BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 73: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (1) – Semyon Bychkov conducts Symphonies by Brahms and Franz Schmidt
This first of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Proms was of two Symphonies – the first a staple of the repertoire, the second being still unfamiliar outside of Austria. At the helm...
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Prom 72: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Litton – Nielsen’s Springtime on Funen and, with Henning Kraggerud, the Violin Concerto, and Charles Ives’s Symphony No.4
The Nielsen element at this year’s Proms concluded with two pieces still to make a wider impact outside Denmark. With the cantata Springtime on Funen (1921), the range (not size)...
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Prom 71 – St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra/Yuri Temirkanov (2) – The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh & Enigma Variations – Julia Fischer plays Tchaikovsky
Yuri Temirkanov must be one of the most unpredictable conductors on the international circuit and I am not referring to his unfortunate remarks about the plausibility of women conductors. Unlike...
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Prom 70 – St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra/Yuri Temirkanov (1) – Francesca da Rimini & Scheherazade – Nikolai Lugansky plays Rachmaninov
The first of the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s two Proms was a sell-out, not surprisingly since it contained two of the most popular works in the repertory, the Rachmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov’s...
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PCM8: Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio – Brahms’s Opus 8 & Arlene Sierra’s Butterflies Remember a Mountain
With Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach still ringing majestically in my ears from Saturday night, I did wonder how I’d take to another cellist so soon, especially as the cello takes the...
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Prom 69: BBC Concert Orchestra/Keith Lockhart with Alison Balsom – Danse macabre, premiere of Guy Barker’s The Lanterne of Light, Carmina Burana
This eighth Free Prom, opening the gateway to classical music for anyone new to it, was programmatically a triumph even if it was comparatively ordinary when judged against others from...
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Prom 68: Yo-Yo Ma plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete Cello Suites
Like the complete cycle of Prokofiev’s Piano Concertos in one Prom earlier in the season, it seemed an eccentric or even dubious idea to present all six of Bach’s Cello...
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Prom 67 – Bernstein Stage and Screen (On the Waterfront, Candide, West Side Story) – John Wilson Orchestra with Julian Ovenden, Louise Dearman, Scarlett Strallen, Lucy Schaufer
Judging from the whooping, cheering and ability to applaud absolutely anything, the vast majority of the capacity audience for this Leonard Bernstein Prom confirmed that John Wilson has an almost...
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Prom 66: London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski – Fidelio Overture & Shostakovich 8 – Mitsuko Uchida plays Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto
With so many newspaper and television images revealing the plight of Syrian refugees seeking a better life, this Prom, linking themes of war, tyranny and freedom, could not have been...
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Prom 65: Being Both – Alice Coote sings Handel – Giulio Cesare, Semele, Hercules, Theodora, Messiah – with The English Concert and Harry Bicket
It is a sign of the ever-growing popularity of Handel’s music among concert- and opera-goers that a sequence of familiar and unfamiliar numbers from his stage-works is not only regarded...
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Prom 64: BBCNOW/Thomas Søndergård – Carl Nielsen’s music for Aladdin & Mahler 4 – world premiere of B. Tommy Andersson’s Pan with David Goode; Andersson Composer Portrait
The world premiere of Pan was preceded by the last of this Season’s clutch of Composer Portraits hosted by the ever-urbane Andrew McGregor. B. Tommy Andersson (born 1964) – the...
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Prom 63: Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Peter Oundjian – Messiaen’s Hymne & Bruckner 7 – Igor Levit plays Mozart K595
Transcendence and sublimity mark these works but it was only the first and briefest of them – Messiaen’s early Hymne (from 1932, reconstructed by the composer from memory in 1947...
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Prom 62: Marin Alsop conducts Brahms with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – Academic Festival Overture, Alto Rhapsody, Triumphlied, Symphony 1
Having given Brahms’s German Requiem and Tragic Overture at the Proms in 2013, Marin Alsop and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment appeared together again this year, demonstrating more...
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Prom 61: San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas (2) – Charles Ives’s Decoration Day & Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – Yuja Wang plays Bartók
Hot-foot from the Edinburgh Festival, the San Francisco Symphony was a welcome return visitor for its second Prom. Michael Tilson Thomas has been Music Director for twenty years, during which...
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PCM7: Emerson String Quartet and Elisabeth Leonskaja – Barber, Debussy, Shostakovich
Perhaps it’s something to do with the run up to Labor Day in America (first Monday of September), but Philip Setzer – leading the Emerson String Quartet at the penultimate...