BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 13: National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America/Valery Gergiev with Joshua Bell
Sporting blazers, red trousers and spotty sneakers, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (newly formed and partly an initiative of Carnegie Hall) made this appearance at...
Prom 12: Santa Cecilia Chorus & Orchestra/Antonio Pappano with Maria Agresta – Viva Verdi! [Libera me … 4 Sacred Pieces]
Curiouser and curiouser: in the only Prom of this season entirely devoted to Verdi in his bicentenary year, not a single item from his operatic output was performed. But more...
PSM1: Academy of Ancient Music/Richard Egarr with Sophie Bevan – Handel, Corelli, Valentini
The focus of the first Proms Saturday Matinee this season was Handel in Rome and the music by which he might have been influenced there. Although accomplished and distinctive pieces...
Prom 11: Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge and Welt-Parlament [Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore with Kathinka Pasveer]
The first complete staging of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus ‘Licht’, in Birmingham as part of the Cultural Olympiad last year (review link below), put paid to any thought that this most...
Prom 10: Santa Cecilia Orchestra/Antonio Pappano – Mozart & Rachmaninov – Jan Lisiecki plays Schumann
Only a week into BBC Proms 2013 and we have variously been at sea (twice), had a double visit from Doctor Who and enjoyed the authentic sounds and balances of...
Prom 9: BBCNOW/Thomas Søndergård – Excelsior!, The Song of the Night, An Alpine Symphony
After its exigencies with intergalactic folk at the two Doctor Who concerts, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales returned for its first ‘straight’ Prom (of three) introducing to London its...
Prom 8: BBCSO/Thomas Adès – Britten, Lutosławski, Totentanz – with Paul Watkins, Christianne Stotijn and Simon Keenlyside
Thomas Adès’s Proms appearances as a conductor over the past fifteen years have also provided an overview of his evolution as a composer, and this concert – which featured the...
Prom 7: Gospel Prom
There could be no doubting the fervour; nor the general reception to this, the first-ever Gospel Prom. There were some 200 singers, mostly dressed in black but with some shock...
Prom 6: BBC Philharmonic/Juanjo Mena – A Vision of the Sea & Inextinguishable Symphony – Nobuyuki Tsujii plays Rachmaninov
On its first outing, David Matthews’s A Vision of the Sea (2013) made a big impact. Impressively scored for a standard large orchestra, including harp and piano, this 22-minute symphonic...
Prom 5: Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Jonathan Nott with Arditti Quartet – Lachenmann & Mahler
The 2013 Proms season promises its share of musical subversion real or imagined, but few pieces are likely to prove more subversive than Helmut Lachenmann’s Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (1980) which...
PCM1: Vilde Frang & Michail Lifits – Ravel, Mozart & Lutosławski
The BBC Proms Chamber Music recitals (every Monday lunchtime during the season) commenced in refreshing style, in both performance and atmosphere. The cool and light space of Cadogan Hall was...
Prom 4: Lully, Rameau, Delibes, Massenet, and the 1913 Rite of Spring – Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth
An instrument for every occasion! On Bastille Day, Les Siècles (a French orchestra with its French founder-conductor) brought along various such apparatuses from different centuries to match the music that...
Prom 3: Doctor Who … Two
Even before we had left the tube station to walk to the Royal Albert Hall, I began to hear people talking about the upcoming event with great anticipation and excitement....
Prom 2: Doctor Who
We’ve been here before – in 2008 and 2010 – when two of the BBC’s biggest brands, the Proms and Doctor Who, collide together in the Royal Albert Hall. In...
Prom 1: Julian Anderson’s Harmony opens Proms 2013, Sakari Oramo/Sea Symphony, Stephen Hough/Paganini Rhapsody
Behold the Proms! This bumper part-oceanic package launched (imagine a bottle of champers hitting a ship’s stern) the 2013 Season, opening with the eager anticipation to hear something new. Julian...
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