BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

Prom 62: Eric Whitacre
There can’t be many occasions when the very mention of the name of the featured artist results in whoops of excitement from the audience and a pop-star welcome. Such greeted...
Prom 61: Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi & Elgar’s First Symphony
The programme book described Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi (first heard in 1950) as “an established fixture of the English choral repertoire”. If only that were the case – this wonderful,...
Prom 60: Le nozze di Figaro [Glyndebourne Festival Opera]
For his return to the Sussex Downs following an inspired yet conservative Billy Budd in 2010, director Michael Grandage has transformed Mozart’s sublime comedy of musical manners into one of...
Prom 59: The Broadway Sound/John Wilson
In the balmy hazy days of August, when the searing heat of the summer sun cracks the flagstones, we in Britain have been reminded of California and Hollywood from John...
Prom 58: A Journey To Far Corners Of Our Musical World
There can’t have been a tougher audience this season: not least a young girl who, at the top of her voice, decided that she’d had enough within seconds. However this...
PCM7: Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with Christine Schäfer
The penultimate Proms Chamber Music recital of the season consisted of two pieces written three years apart yet separated by a seemingly vast cultural gulf.With its intuitive fusion of cabaret...
Prom 57: Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester/Gatti with Frank Peter Zimmermann
Although Daniele Gatti, Proms regular since 1995, directed a previous generation of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester on a tour in 1998, this was his first collaboration with the young musicians...
Prom 56: Oliver Knussen conducts Goehr, Grime, Debussy and his own Third Symphony
Maybe Oliver Knussen’s annual Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was not best suited to this Saturday-night slot, but the programme was as substantial and well-planned as ever. The first...
Prom 55: English National Opera’s Peter Grimes – Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft, Iain Paterson, Edward Gardner
Edward Gardner is quoted in the programme for this Prom as finding Peter Grimes “very un-English”, and his collaboration with the American director David Alden on the 2009 English National...
Prom 54: Max 9, Shostakovich 10, Tasmin Little plays Delius
During the course of his near-decade as Master of the Queen’s Music, Peter Maxwell Davies ('Max') has written a number of ‘official’ works as well as a substantial body of...
Prom 53: 1612 Italian Vespers [I Fagiolini/Robert Hollingworth]
“The comparison is unfair”, Robert Hollingworth protested at the start of this late-night Prom, “the same as saying: with the greatest work of art in the world, how does this...
Prom 52: Gergiev conducts Prokofiev’s Cinderella
For balletomanes and lovers of Russian music, Valery Gergiev’s concert performances of the great full-length Russian ballets have been among the highlights of recent Proms seasons. Here he gave us...
Prom 51: Andris Nelsons conducts Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony
Back for his fourth Prom in as many years, Andris Nelsons brought this Russian sandwich of a concert to a cracking start with the Overture to Glinka’s Pushkin-inspired opera Ruslan...
Prom 50: Osmo Vänskä & Michael Collins
The current Proms season has made a feature of music by Frederick Delius, the 150th-anniversary of whose birth fell this January, and this programme included a rare revival of his...
PCM6: Escher String Quartet – Hugh Wood & Debussy
It was gratifying indeed to hear Hugh Wood’s Fourth String Quartet. Wood, here interviewed is unassuming and modest, and retains a youthful manner in his 80th-birthday year. He was happy...
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