BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts

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Prom 46: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim – The Marriage of Figaro, Resonating Sounds, Ramal, Alborada del gracioso, Boléro
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra dates back to 1999 as the brainchild of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. Mixing young musicians from Israel, Palestine and several other countries (including Spain), this...
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Prom 45: Laura Mvula with Esperanza Spalding, Electric Vocals, Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley – Sing to the Moon
Although it is not unprecedented to have 'pop' artists at the Proms, to have one that has such current cross-cultural appeal is unusual. This might explain the enthusiastic rumpus created...
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Prom 44: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Davis with Truls Mørk – Don Juan, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Symphonie fantastique
Sir Andrew Davis, going great guns at the Lyric Opera of Chicago until at least 2021, has since January last year also been the Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony...
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Prom 43: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner with Albina Shagimuratova, Stuart Skelton, Mikhail Petrenko and Baiba Skride – Scherzo fantastique, The Bells, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, 1812 Overture
A Russian programme oddly shaped and of no particular relevance to wider Proms themes but enjoyable for all that. Edward Gardner may not be the most innovative conductor of his...
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PCM5: Anne Schwanewilms & Malcolm Martineau – Debussy and Richard Strauss
With the unfortunate withdrawal of Alice Coote due to ill health (and with her Julius Drake), the BBC Proms team secured the considerable services of Anne Schwanewilms and Malcolm Martineau...
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Prom 42: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Manze with Roderick Williams and Allan Clayton – Rudi Stephan, Frederick Kelly, George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony
“Lest we forget” was the strap-line above this concert, one of several Proms marking (or occasionally just cashing in on) the outbreak of the First World War one hundred years...
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Prom 41: Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon play Mozart 40 – with Alexandra Wood & Stevie Wishart Spinning a Yarn – and the world premiere of Benedict Mason’s Meld
Given its unique ambience and dimensions, the Royal Albert Hall might be thought an ideal venue to put on a musical ‘event’ such as Benedict Mason has been synonymous with...
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Prom 40: LSO/Bernard Haitink with Camilla Tilling – Schubert 5 & Mahler 4
Some conductors gracing Proms 2014 are marking significant birthdays this year – Donald Runnicles 60, Andrew Davis 70, Roger Norrington 80 and Neville Marriner 90. Nor should we forget those...
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Prom 39: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Markus Stenz with Jonathan Biss – Les Indes galantes, Bernard Rands’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Mozart 1/K16, Ein Heldenleben
One might look in vain for any connection among the pieces of this concert; rather the selection seemed to revel in music-making for its own sake. Indeed it was all...
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Prom 38: BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds with Leonard Elschenbroich – Finlandia, Max 5, Frank Bridge’s Oration, Sibelius 2; Peter Maxwell Davies Composer Portrait
As his eightieth-birthday celebrations gather momentum, this was a good time for the Proms to gain Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s insight into his own music, ahead of two concerts devoted...
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Prom 37: Steve Reich – It’s Gonna Rain, The Desert Music – David Hill conducts BBC Singers & Endymion
Fifty years after Steve Reich made a tape recording of Brother Walter preaching in Union Square, San Francisco, the resultant piece of phasing, It’s Gonna Rain, continues to have a...
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Prom 36: BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo with Janine Jansen – Vaughan Williams’s The Wasps, The Lark Ascending & Job – and William Alwyn’s First Symphony
An oddly arranged yet absorbing programme of English music – the first half opening and closing with Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘favourites’. That the Overture to his incidental music for Aristophanes’s...
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Prom 35: BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Thomas Søndergård with James Ehnes – Caroline Mathilde, Walton, The Swan of Tuonela, Sibelius 5
After two collaborations with erstwhile chiefs, one distinctly wobbly, the other immensely assured, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has given two Proms under its current principal conductor, Thomas Søndergård....
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Prom 34: BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Thomas Søndergård with Francesco Piemontesi – Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration & Burleske, Mozart K386, Nielsen 5
In an imaginative and satisfying Prom that contained nothing over-familiar yet had plenty of red meat, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its effortlessly authoritative conductor Thomas Søndergård gave...
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PCM4: Janine Jansen, Sakari Oramo & Itamar Golan – Prokofiev & Schubert
This was the first of three Proms appearances this season for Janine Jansen. Each is in the company of Sakari Oramo, though on this occasion the conductor was enjoying a...