BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 51: LSO/Daniel Harding with Ian Bostridge – Tippett, Britten & Elgar [Colin Davis Tribute]
It’s fair to say, I’m sure, that when Sir Colin Davis passed away on April 14 at the age of 85 something irreplaceable was lost to us. Certainly for regular...
Prom 50: Ilan Volkov/Chord-Breaking Machine, No other people., Coptic Light … Frederic Rzewski Piano Concerto
Ilan Volkov’s Proms have latterly become something of an odyssey through the more experimental realms of music – witness his diverse tribute to John Cage last season – and this...
Prom 49: Scottish Chamber O/Robin Ticciati – King Lear & Eroica Symphony – Stephen Hough plays Mendelssohn
In his concerts and recordings with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Robin Ticciati has shown an affinity with the music of Berlioz. Here one of the composer’s more elusive but ultimately...
PCM6: Robin Tritschler & London Conchord Ensemble – Peter Warlock’s The Curlew, Poulenc, Imogen Holst
This blend of French and English music was largely well chosen, though the suspicion lingered that many would have preferred to end the concert with The Curlew rather than the...
Prom 48: Matthias Pintscher/Rapsodie espagnole, Firebird, Chute d’étoiles [Tine Thing Helseth & Marco Blaauw]
The Proms is certainly a unique institution. With around two-thirds of seats occupied, an unlikely mix of tourists and trumpet enthusiasts enjoyed or endured the demanding centrepiece of this concert,...
Prom 47: OAE/Marin Alsop – Schumann 4 & Brahms’s Tragic Overture and A German Requiem
On the surface this Prom appears unremittingly doom-laden and despairing, but any performance that plumbs all the dimensions of Brahms’s A German Requiem should also find much that is consoling...
Prom 46: CBSO/Andris Nelsons with Kristīne Opolais – Dvořák, Otello, Eugene Onegin, Emperor Waltz
Chemistry between an orchestra and conductor is difficult to predict but when present it can produce extraordinary results. Andris Nelsons, music director designate of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been...
Prom 45: Andrew Davis conducts Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage [Groves, Tynan, Wilson-Johnson, Clayton]
Tortured innocent he may have been yet a hundred years after his birth Benjamin Britten seems as much a fixture of our national life as that other great survivor of...
Prom 44: RPO/Charles Dutoit – Fireworks, La mer, Daphnis … Penderecki with Elschenbroich, Müller-Schott & Noras
This year one of the BBC Proms themes is Polish music, and this concert marked the 80th-birthday of Krzysztof Penderecki, alongside more familiar Charles Dutoit repertoire. Stravinsky’s Fireworks was lithesome,...
Prom 43: Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips – Taverner and Gesualdo
It is a cause for regret that in an anniversary year, the music of Naples-born Don Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) is featured in just the one Prom this season. Even then...
Prom 42: Bournemouth SO/Kirill Karabits – Janáček & Tchaikovsky – Sunwook Kim plays Beethoven
This Prom welcomed back the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to the Royal Albert Hall under the watchful eye of its conductor Kirill Karabits, now in his fifth season with the South...
Prom 41: LSO/Valery Gergiev – Borodin, Rider on the White Horse, Pictures at an Exhibition – Daniil Trifonov plays Glazunov
A concert comprising Russian music of greater and lesser familiarity – which latter term is unfortunately true these days of Borodin’s Second Symphony (1876), the piece never having regained the...
Prom 40: 6 Music – The Stranglers, Cerys Matthews, Laura Marling, Anna Stéphany, London Sinfonietta
One of BBC Proms’ biggest and most valuable assets is the potential for diversity and flexibility. This can be used in a number of ways, introducing more classically inclined audiences...
Prom 39: BBCNOW/David Atherton with Nishat Khan – Indra, Gate of the Moon, A London Symphony
If any link were to be sought among the strands of this programme, it must surely be extra-musical and relate to the incidental connection (in this context) between England and...
PCM5: Gustav & Imogen Holst, Eton Choirbook, Birtwistle Moth Requiem [BBC Singers/Nicholas Kok]
With a selection of choral works spanning 500 years, the BBC Singers and Nicholas Kok presented an interesting selection of English choral music. Sadly, much of Gustav Holst’s work in...
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