BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 64: London PO/Vladimir Jurowski – Witch of Atlas, Pohjola’s Daughter, Zarathustra – Anika Vavic/Prokofiev
We opened with further Bantockian adventures, a 15-minute piece by the relatively young Granville Bantock (1868-1946). He's a feature of this year’s BBC Proms. Courtesy of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s eponymous...
Prom 63: Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen – Der Schauspieldirektor & Bruckner 7 – Midori plays Eötvös
With this Proms visit the Philharmonia Orchestra under its Principal Conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, renewed the beauty contest that has been a feature of the closing days of the season. But...
Prom 62: A Celebration of Charlie Parker – Django Bates and Norrbotten Big Band
It hardly seems 26 years since Django Bates brought Loose Tubes to the Royal Albert Hall for a late-night Prom which, reckless even by the standard of that most unpredictable...
Prom 61: Josep Pons/Scherzo à la russe, Language of Leaving, Petrushka, F. P. Zimmermann plays Brahms
The main Prom opened with three Stravinsky vignettes, further contrasted with his Petrushka at the end of the evening. Scherzo à la russe, originally scored for Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra (jazz...
Prom 60: Andrew Davis/Glyndebourne’s Billy Budd with Mark Padmore, Jacques Imbrailo & Brindley Sherratt
Having read Mark Valencia’s review (link below) of Glyndebourne’s first revival of its staging of Billy Budd, I was kicking myself for not moving Heaven and Earth to get to...
Prom 59: Hollywood Rhapsody – John Wilson Orchestra with Venera Gimadieva, Matthew Ford & Jane Monheit
After each sensational concert by John Wilson and his handpicked orchestra you’d be forgiven for asking if there is any great music from Hollywood left to be discovered. Yet back...
Prom 58: Light Organ – Richard Hills at Royal Albert Hall
No, not a concert played on a Hammond SK1 (the smallest and lightest organ that the company has ever made) but a recital that showcased melody played on the immensely...
PCM7: Signum Quartet & Christian Ihle Hadland – Maconchy & Brahms
Although the two works here are rather different in style, they both inhabit a world of passionate, intense emotion. Whereas Elizabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet No.3 (1938) is concise and terse,...
Prom 57: Mark Elder conducts Wagner’s Parsifal with Lars Cleveman, Katarina Dalayman & John Tomlinson [Hallé]
The baton-less hands of Mark Elder appeared to pluck wisps of sound from his players and fold them into diaphanous melodic shapes. From the slowest, most rapt of Preludes until...
Prom 56: Gustav Mahler Orchester/Philippe Jordan – Rienzi & Shostakovich 5 – Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Ravel
This Prom promised more than it delivered. With an attractively traditional programme, an experienced soloist and a full house, expectations were high. The end result was distinctly uneven. Youth orchestras...
PSM4: ECO/Paul Watkins, Ben Johnson & Richard Watkins – Britten’s Serenade and Lutosławski’s Paroles tissées
A time there was, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, that the English Chamber Orchestra was as synonymous with Benjamin Britten as the Academy of Saint Martin in the...
Prom 55: Warsaw Philharmonic/Antoni Wit with Alexander Melnikov – Lutosławski, Shostakovich, Panufnik
This enticing Prom from the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (Orkiestra Filharmonii Narodowej w Warszawie) and its long-serving if here outgoing conductor, Antoni Wit – familiar folk from numerous Naxos recordings –...
Prom 54: World Routes – Trio Da Kali, Fidan Hajiyeva & Gochaq Askarov, Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba
The World Routes concert is now a regular feature of the Proms. This one drew on the music of two very contrasting economies – the oil-rich Azerbaijan, hosts of the...
Prom 53: Rotterdam PO/Yannick Nézet-Séguin – Tchaikovsky & Prokofiev – Anna Caterina Antonacci sings Wagner
There was a time when everything Yannick Nézet-Séguin touched turned to gold, but this was not the case with his Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Prom, at least not in the first...
Prom 52: Sakari Oramo/Cave of Luminous Mind, Celtic Symphony, Enigma Variations – Lisa Batiashvili plays Sibelius
Sakari Oramo’s second Prom as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra proved a substantial affair, opening as it did with a new work by Param Vir. Best known for...
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