BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

This was the first free main concert in the history of the Proms, and it marked the 200th-anniversary of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Suitably, the main work was probably the...
A crime was committed at the Royal Albert Hall tonight. A crime against sound. And we don’t need Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver to find the culprit. AMPLIFICATION (is that loud...
Designed as a programme to link Benjamin Britten with friends and associates, this was an interesting selection starting with Britten’s work for piano and strings, Young Apollo, written to a...
These two works effectively take up the Christian story where the St Matthew Passion left off, and cover the subsequent triumphant events in the life of Christ which were fundamental...
Mariss Jansons, his Bavarian orchestra and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony were guaranteed a full house, and the prospect was, not unreasonably, weighed down with expectation. The result, though, was more diffuse,...
What is Nigel Kennedy for?For the Proms he’s a guaranteed sell-out – indeed rare must be the evening that 12,000 people can throng the Royal Albert Hall’s rotunda, but here,...
Strange to relate that some people, in Bristol to be precise, are knocking the traditional concert and questioning its time-honoured place in society: it suits their agenda while also scoring...
Opening this Prom was Lutosławski’s Symphonic Variations (1938), a tautly inventive piece in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra relished those echoes of pre-First World War Stravinsky, impressionist-era Szymanowski and neo-classical...
The BBC Philharmonic continued its Proms schedule with this intelligent, quietly innovative programme. Connections – not mutually exclusive – were made in various ways. There were two pieces with regal...
An approximation of the gaudy savagery of ancient Russia was the starting point for the BBC Philharmonic’s Prom with its Conductor Laureate Gianandrea Noseda, and I’d be impressed if a...
tenThing’s leader Tine Thing Helseth related how her female brass ensemble came about – in 2007 – as a bit of fun. The players (not exclusively the line-up here) decided...
Within a Proms season dominated by Wagner in general and his later music-dramas in particular, it is good that the earlier Romantic operas have not been neglected and Tannhäuser was...
I can imagine the point of having the Blue Danube Waltz as a curtain-raiser to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles’s Saturday-night Prom was the...
Following the “Handel in Italy” Proms Saturday Matinee, the remaining four are all given to exploring Benjamin Britten and his circle and influences. Here, appropriately with the strings and percussion...
Colin Anderson writes... Naresh Sohal’s The Cosmic Dance (2012-13) has been inspired by the Big Bang. It is, says the composer, “my own musical account of the phenomenon of the...
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