Rossini, Poulenc, Fauré and Liszt – Venezia e Napoli
This beautifully crafted programme, built carefully from a request to Louis Lortie to include some Rossini, interweaved musical references to Venice and Naples in an inventive and wholly satisfactory way.Lortie,...
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Prom 48 – Reflections on Narcissus & A Midsummer Night’s Dream – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Matthias Pintscher with Alisa Weilerstein
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Association, Matthias Pintscher, is no stranger to acting as composer-conductor at the Proms. Here, the piece was Reflections on Narcissus (2005), a 35-minute work for...
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Prom 47: Ulster Orchestra/Rafael Payare – Piers Hellawell’s Wild Flow & Tchaikovsky 5 – Narek Hakhnazaryan plays Haydn
“No matter what you do, someone, somewhere will complain” – so runs the old adage, and whilst no single Proms season can please everyone, there is no doubt in my...