BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Unless Ilan Volkov had suddenly decided to play the opening work half-speed (or perhaps, Oliver Knussen-like, repeat it complete), the listing in the Proms Guide of Gérard Grisey’s Dérives proved...
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Surrounded by Ron Arad’s Curtain Call (polymer rods defining a circular space inside the Roundhouse) the BBC Proms renewed a 45-year-old association with this venue, where from 1971 there were...
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Fond thoughts of Raymond Gubbay sprang to mind more than once during this Proms performance of Janáček’s autumnal masterpiece, The Makropulos Case. Over the years the populist impresario has solved...
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Shakespeare is not just the most-performed playwright for the stage but also the most filmed author for the screen. A well-devised Proms programme showed this variety with a British first...
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The Royal Albert Hall was packed on one of the hottest days of the year and it was a full house in other ways too. Daniel Barenboim’s health may or...
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J. S. Bach and Arvo Pärt both seek to capture the sacred and divine realm in their choral music but they do so by very contrasting means. Where Bach calls...
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Mark Valencia writes...Tenors, those kings of the limelight, rarely take second place to anyone; but in the six songs of Das Lied von der Erde it's the alto soloist (or...
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The Royal Albert Hall was more than two-thirds full for this peculiar programme, bookending London and UK premieres of novelties (not dissimilar in idiom) with neo-classical provocations conceived a century...
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Stile Antico brings a fresh, intelligent and collaborative approach to vocal polyphony. There is no conductor. In Thomas Morley’s ‘It was a Lover and his Lasse’ the twelve singers were...
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This Prom continued the season’s emphasis on the cello with a first hearing for Falling in the Fire (2016) by Charlotte Bray. Inspired by carnage wrought on the ancient city...
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The candle-lit interior of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse provided the perfect backdrop for this Shakespeare-inspired Prom featuring the ravishing music of Henry Purcell and his contemporaries John Blow and Matthew...
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While George Gershwin is the headline-grabbing name in this, the annual Proms appearance by John Wilson’s Orchestra, he is but one of five composers jostling for space in a concert...
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There could be no greater contrast in Proms terms than the size of the Royal Albert Hall as compared to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which is a twentieth of the...
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The juxtaposition of Webern’s Passacaglia with Brahms’s example (the Finale of Symphony 4) has been promulgated at the Proms at least twice before – from the CBSO and Sakari Oramo...
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Six years on from his debut at these concerts, Jamie Cullum returned to the Proms for this late-night event which played to his strengths as pianist, singer, songwriter and all-round...