BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 28: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo – Egmont, Electric Preludes, Oedipus rex – with Francesco D’Orazio, Allan Clayton, Hilary Summers and Rory Kinnear
The hybrid term “opera-oratorio” captures the flavour of Oedipus rex very well. Bracing in its directness, searing in its impact, Stravinsky’s fifty-minute adaptation of Sophocles’s first Oedipus play may not...
Prom 27: BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Mark Wigglesworth – Wagner & Elgar – Matthew Trusler gives the London premiere of William Mathias’s Violin Concerto
The house was at best two-thirds full but this programme certainly played to the strengths of Mark Wigglesworth, the nearly-man whose upcoming ENO tenure might just consummate all that early...
Prom 26: European Union Youth Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko – Berio’s Sinfonia & Shostakovich 4
For its 20th-appearance at the Proms, appearing with Vasily Petrenko rather than the indisposed Semyon Bychkov (who will, we are assured, be back for Strauss’s Elektra later in the month),...
Prom 25: Late-night John Tavener – Ikon of Light & Requiem Fragments – Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips
Presumably not commissioned with the First World War commemoration in mind, one of the late Sir John Tavener’s last works was appositely premiered in this Prom leading up to the...
Prom 24: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Donald Runnicles – Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia … Mahler 9
An enticing juxtaposition of contemporaneous masterpieces, brought all the closer given there was no interval, the Mahler completed in 1909 and the Vaughan Williams the following year in which he...
PCM3: London Winds play Mozart and Richard Strauss
Summer days and serenades for wind instruments are an ideal match. The light streaming through the windows of Cadogan Hall only enhanced that feeling, particularly so in early Richard Strauss...
Prom 23: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Donald Runnicles – The Sun Dances, Beethoven 4, Mozart’s Requiem
The Sun Dances, written in the year 2000 by John McLeod (born in 1934), has suffered the fate of many a new work. Commissioned by the National Youth Orchestra of...
Prom 22: War Horse Prom
Initially leaving me (somewhat uncharacteristically) at a loss for words, the BBC Proms teamed up with the National Theatre for the first time to present a centenary commemoration of the...
Prom 21: Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate – John Wilson Orchestra with Ben Davis, Alexandra Silber, Tony Yazbeck & Louise Dearman; conducted by John Wilson
‘Another op’nin’, another show’ – this time Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. John Wilson and his hand-picked Orchestra have delighted Proms-goers since 2009 with their celebration of classic M-G-M film...
PSM1: Armonia Atenea/George Petrou with Myrsini Margariti & Irini Karaianni – Greek Mythology and Baroque Opera
George Petrou has been a rather well-kept secret in the world of Baroque opera performance, at least in the UK. Handel fans will probably already know his handful of recordings,...
Prom 20: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins with James Crabb – War Elegy, The Singing, Walton 1; Sally Beamish Composer Portrait
Sally Beamish is a very successful composer. Despite experiencing what might have been the somewhat off-putting interviewing style by the fast-talking Andrew McGregor, she emerged as a pleasant, outgoing personality,...
Prom 19: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Vasily Petrenko with Inger Dam-Jensen and BBC Singers – Richard Strauss’s Festival Prelude, German Motet & Four Last Songs and Elgar’s Second Symphony
An intriguing if impractical programme in which the presence of Elgar alongside Richard Strauss (it’s the latter’s 150th-anniversary) prompted the thought that British music of a certain kind has featured...
Prom 18: BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena with Alexandre Tharaud – Night’s Black Bird, Ravel’s Left-Hand Piano Concerto, Mahler 5
Following Prom 10 and the two CBeebies programmes, the BBC Philharmonic returned with Chief Conductor Juanjo Mena and opened with Harrison Birtwistle’s Night’s Black Bird. On paper there was a...
Prom 17: Late-night Les Arts Florissants/William Christie – Rameau’s Grands Motets
This was the second appearance of Les Arts Florissants at the Proms this season, again celebrating Rameau in the 250th-anniversary year of his death. Seeing as Rameau’s contribution to the...
Prom 16: Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra/Sascha Goetzel – Islamey … Beni Mora … Belkis, Queen of Sheba – with Daniel Hope giving the premiere of Gabriel Prokofiev’s ‘1914’ Violin Concerto
A Proms visit from Turkey’s leading orchestra might have been expected to focus on music with an Eastern or Oriental flavour and so it proved, though the centrepiece of this...
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